</div></div> <section end="technews-2017-W15"/> 18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
</div></div> <section end="technews-2017-W15"/> 18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
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== Question about creating a new page ==
Hi again,
So I wanted to create a page for Graham Brown, American thriller author that has co-written books with [[Clive Cussler]]. He is on the disambiguation page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Brown already. I don't have complete info about him, but wanted to at least start the page so I did a draft so far https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Graham_Brown_(writer). So I've checked the Making Your First Page article but ran into a couple of quesions:
Can I use the official bio photo with permission and how to I mark that?
I have a year of birth, but not day/month. Is that necessary?
I was using another author page as my example. I want to link to the books he's written, and provide a quick summary. My assumption is as a co-author of two NYT best-selling novels he qualifies as a writer of note and deserves his own page.
Thanks
[[User:BookReviewer|BookReviewer]] ([[User talk:BookReviewer|talk]]) 00:56, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
You are invited to join us at Ace Hotel for Wikipedia Day NYC 2017, a Wikipedia celebration and mini-conference as part of the project's global 16th birthday festivities. In addition to the party, the event will be a participatory unconference, with plenary panels, lightning talks, and of course open space sessions.
With special guests Katherine Maher of the Wikimedia Foundation and Tim Wu of Columbia Law School speaking on our Post-truth panel!
Also featuring an International/Multilingual panel, a Documenting Activism panel, a Multimedia/Tech Panel, a Science panel, an Art panel, and more.
And there will be cake.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed. [2]
The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [3]
The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [4]
Problems
Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [5]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [7]
Changes this week
There is a new magic word called {{PAGELANGUAGE}}. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [8]
When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [9]
You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [10]
The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. [12]
Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [13]
When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [14]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Reversion of Baltimore Ravens edit by 126.19.93.217
Why did you revert my edit on the Baltimore Ravens page? You should read the edit. It's just some guy inserting his personal opinion about how great the move is. It barely sounds appropriate. I'll re-add it since I assume you didn't even read it. 126.19.93.217 (talk) 19:01, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also, why did you threaten me for saying my edit summary was misleading? That seems like really inappropriate behavior. Like I said previously, actually read the edit please. 126.19.93.217 (talk) 19:03, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You removed two URLs from reference citations & removed part of the image syntax, leaving a red link. While it is true I did not scroll down far enough to see the opinion that you removed, the first three portions of your edit were indistinguishable between incompetence or vandalism, so I reverted them. Since your edit summary deleted random opinion of a user had nothing to do with the URL removals or the mangling of the image syntax, I flagged it as a misuse of the edit summary. I apologize if I misinterpreted your intent behind these mistakes. When I spot something that looks like vandalism or seems amiss, I act quickly. I would ask that you please preview your edits before saving them to avoid future mistakes in the Wikimarkup & the interpretation of your intent. We all make mistakes, particularly when we begin editing. After, seven years & 16,000 edits, I, myself, am certainly not immune to mistakes, although previewing my edits has certainly helped.
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 see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [15]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
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 OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [16]
Changes this week
ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [17]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).
Future changes
The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [18][19]
The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.
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
The block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. [20]
Changes this week
Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. [21]
There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. [22]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. [23][24]
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Babycastles gallery by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
We will include a look at the organization and planning for our chapter, and expanding volunteer roles for both regular Wikipedia editors and new participants.
We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, and other outreach activities.
We welcome the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from all educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.
After the main meeting, pizza/chicken/vegetables and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
You can park in any numbered stall as long as you pay for the stall. There are pay machines at each lot and you pay for the space when you park. Our prices are 3 dollars for under 3 hours and 6 dollars for all day. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
@Brianhe: & @Peaceray: Hey there, thanks for asking this important question and for doing a little research on the parking. I've updated the event page with details on the rooms and building addresses. You are correct that parking for the day is $6 for all day. The garages can fill up, so it's best to leave a ten minute buffer for your travel time. I emailed Kimberly to ask her if she would recommend a garage and give us further instruction. Will update the event page accordingly. Will be so glad to have you both there. Shameran81 (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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
EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. [25]
Problems
The Firefox add-onFirefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. [26]
Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. [27]
Changes this week
The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. [28]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring. [29]
Editing as Activism: Black WikiHistory Month Workshop and Edit-a-thon at UW Bothell
Editing as Activism: Black WikiHistory Month Workshop and Edit-a-thon Social Justice Organizers at University of Washington-Bothell are hosting a two-day editing event for Black WikiHistory Month on Feb. 22 and Feb. 23, 2017.
Location: UW Bothell Activities & Recreation Center (ARC) Overlook (Sports and Recreation Complex on the campus map), Second floor, room 202. Address: 18220 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011; vehicle parking in North parking garage $3 for 3 hours or $6/all day rate cash or card
This workshop gives you the critical tools you need to log on with purpose and make edits that make a difference.
Location: UW Bothell Common Grounds Cafe in the Commons Hall (UW2), main floor. Address: 18115 Campus Way NE Bothell, WA 98011; vehicle parking in South parking garage $3 for 3 hours or $6/all day rate cash or card
Put your editing skills to work in a group editing session. Edit and/or create pages that improve Wikipedia's coverage of Black history and culture. All welcome. Novice editors encouraged to attend the Learn to Purposefully Edit session on Feb. 22. Bring your laptops, power cords, and books/articles to edit with.
All are welcome; this event is specifically geared towards the University of Washington student and faculty community. Light refreshments will be served.
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 edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide. [30]
Changes this week
Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards. [31]
There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options: type and peers. The type option solves this problem. You can use peers to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [32]
OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [33]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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
On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [34]
Changes this week
You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [35]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [36]
The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [37][38]
Join us for a communal updating of Wikipedia entries on subjects related to art and feminism! Our focus is on improving Wikipedia's representation of North American Indigenous art, Indigenous womxn artists, and Indigenous feminism.
We will provide tutorials for beginner Wikipedians, childcare, refreshments, and live streaming for those unable to attend.
Cost is free! Anyone and everyone who wishes to attend this event is welcome. Bring your own laptops and power cords (guest access to UW WiFi will be available).
Reversion of removed content from the page "List of people of Cuman descent"
I don't know where to post this but i saw your message about that you restored the removed content from the page "List of people of Cuman descent". I removed the content because there is absolutely no source about the ethnic origin of them, and it's all false, (mostly) made by Hungarian nationalists. Thank you in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrappos (talk • contribs) 19:57, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Always put something in the edit summary. Please refer to Help:Edit summary about this.
It would be helpful if you gave a fuller explanation, like you did in your note to me, about your reason for the removal at Talk:List of people of Cuman descent
Please sign your notes on talk pages with ~~~~. Please also see Wikipedia:Signatures.
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 now search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [39]
When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [40]
Problems
Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [41]
Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [42]
Changes this week
The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [43]
The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [44]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Clarification
The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.
Join us at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Education and Research Building at the Museum of Modern Art, 4 West 54th Street, on Saturday, March 11, 2017 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for an all-day communal updating of Wikipedia entries on subjects related to art and feminism. There will be childcare, snacks, multiple trainings and panel discussions. People of all gender identities and expressions welcomed and encouraged to attend.
This year’s edit-a-thon kicks off at 10:00 a.m. with a conversation about information activism with writer Joanne McNeil and Data & Society Research Institute Fellow Zara Rahman, moderated by Kimberly Drew, the social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, creator of the Tumblr “Black Contemporary Art,” and the person behind @museummammy on Instagram. Afternoon breakout groups will engage in focused discussions about related issues, including intersectionality and librarianship, power structures in notability guidelines on Wikipedia, and radical archives. --Pharos (talk) 18:46, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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 this week
You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [45][46]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [47]
CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [48][49]
Art+Feminism @ Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (March 18, 2017)
You are invited to the upcoming Art+Feminism edit-athon, which will be held at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (415 Southwest 10th Avenue #300, Portland 97205) on Saturday, March 18, 2017 from 10:00am – 5:00pm. For more information, visit Eventbrite.
I've been an editor a long time, but rarely make changes. Usually when I'm doing research and find a change or citation that needs updating. Today I ran across an entry that I believe needs editing, but wanted some guidance before I did so.
There is a section in Influence and reception that seems to just be personal opinion, specifically:
→Credibility—a Kirkus review is respected throughout the industry and by media and libraries
→Marketing tool—a good Kirkus review is a valuable marketing tool, great for a blurb on a press release, or to be placed on your site, or as an editorial review on retailer sites
→Personal gratification—every author I know feels great when their Kirkus review has good things to say.
Am i correct that this is personal opinion and should be removed or rewritten?
@BookReviewer: Well, it certainly smacks of WP:PROMO, but more importantly, it is a copyright violation (see WP:COPYVIO) as the text exists in selfpublishingadvice.org/publishing-is-a-kirkus-review-worth-the-price/, which has a June 13, 2014 publication date that precedes the addition of that text to the article. I would say remove that text ASAP with an edit summary of [[WP:COPYVIO]]: copied from http://selfpublishingadvice.org/publishing-is-a-kirkus-review-worth-the-price/.
Got it. Removed that and updated a bit of the description. I need to cite the "most expensive fee-for-review" statement, but I know its correct. I'll find an authoritative link or price comparison chart this weekend to back it up.
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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [50]
You can see monthly page views when you click on Page information in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [52]
The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [53]
The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [54]
Problems
On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [55]
Changes this week
When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [56]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
On the last Sunday of every month, the Boardroom at Ace Hotel New York hosts Action Equals History — a unique opportunity for New Yorkers to learn hands-on in a technology training/workshop session about the mechanics, practices and benefits of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects. This is an opportunity for all to gather, share and work collectively towards a more robust account of history.
For this month, and following on the recent Art+Feminism campaign, we'll focus on building better edit-a-thon tools for a variety of different thematic campaigns, and user-testing them with the community. Towards a goal of advancing these tools for wider use with diverse local groups.
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
When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [57]
Problems
Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [58][59]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).
Cut & paste of material from Theranos to Elizabeth Holmes
Sorry, it just seemed like her Wikipedia page read as if it were written by her personally. The talk page seemed to reflect that sentiment as well. 173.179.145.202 (talk) 14:45, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I do think that there is some negative coverage in the Questions about Theranos section, & the Awards and recognition section does state that 'Following the scrutiny over the Theranos lab controversy, Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders" for 2016.' If you want to expand on that, please do, but please adhere to the editing guidelines.
In this edit you posted a Template:Uw-tdel3 warning, but your edit summary referred to Template:Uw-tdel4, so presumably you intended a level 4 warning and posted the wrong one by mistake. This is of no importance, but I thought I would let you know so that you can watch out for similar mistakes in future. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:39, 30 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@JamesBWatson: Thanks for pointing this out. I usually use Twinkle for user warnings, but I think in this case, because there were section headings after the March 2017 section heading, I was trying to post manually under that heading. I think I made a typo in the template syntax, copied & pasted to the summary, saw my mistake in the body but only managed to correct it there.
I know you admins must rely on the edit summaries to determine up front about the warnings that other editors are make to a particular editor. Sorry if I created any confusion about the matter.
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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [60]
The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [61]
English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [62]
Problems
Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [63]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [66]
New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [67]
The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [68]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.
So I wanted to create a page for Graham Brown, American thriller author that has co-written books with Clive Cussler. He is on the disambiguation page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Brown already. I don't have complete info about him, but wanted to at least start the page so I did a draft so far https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Graham_Brown_(writer). So I've checked the Making Your First Page article but ran into a couple of quesions:
Can I use the official bio photo with permission and how to I mark that?
I have a year of birth, but not day/month. Is that necessary?
I was using another author page as my example. I want to link to the books he's written, and provide a quick summary. My assumption is as a co-author of two NYT best-selling novels he qualifies as a writer of note and deserves his own page.