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US National Archives collaboration

United States National Archives WikiProject

Would you like to help improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the National Archives and its incredible collection? This summer, the National Archives—which houses some of America's most important historical documents—is hosting me as its Wikipedian in Residence, and I have created WP:NARA to launch these efforts. There are all sorts of tasks available for any type of editor, whether you're a writer, organizer, gnome, coder, or image guru. The National Archives is making its resources available to Wikipedia, so help us forge this important relationship! Please sign up and introduce yourself. Dominic·t 15:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

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Legislators

Hi-I came across an article about Fred Townsend who served in the Iowa Senate. His father John Selby Townsend served in the Iowa House of Representatives and I started that article. Many thanks-RFD (talk) 13:19, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Cool. Once again, thanks for the initiative and thanks for the heads up!  :) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Edward Hirst (cricketer)

You deleted a new article for this individual under the notice of '09:17, 24 October 2008 Philosopher (talk | contribs) deleted "Edward Hirst (cricketer)" ‎ (A7 (bio): Doesn't indicate importance or significance of a real person)'.

I would like to create such an article, as the said E.T. Hirst played twenty one first-class cricket matches for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1887 and 1888. It is all part of my attempts to complete the names on the List of Yorkshire County Cricket Club players and [Category:Yorkshire cricketers] which contains others of similar notability.

I have a number of reference sources, such as this - Could you please advise me. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 15:11, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Having waited for over three days for a response, I have edited in the new article. You are welcome to berate me when you have the time to assess the new article ! I am going away for a few days from tomorrow - hence the 'urgency'. Regards,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 16:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, RL caught up with me yet again. I originally deleted the article because the article didn't seem to claim that he was notable. Your new article fixes that problem. As to whether he actually is notable - if the other players are notable, he probably is as well. As far as that goes, however, I have no idea whether the others are notable or not, as I don't know the first thing about either cricket or English sports. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 04:15, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Well, under this Wiki guideline [1] then Hirst, plus all his fellow cricketers, "has appeared in at least one major cricket match since 1697 as a player or umpire". So I am assuming that it will pass the notability criteria. Thanks anyway,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 15:09, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

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How many updates have you made now? You deserve a cookie.

I finally got an account and apparently, I can send people digital cookies thanking them for the work they do on Wikipedia. You've done a ton, so keep it up! AdamTReineke (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

And thanks from me as well

Thanks for the AWB approval. I hope to use it wisely. Regards, Buster40004 Talk 12:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

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AWB

Hi, I have seen your comment on my request for permission. I would like to point out that out of my 400 or so vandalism reverts, I have only received 4 negative responses. --Miguel AG^(talk) Review me! 00:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that you seem to know what you're doing, and some false positives are to be expected ... but with bots and tools that allow bot-like editing, people tend to get pretty finicky about false positives. Since I'm no longer a "regular" at the AWB approvals, I'm not sure where they're drawing that particular line these days (or even if they are), hence the request that another admin handle it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Appreciate your response. Thank you for reviewing my request. Miguel AG^(talk) Review me! 07:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

John Catlin

Hi-I noticed the comments about James Clarke and the Iowa Territory. I started an article about John Catlin the last secretary of Wisconsin Territory. Part of Wisconsin Territory (now eastern Minnesota) was not admitted as part of the new state of Wisconsin. Congress neglected to organize that part into a new territory. Consequently Catlin became acting governor of Wisconsin Territory when Henry Dodge became an US Senator from the state of Wisconsin. Okay-Catlin went to present day Stillwater, Minnesota taking the Wisconsin Territory seal with him and issues a writ of election for the Wisconsin Territory Congressional Delegate. Henry Hastings Sibley gets elected and after some debate Congress seats him. Sibley was able to organized the Minnesota Territory and eventually became the first governor of the state of Minnesota. In 1846-1849, there was confusion about the status of unorganized territory. Thank you-RFD (talk) 12:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

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A cup of coffee for you!

Thank you for approving my AWB request! I promise i will be using it for good. Once again, Thank you Anirudh Emani (talk) 06:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

for your suggestion re: citation templates. At this point I think I'd just confuse my students more by pointing it out to them, since they were already taught to add their references manually. I'll keep it in mind for next time, though! Sgelbman (talk) 13:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Hope you have a great semester! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Removing edit

Had Twinkle do something very odd just now... first of all, it issued the wrong warning, then it recorded my IP address, which I haven't used since my account was created since I've gotten into vandalism reverting. Could this edit please be removed from the history. Thanks. Calabe1992 (talk) 14:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you; appreciated. Calabe1992 (talk) 14:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Since the deleted information would still be visible to admins, I've forwarded the request to the oversighters for full removal. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 14:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Need license template help

This brand new user has created a template that can easily be confused with the actual character license template. It's been showing up at promotional images backlog and I need to now go back and re-do everything because it appeared that this was the character template to me until moments ago. It looks to me like this could cause a lot of confusion because it states it is not a license. Will go back and "undo" everything I've done re: promotional licenses for characters. Will change them to the real character license, but think someone needs to know about the template as it's so easy to believe it's the character license. Thanks, We hope (talk) 03:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

It looks like WP:T3 (duplicate template speedy criterion), so I've tagged it as such. At a guess, I'd say that if/when it is deleted, it should be replaced by {{Non-free character}}. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Did change everything that had been tagged with it to non free character, so as far as it goes now, it should be out of use. Thanks! We hope (talk) 13:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You got it done!

Congratulations on reworking the template Compact election box to include a no change aspect per our previous discussions several months back. I only noticed because I have Swati Dandekar on my watch page. By the way congrats on how you improved her article changing the lists of facts I had put there into readable prose, it greatly improved the article. Dandekar was one of my first articles I worked on and I have learned much in the 11 months I have been editing on Wikipedia (5,700 edits if it means anything) - but I digress. In my back tracking to learn how you changed the coding for the template to make it a no change template and then other edits you made to various pages using the new {{Compact election box no change}} I discovered you have made a typo in your reference for the 2010 elections, you have it stating Official Results Report, General Election held November 2, 2011 instead of 2010 and you can see this @ User:Philosopher/Republican Example and as you do the copy and paste method like I do, this typo has spread. As you probably know you can use the Pages that link to search tool and insert Template:Compact election box no change in the search field to locate those articles.
The second part of my contact with you has to do with making a new page for Iowa House of Representatives elections, 2010 and possibly redoing the Iowa House of Representatives elections, 2008 and Iowa House of Representatives elections, 2006 into the same {{Compact election box no change}} format, allowing for a copy and paste for individual Representative's articles. Also maybe doing previous years before 2006 and of course the same for Iowa Senate elections. Have you started any of these? Thoughts? Maybe we can enlist others to help? Otherwise it will be a hodgepodge of articles with and without the standardized layout of the {{Compact election box no change}}.
I prefer not having fractured conversations so please respond here. I will watch your talk page for the duration of this conversation.
THANKS—RifeIdeas Talk 17:26, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! I'll go through and fix them. Since I don't have that many yet, I'll do it manually, but there's always AWB if I make too pervasive of an error *crosses fingers*. As you figured out, I'm using User:Philosopher/Republican Example and User:Philosopher/Democratic Example to standardize my references and templates across articles - guess that means I'm standardizing the bad along with the good, but at least it means it's easy to fix the errors when they're discovered. Sorry for the long reply, but here's what's on my mind as far as this goes. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Dandekar

I'm glad to see you approve of my changes to Swati Dandekar - it was that article that actually kick-started this project, as I was updating it following her resignation from the Senate and thought "Why not put an election template on here" only to remember that I'd forgotten to make it. So I'm doing it now. As a side note, Dandekar might make a good candidate to see what a B-class Iowa politician article might look like - it's only one criterion short of that class, imo - and the only C-class state legislative article I've found so far - so if you have any suggestions for improvement, or can improve it further yourself, that'd be awesome! I'm afraid I'm going to be tied up with a project for a while, so won't be improving it much myself in the near future. Which brings me to that big project itself, the Bio project. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

In my review of her article since your response I re-added the sources for her committee assignments. I also upgraded the bare pdf url's of the election results to template cite web style for consistency. I also added the page #s since there is the thought of elevating the article above C-class (this may not be needed for a standardized reference for the mass Politian articles). In doing so I using your sources @ User:Philosopher/Democratic Example when I noticed that your choice for the 2008 election was a html url and not a pdf url. I changed Dandekar's to the pdf url because I think that source will be less subject to change than the html one. I also tracked all of the references and external links and corrected the non-viable links to new viable ones. I removed all the quotation marks from the <ref name=> as I found out after 100's of my own edits using them that the quotation marks are unnecessary. In checking the references I found changes in her board appointments, so I updated them. I now think the lede paragraph is a little heavy and wonder if the board membership details should be put into it's own section under a heading of Occupation or Community leader as that is what is listed as her occupation on the legislature website. You may want to check my changes for accuracy and readability. I do not know if it is relevant but there is some personal information available on her constituency site about her husband and children we could add. Any information leads you could give me to expand the article will be appreciated.
Keep up the good editing. —RifeIdeas Talk 17:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

As far as the html vs. pdf url goes, I used the one available on the Secretary of State's directory. The pages should both be static, I don't know why they have 2 (2008 general and 2010 primary) as html files and the rest as pdfs. It's interesting to know that you don't need quotation marks for <ref name=>, I wasn't aware of that.

As for the rest, a family/background section could be useful if there's enough verifiable information about it to create such a section. Dandakar's been profiled by several magazines/newspapers, so maybe you could glean enough information, I'm not sure. As for the organizations, I don't know - I've got a gut feeling that such a section would need to be more than a bare list of organizational involvement, but am not sure how I would expand it. Guess I haven't expanded enough articles yet.  ;) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:59, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Bio project

At the moment, I'm going through Category:Members of the Iowa House of Representatives in reverse alphabetical order by surname, excluding members who haven't served in the past decade or two, and adding the results to their pages. I'm also making a series of standardized fixes to each page, including several that probably aren't obvious from the editing history (they may not apply to every article and include a few changes to commons:), checking SoS and news records for primary challenges and special elections, etc. A good idea, I already discovered and fixed a serious error I'd made to Roger Wendt's article while applying these changes. It'll take me a little bit, but it'll be worth it to have each article standardly improved! (I plan to do Category:Iowa State Senators afterwards, but that shouldn't take much additional time, as many of its members are also members of Category:Members of the Iowa House of Representatives.) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, and at the risk of appearing to violate WP:OWN, I'm going to be checking each individual article for these improvements myself, so while you can join in the project, the effort would be largely redundant. There are a few pervasive and possibly-pervasive issues in the articles that I just need to assure myself have been fixed, if only for my own piece of mind, and there's no better time to check/fix them than when I'm going to be editing each of them anyway. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Election page project

As for the elections pages, those should be really fast and easy to make when I'm done - just copy-and-paste the appropriate electoral section from the member articles, add a header, and voila! The same goes for the special election sections and pages - and since I'm checking for them with each candidate, we can just cycle through the articles and not have to worry about missing one.  :-D --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

You method of operation is just the opposite of my thinking. I was thinking of doing the various year elections first and then copy and paste the information into the individual Politian's articles (making them easy). My reasoning is that the SOS pdf's are already listed by districts so it would be easy to copy and paste these results one after another into a page format that has been standardized for all election years. The election years page format could include a section for primary challenges with possibly a marker for this in the main election results (like the asterisk for incumbents). This may result in less searching for the individual Politian articles. However since you are undertaking the entire project I defer to your judgment. I do feel your knowledge about political articles far exceeds mine and am glad you are willing to undertake such a large undertaking and as you are the one who has done so much in the past on these articles you should be able to spot things that need corrected or improved upon much better than anyone else.
Again keep up the good editing.—RifeIdeas Talk 17:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jyjou*

Hello. I replied to your comment at AfD. Since english is not my mother tongue, I probably haven't made myself clear: I was talking about spam, not copyvio and I didn't check for copyvio on google. The google results are mostly copied from each other, not the wikipedia article. In any case, thank you for the comment. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 09:00, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Attack, with full name

Have an edit here that Cluebot picked up on right as I did. Full name used as an insult. Calabe1992 (talk) 18:40, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Revision deleted. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:27, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion declined

Please do not replace declined speedy deletion templates (for the same reason, at least) as you did at List of cities, towns and villages in Burma: B and Template:Lists of Burma locations. Also, as WP:G7 is for author-requested deletion, please don't use it on pages you haven't edited previously, as you did at List of cities, towns and villages in Burma: Y. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:38, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

You are causing disruption by removing my speedy tags. Proper lists are being created by township and I have a right to place db-author deletion tags on redundant lists I virtually am the sole author of.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:44, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Not at all, once a speedy deletion is declined, the deletion request should be taken to another forum. The request had already been declined for two of them. As for the "Y" one, even if the header was deleted, you didn't even edit the article, so db-author was clearly inappropriate. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:49, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Just so the reasoning is out there, this is because speedy deletion is for non-controversial requests. At an absolute minimum, the earlier removal of the tag indicated that another editor disagreed with you about the deletion request, hence it was not a non-controversial request. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

All true, but this multi diff leaves Dr Blofield as the sole author of the template at the time of the deletion request, something that was not obvious to the admin who made the first decline. As such I would have been tempted to delete anyway if the template was not still included in the other articles where after Dr Blofield's edits there was a spattering of disambiguation edits which could be contrued that he was not the sole editor but it could also be arued that the disambiguations where not substantial leaving Dr Blofield as the author. What do you think? That would still make it un-controversial on the assumption that the first declining editor checked the history but not the diffs (it would be too much to ask) Agathoclea (talk) 19:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I've asked Calliopejen to AFD the lists but it is disruptive keeping a bunch of unwikified lists when they are being replaced with township tabled lists. Its just a waste of time having to take your own lists to AFD. Thanks. If you actually looked at what happened in the history I am really the sole author of them, except the Y page which has just one village listed!!. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:07, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Agathoclea, I'll grant most of that, but you still have the "Y" one, which was created solely by a different author and who clearly intended it to be part of this series. Thanks for pointing out the diffs (I hadn't noticed them either). Knowing that, maybe the template could have been deleted ... but perhaps the template is also essential to the "Y" one? In my mind, it's a close case - and also, to my mind, Speedy isn't for close cases. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:25, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Dr. Blofield, Perhaps I am being overly cautious here. Sorry if that's the case. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:25, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Well you could make amends by notifying the other "contributors" of the the db-author and whether they object or not..♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

You've got mail

{{You've got mail}}David M Levy 15:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Replied. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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The Signpost: 25 April 2021

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• Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

• Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

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• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).

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21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

• The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs.
• Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
• Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews.
• Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews.
• Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews.
• Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations.
• Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items.

Please remember that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of Round 2 but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in Round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [13]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [14]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [15][16]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [17]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
• The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [18] [19] [20]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [21][22]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [23]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

• There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [25]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [26][27][28]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [29]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [30][31]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
• Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

• Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

• After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Ilhan Omar on a "Biographies" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2021-24

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [32]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [33]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [34]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [35][36]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-25

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [37]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [38]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 June 2021

• News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more

• In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money

• Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release

• Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report

• Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way

• News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia

• Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things

• WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview

• Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive?

• Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed

• Obituary: SarahSV

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [39]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [40]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [41][42]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [43][44]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

You've been unsubscribed from the Feedback Request Service

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WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were:

• The Rambling Man, with 1825 points from 3 featured articles, 44 featured article reviews, 14 good articles, 30 good article reviews and 10 DYKs. In addition, he completed a 34-article good topic on the EFL Championship play-offs.
• Epicgenius, a New York specialist, with 1083 points from 2 featured article reviews, 18 good articles, 30 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
• Bloom6132, with 869 points from 11 DYKs, all with bonus points, and 54 "In the news" items, mostly covering people who had recently died.
• Gog the Mild, with 817 points from 3 featured articles on historic battles in Europe, 5 featured article reviews and 3 good articles.
• Hog Farm, with 659 points from 2 featured articles and 2 good articles on American Civil War battles, 18 featured article reviews, 2 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 4 DYKs.
• BennyOnTheLoose, a snooker specialist and new to the Cup, with 647 points from a featured article, 2 featured article reviews, 6 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 3 DYKs.

In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
• An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

• IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

• The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [45]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [46]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [47][48]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [49]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [50][51]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [52]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 July 2021

• News and notes: Wikimania and a million other news stories

• Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong

• In the media: Larry is at it again

• Board of Trustees candidates: See the candidates

• Recent research: Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

• Traffic report: Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

• News from the WMF: Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

• Humour: A little verse

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

• If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

• Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

• Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:18, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [53][54]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [55]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [56]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [57]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [58]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [59]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [60][61][62]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [63]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [64]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

• News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban

• In the media: Vive la différence!

• Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year

• Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs

• News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia

• Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview

• Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan

• Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:44, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [65]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [66]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)