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Editing news 2022 #2

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Graph showing 90-minute response time without the new tool and 39-minute response time with the tool
The [subscribe] button shortens response times.

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:35, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #23

Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!

Highlights

Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test

The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.

Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.

This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.

Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback

After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:

  • Patroller fatigue:
    • By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
  • Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
    • Add a Link
      • Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
      • The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
      • The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
    • Add an Image
      • Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
      • Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
      • We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [1]

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.

Recent changes

  • All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [2]
  • The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [3][4]
  • Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors

  • All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
    • We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
    • Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
    • Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
    • A new special page — Special:ManageMentors — now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
  • The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [5]

Deployments

Improving this newsletter

We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

readded
removed

Interface administrator changes

readded TheresNoTime
removed TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

removed TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

removed TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question from GeckoGamer4444 (20:34, 1 December 2022)

Hello Nick how do you start a new wiki page about a company? --GeckoGamer4444 (talk) 20:34, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GeckoGamer4444. Thanks for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia! I can point you straight away to the most important policy which may help you work out whether or not it would be possible for a company to have an article about it on Wikipedia. You can find it HERE and it lists our notability criteria for businesses. To be frank with you, Wikipedia is not here to help a business promote itself but, if you can find at least three totally independent sources that talk about that company in details and in depth, then it might well meet our criteria. Those sources exclude paid advertising, press releases, newswire articles, blogs, interviews with connected people, and the company's own website. If you can't find any, then I'm afraid you've absolutely no chance. It's as simple as that.
To save you wasted effort, feel free to link me to those three sources you identify, and I will take a quick look at them for you. Then, if they seem OK, I would point you to this guidance page which all new editors should read. But be aware that creating a brand new draft article from scratch is the very, very hardest thing anyone can do here - and that applies much more so for inexperienced editors. So we always advise people to get experience first and to contribute many smaller edits across a range of existing articles first to try to get the hang of how things work here.
Finally, should you work for, are being paid by that business to create an article, you must declare that connection and who is paying you before you start any editing. See WP:PAID for our mandatory policy on how to do this. If you are the business owner, their friend or relative, then you still have a Conflist of Interest which you should also declare.
We regularly find ourselves deleting new pages that are effectively spam articles, solely written in order to promote a business, without any good sources to back up their claim for notability.
I hope this helps. Feel free to follow up with any other questions. And 'good luck'! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Abdul Jamal Ibrahim (15:04, 5 December 2022)

Hello! Can I write and publish a biography of someone who is well recognized in my country or Region? After my research on his/her life history and achievements, I wanted to know how to get Started. Please🙏 --Abdul Jamal Ibrahim (talk) 15:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Abdul Jamal Ibrahim, and welcome to Wikipedia. You ask a good question, but it has no easy answer. Firstly, does your own language Wikipedia have an article about this person? If so, that is a really good start, and it may help you identify published sources that write about that person in an independent manner. If not, why not? Here on English Wikipedia, we need evidence that a person has been written about, but not by themselves or on private blogs, but by proper, reliable sources. Our 'notability criteria', which must be met if there is to be an article about them, can be found at WP:NBIO. However, those sources do not need to be in English.
Please be aware that creating a new article that is acceptable here is the very hardest task anyone can perform - much more so for a newcomer. You might wish to read is guidance page for beginners wanting to create a new article, and spend some time here learning how Wikipedia editing works before attempting the challenging task of creating a new article. Of course, should you be connected with the person you want to write about, you would need to declare that connection before you started work here. More advice on that can be found at this page: WP:COI.
If you want to let me know their name, and give me some sources to look at, I can offer you a guess as to how likely you would be at successfully starting a new article. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mentor @Nick Moyes for this clear explanation. Please About my own profile page,is it recommended to write my own biography. How should I handle this one please. Abdul Jamal Ibrahim (talk) 10:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Abdul Jamal Ibrahim, thanks for acknowledging my response to you. I'm glad it was clear.
The only 'biography' you should put on your own userpage is something that very simply explains why you're interested in editing Wikipedia. Maybe a line or two about your background to help people understand your experience in editing or contributing in a particular field. For your own privacy and safety, it should not reveal any personally identifying information, but it absolutely must not look like a LinkedIn profile, nor appear like a Wikipedia entry - that kind of content gets deleted pretty quickly. The following would be perfectly acceptable, and I offer it purely as a demonstration for you to consider:
"Hello, my name is Abdul Jamal Ibrahim. I live in Malaysia where I studied economics, but now work in public relations. I have a life-long interest in steam trains and plan to make improvements to articles about the transport system in my country. I will not be writing about any of the companies I work for, as I appreciate this would be a conflict of interest. As I'm a brand new editor, please let me know on my talk page if any of my edits fail to follow Wikipedia's guidelines, as I'm keen to learn to do things the best way."
You don't have to say as much as this, but personally I find it helps me to understand the motivations of new editors. If someone takes the trouble to say why they're here, and what their interests are, then more experienced editors tend to be far more willing to explain things if they get them wrong. (Oh, making mistakes and being corrected can put some people off, or make them angry, but it's how we work and learn here.) I do hope you like it! Have you checked your 'Homepage' tab yet? - there are various small user tasks available for you to try editing and to help you understand how to make small improvements. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for taking your time to make things clear for me. Abdul Jamal Ibrahim (talk) 11:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Blood Hound956 (07:30, 11 December 2022)

How do you extend an article which doesn’t have much information --Blood Hound956 (talk) 07:30, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

hello, Blood Hound956, and welcome to Wikipedia. That's a really great question, and one that can be answered fairly easily. (Had you told me the article title I might have been able to help you more effectively, of course.)
Think of Wikipedia as simply a collation of factual statements written in a neutral manner that have already been published elsewhere by Reliable Sources. Finding those published sources and using statements within them to extend an article is your first big challenge. Some degree of ability in using search engines is really helpful, here. But sources don't have to be online pages. Books, major newspapers and magazines and anything properly published and available through a library or bookshop is quite acceptable (even if not in English).
Things you happen to know (even if true) and stuff written on social media or blog posts by individuals are not regarded as reliable, however. Nor are the words written by a person who is the subject of an article. So you can't extend and article with that type of information I'm afraid.
Then, using your own form of words (i.e. not copy/pasting what someone else has written), you add factual statements into an article and support it with a citation. (the editing tool has a 'CITE' button for adding a reference to a source. Unsourced additions tend to be reverted, so citations are really important.
It follows that if you are unable to find any published sources you will not be able to extend that article, even if you happen to be an expert on that subject, or know the person, place or business you want to write about really well.
Let me know how you get on, or link me to the article, and I'll see if I can find anything for you should you hit a dead end. I'll also drop by your talk page and leave you a welcome message with links to get you started with editing. It's wise to start slowly as there's quite a steep learning curve on Wikipedia. Think of it like driving a car - start slowly and gently, making sure you follow the key rules of the road. Don't speed off on your first day and crash the car into a wall ...it tends to put you off! And if someone with more experience tells you you've made a mistake and they revert what you've done, think about it from their perspective for a moment, and check if they've left an explanation in an WP:Edit Summary. If you can't see why they've undone your edit, it's quite OK to politely ask them to explain it to you. Good luck, and regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:40, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail

Hello, Nick Moyes. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:43, 15 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Season's Greetings

Hello Nick Moyes: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:52, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Clovermoss. And Season's Greetings to you, too. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Happy Holidays!

Hi Nick. I just wanted to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year 2023. Colman2000 (talk) 03:28, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Colman2000. May I wish you and your family the same. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:02, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seasons Greetings

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether it's Christmas or some other festival, I hope you and those close to you have a happy, restful time! Have fun, Donner60 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)}} [reply]

Donner60 (talk) 04:25, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red January 2023

Happy New Year from Women in Red | January 2023, Volume 9, Issue 1, Nos 250, 251, 252, 253, 254


Online events:

See also:

Tip of the month:

  • De-orphan and incorporate an article into Wikipedia using the Find Link tool

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 18:02, 27 December 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Vladimir the Great

Hi, I noticed that you were recently active and was wondering if you could help me with something. I just reviewed a pending change on the page I linked to above, but as I did it, I edit conflicted with an IP, and I think it made the page go weird. Can you please have a look and check I’ve done it right? Thanks. Blanchey (talk) 22:57, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Blanchey Thanks. I've restored it to the version by Ealdgyth. I'll leave a non-templated personal note for the IP editor shortly. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you again for helping. Blanchey (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello Nick Moyes,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
  • Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mrdeadflim (03:06, 8 January 2023)

Aye, is it okay if i create page --Mrdeadflim (talk) 03:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Mrdeadflim. You can create a new encyclopaedia page, providing the topic meets our Notability Guidelines. But doing so from nothing is the very hardest tak anyone can perform here. It is far better to start slowly by making small improvements to existing articles and learning how we operate here. Do read this page to learn more about starting one.
You can also create a new page as part of your userpage, providing it is relevant to the work of helping to build and maintain this encyclopaedia. I see you have already created one (User:Mrdeadflim/sandbox)). Please don't try to add more content like that, as it's not really appropriate to talk about non-Wikipedia stuff. But your sandbox is the best place to experiment in editing and creating draft articles. You can start work on a new article by using the 'Article Wizard' which you can find HERE.Hope this answers your question. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:18, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Hhaiderhhabib (06:23, 9 January 2023)

Nick im not able tp publish my wikipedia page and i deleted a lot of unverified references can you help --Hhaiderhhabib (talk) 06:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again, Hhaiderhhabib. I am not at all sure what help you are asking for. Are you Omar Gull, and are you trying to write about yourself? If so, that would have been why your userpage was deleted, as we don't permit Wikipedia userpages to resemble articles.
I notice you have also submitted Draft:Omar Gull, which was declined at 'Articles for Creation'. What you wrote looked like someone either wanting to promote themselves here, or paying someone else to do the promotion for them. If you are that person, or if they are paying you, then you have a clear Conflict of Interest, and must declare that you are being paid, and by whom, before you continue editing. See WP:PAID for guidance on how to do that.
You did right to delete any references which are mere mentions of a person. If a citation doesn't verify any stated facts, then that citation generally has no place in the article. They do not count towards 'notability' - see WP:NBIO for what our notability criteria involves for people.
We see far too many CEO and entrepreneurs trying to get articles about themselves on Wikipedia based only on citations to insider business magazines or interviews. Neither are acceptable, so unless independent mainstream media has written about someone in detail and in depth, then they are highly unlikely to be able to have an article about themselves here. If the company they run, or the product they created does have an article here, then it is probably acceptable for a WP:REDIRECT to exist from their name to that product or business, but no more. Does that help to explain things for you? Nick Moyes (talk) 10:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding my draft Draft:Adil Qadri

Hello @Nick Moyes, I am not an experienced in wikipedia but i am trying to learn about it. Just needed your assistance on the draft i started Draft:Adil Qadri. Thank you Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 11:30, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Alizulfikarzahedi Your draft is fairly well laid out. A few minor things like wrong capitalisation on things like 'Perfume' and 'december', but it looked fairly well done for a new editor. You have two links to perfume, the second one of which is incorrect. But as there should only ever be one wikilink to another article per page, you should simply remove that second lik.
However, the major problem I see is the sources which do not demonstrate to me that Qadri meets our Notability Criteria. We see so many draft articles intended to promote entrepreneurs, and require better sources than business news articles. If his company is notable (see WP:NCORP, it's possible that a WP:REDIRECT from his name to that company would be acceptable. You may submit it to WP:AFC for review, but I doubt they would say anything different. So it would be best to look for more independent sources or wait because it is WP:TOOSOON. I have added a submit button to your article, but don't advise you to do so until you've worked on it more. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes Thanks for your reply Nick. I think the sources are present such as one on khaleej times.[7]and[8] [9], others. is it possible that it meets Notability Criteria. Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 12:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Alizulfikarzahedi My own view is that they're not - they are still insider business stories, and not real journalism reporting on a genuinely notable person. What makes you so keen to create such an article? Are you being paid or employed to promote him? If so, you should declare this WP:COI on your user page. I see that repeated attempts were made to create a page for him on Simple Wikipedia, but were deleted on the grounds of lack of notability. Does he have a page about him on his own language Wiki? That might be the place to try, rather than here, where our notability criteria are quite tough. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:31, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
By the way: what is this picture that you uploaded to Commons of? There is no description, just a random file name. It doesn't link to any page and seems to serve no purpose. If it's of you, then you should clearly indicate this fact. If not, I would advocate its deletion. regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My picture. yes Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 13:38, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes just got to know about him while going through the news so created draft and reached out to you if there are any problems Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 13:37, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK. You should properly label your photograph asap, or it is liable to be removed as irrelevant to Wikipedia. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
yes i requested the renaming. Thanks Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 14:05, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding article i want to work on

Hello @Nick Moyes sorry for the ping again, but i have one article that i want to work on "Fort Munro Steel Bridge" which seem to be Notable as well. Can you do your research and work with me on this one? Best Regards Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 14:32, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Alizulfikarzahedi No, I'm sorry: I'm only prepared to work on articles that directly interest me for one reason or another (usually mountains, mountaineers or wildllife). However, if you do the initial research yourself and show me some references that you believe make the subject Notable, I will happily look at them. If not immediately notable in its own right, you'd be OK to add something to the article on Fort Munro with few worries. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
sure. I will work on the article and will get back to you when i have some initial content. thanks Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 14:59, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes Draft:Fort Munro Steel Bridge, you can see the draft here. Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 15:52, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK - good luck (the videos of the bridge look amazing). You might want to read WP:NOINDICSCRIPT, as I think this will apply to the infobox. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the bridge is amazing, got to visit a few times. The view is scenic from the top. Will read the WP:NOINDICSCRIPT. Thanks again Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes Hi, i have published the steel bridge draft into the mainspace Fort Munro Steel Bridge. Have a look. Thanks Alizulfikarzahedi (talk) 22:06, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-02

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 use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [10]
  • Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
  • You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [11]
  • A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [12]
  • Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [13]
  • You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [14]

Changes later this week

  • Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Happy New Years!

Happy new year! Have a great 2023! BloxyColaSweet (talk) 04:34, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Revoke TPA

Could you revoke the TPA of 2600:100C:B235:97B6:E908:ADBE:CA90:D9DE? They clearly aren't going to use it right. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 21:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Blaze Wolf Sorted! (I had a minor panic as I thought I'd drastically reduced their original block by removing TPA - but it was fine). Nick Moyes (talk) 21:30, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 21:31, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bida thomas (13:20, 14 January 2023)

Good day, Mentor. Have you seen any of my recent pages? What are your thoughts? --Bida thomas (talk) 13:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bida thomas Which pages do you think are most ready for me to look at, and on which you'd like feedback? Nick Moyes (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
here they are: User talk:Bida thomas#Links to draft articles Bida thomas (talk) 14:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Bida thomas That list is a bit of a mess, and I've not the time to work through them all - sorry. Please list me your top two for me to look at, but only after you have addressed the feedback you received (such as no external links in the article text), and I'll see what I can do. Please then tell me what you think are the issues you're struggling with in each one. Is it style and formatting, if so please look through WP:MOS, noting you need the subject in bold in the first sentence. References need better details (titles for each one, date if available, and do on). Hope this helps. In haste, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:02, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. I will do that and share. Thank you Bida thomas (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from SourMango77 (02:00, 15 January 2023)

Hi, I was wondering how you reference a letter? I tried using the format in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_letter but I couldn't get it to work. Also, the letter I'm referencing doesn't have a subject, which I realise is required. After reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Cite_letter about that exact issue, I couldn't understand what some of the users were doing to fix the issue. --SourMango77 (talk) 02:00, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SourMango77 It's always a good idea to practice using your personal sandbox for difficult edits (see the link at the top of every page in desktop view). This is especially sensible when trying to use templates for citations or tables. These are both tricky things to get right. I don't see that you've made any edits yet, so it's impossible for me to understand what you've been trying to do or help you fix it. Be aware that you can't reference an unpublished letter - it must be something that anyone can theoretically find with access to a decent library or internet.
The format shown in {{Cite letter}} uses our 'source code which WP:Source Editor uses. If you are trying to edit using Visual Editor the code is automatically inserted for you, though I don't think 'Cite letter' is available as it's an unusual one to be using.
I would temporarily copy the text I want to improve into my sandbox and work on it there. I'd also copy the 'References' section of any page becasue the code that's hidden within it forces your inline citations to be summarised under that section. The text you'd pest in on consecutive lines would be
==References==
{{reflist}}
Let me have a link to an example of what you're trying to do and I'll see if I can help you further. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:33, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from AdidasZRO (18:54, 15 January 2023)

Hi! Noticed that I was assigned under you as a mentor, and I'm starting out in creating my first article. Right now it's in my sandbox, and was wondering if you'd like to review/suggest any new article tips? Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AdidasZRO/sandbox Thanks! --AdidasZRO (talk) 18:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, @AdidasZRO, great to hear from you. You look to have done a pretty good job with that draft, and it looks ready for submission for review at WP:AFC. The only thing I've not done is look at your references to determine whether or not it meets our notability criteria for businesses and organisations. Obviously, this is a key thing, but there are simply too many of them for me to do that task quickly. If you want me to look at that, just identify the three most significant references that are independent of the subject. My gut feeling is that it probably is a notable organisation, so I could suggest you submit it whenever you're ready.
On a different note, what was the outcome of suggestions that you might change your account name. Something so close to Adidas ZERO is always going to flag people's concerns. If it's an innocent (fan-like) name, why not put a sentence about it on your userpage to explain why you chose it, and refute any promotional connections. Hope this helps - and well done, again. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciate the prompt reply! @Nick Moyes. Yes, on the draft, I think that was an area of concern (notability criteria). I did look thoroughly where I could on independent citations and found for organizations such as NY Times, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Tricky, because many mentions are fairly brief when it comes to the overall purpose of this org.
On the name, thanks for the reminder. My main goal was to include a name incorporating an 'A to Z' pattern, but actually think I can revise in a way that avoids promotional connection. Was delayed in that update, but will get that done! Thanks, AdidasZRO (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have faced similar problems with articles I've wanted to create. I decided to wait until there was more mainstream media coverage available. The problem with government agencies/charities and so on is that they rarely get detailed analysis in the media, and thus may do fantastic work on a big scale. But if they've not been written about in sources, then they don't meet our notability criteria.
BTW: I just noticed two of your citations hyperlinks are faulty. For the HYTimes (ref 4) and another to the Washington Post, you only included a url to their homepage, not to the article. I suggest you go through and check that every cited reference actually leads to the article in question. Must dash... Nick Moyes (talk) 22:02, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AdidasZRO Oops, forgot to 'ping' you. Not sure if you've added my page to your Watchlist. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes Oh thanks, I appreciate those catches, they were tricky to get right. @. Now added your page to the watchlist. AdidasZRO (talk) 02:35, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just in case the minutiae of editor interaction interest you: The convention here is that if anyone leaves a message on someone's talk page, they're expected to 'watch' that person's page - at least for the life of that conversation. (You can select the duration, rather than watch it permanently, which helps). Of course, new users don't know this, so I always try to WP:PING the person when I reply. But I forgot this time, so had to leave an extra message that did notify you. Another tip is that you can't simply edit a reply you've already published which left out a name or signature insert it, hoping it will 'ping' or notify that person...their name and your signature have to be included at the same time it's published, or it won't work. Using the reply tool saves one having to manually add a signature, but one still has to 'mention' them by typing the '@' sign and selecting their name from the dropdown list.
Oh, and you can select whether or not you want to get an email each time you have an edit made to your own userpage (which I find really useful). Yo can change what you get notified about by going to 'Preferences>Notifications' and altering the selections.
Because you've said you've added this page to your watchlist for the time being, I thought I wouldn't 'ping' you as normal, and see if you spot this edit. I tend to skim through my watchlist every other day to see if there are changes to pages I'm interested in, or if there are pages I no longer want to monitor. Hope you find these little tips of interest. If you do, we even have Tip of the Day to alert people to tricks and shortcuts when editing. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bida thomas (09:36, 18 January 2023)

Good day, Nick, at your convenience, please check my latest draft and advice accordingly: Draft:Dr. John Garang Mausoleum --Bida thomas (talk) 09:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I also have a second draft here: Draft:Alex Lodiong Sakor Eyobo
Thank you for your time. Bida thomas (talk) 10:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Thank you!

The Special Barnstar
For helping me with stubs in the past! BloxyColaSweet (talk) 21:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TEA discussion by new user

At WP:TEA#How do I stop a member from harassing me and posting vague threats on my talk page?, you are the subject of Reservationsatdorsia's inquiry and complaint. (FWIW, I don't know if you saw this edit.) — Fourthords | =Λ= | 00:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there Fourthords. Thanks for dropping by with that 'heads up'. There was no harassment or threats made by me, and the editor was blocked by another admin at exactly the same time I was leaving them polite messages asking them to tone down their insults and aggression at the Vector200 talk page. Their Teahouse post was also reverted by the blocking admin, so there's nothing more here that concerns us. There's no place for that kind of user here. I appreciate you letting me know, though. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Rashid Naseem lone (11:11, 21 January 2023)

Hello --Rashid (talk) 11:11, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rashid Naseem lone. Welcome to Wikipedia. I see you're a very new user, so I'm happy to answer any questions about editing that you may have. I'll leave a welcome message with some helpful links on your talk page to get you started. You'll see I've just reverted one of your first edits. It was well-intentioned, but there is a huge difference between 'greenhouse gasses' and 'green house gasses'. You change to the second version was no correct, as it implied there were some green-coloured gasses inside a house, and not, as was intended, gasses that are causing the greenhouse effect and global warming. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:28, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Third Adminship Anniversary!

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Have a very happy adminship anniversary on your special day!

Best wishes, Chris Troutman (talk) 19:33, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-04

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

  • Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [15]

Changes later 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).
  • If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [16][17]
  • The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red in February 2023

Women in Red Feb 2023, Vol 9, Iss 2, Nos 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 259


Online events:

Tip of the month:

  • Explore Wikipedia for all variations of the woman's name (birth name,
    married name, re-married name, pen name, nickname)

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 07:28, 30 January 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Mentor

Hi

You are in Mentor prog.

So you can be mine if you want to :) MumQuin (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MumQuin It's more the case that you're welcome to just drop by with any question about how to edit. I'll help you if I can. If I'm not around, you're also welcome to seek help at the Teahouse if you need it. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:11, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thx. :) I will. :) MumQuin (talk) 14:27, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this normal here people just delet comments you did in a dabate and tell you they "BELIVE" it was not constructiv? See on my talk page. Very friendly behavior here :) MumQuin (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there @MumQuin. I assume you mean this edit you made to the Vector 2022 discussion. I do know that page has attracted a huge amount of heated debate - sometimes from very new users who've just come to complain, so it's important to have contributions that take the discussions forward. I don't think yours was especially helpful (more hot air and annoyance than helpful comments). BUT (and it's a very big 'but'): I believe you made it in good faith because of your views, and that I don't think you deserved one of our low level templated notices left by one of my fellow administrators. It's very easy to be irritated by these impersonal templated messages, but please appreciate that it's a huge task ensuring that this encyclopaedia is kept running smoothly and sometimes we make mistakes. I know I do - even after 11+ years here. So, my advice is to try to see it from the other person's viewpoint, whilst considering how useful any particular comment is to take forward any debate. I might probably also have removed it with an edit summary saying 'not really very helpful', but wouldn't have left a message on your talk page. However, it could be argued that explaining to you (via a templated message) what I had done, it would at least have communicated clearly what my actions were and why. You might otherwise have wondered what happened to your edit. So, it's a balance thing.
I don't mean to be rude, but I suspect that English may not be your first language, and so it can be hard for people like me to see past the unintended blunt words to the intended contribution behind them (I know when I go to German speaking countries I must sound terribly rude at times because I only have a tiny vocabulary and limited knowledge of how to say things correctly. I certainly can't write in German.)
I hope this explains things. Bottom line: don't take this issue to heart. Wikipedia can seem like a harsh environment for new editors. My view is that new users are best advised to stay away from contentious areas like using WP:AFD and WP:PROD until they have more experience of creating content. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:34, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #24

Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomer experience projects

The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:

Newcomer tasks

  • Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [18]
  • The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [19]

Mentorship

  • When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [20]
  • Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [21]
  • Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?

Other news

  • In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [22]
  • This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations

  • Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
  • Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations

14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
  • Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
  • Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User-made portraits, again

Wikipedia:No_original_research/Noticeboard#Cartoon_portraits, perhaps something you'll find interesting. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:32, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-06

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

  • In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [23]

Changes later this week

  • 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).
  • Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [24]
  • Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [25]
  • Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes

  • Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Benjoface (12:51, 12 February 2023)

How do I create an article? And is it possible to make one on a phone? --Benjoface (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Benjoface yes, it’s perfectly possible to create a new article on a mobile. I edit a lot using a tiny iPhone, and prefer ‘Desktop’ view to Mobile view. See very bottom of any page to switch between them.
However, creating a new article that meets our criteria for Notability is not itself easy. In fact, even for experienced editors, it’s still the hardest task they can perform here. See WP:YFA for some basic advice. BTW: what is the subject you’d like to create? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:11, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I would like to make an article about Cg5 (singer and producer). Benjoface (talk) 01:43, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Benjoface ok. As not every musician, actor, performer etc is going to meet our notability criteria (see WP:NARTIST), it’s important that you find at least three in-depth and independent source that talk about him. Avoid interviews and personal blogs and websites. See Reliable Sources.
As mentioned, to avoid disappointment, do spend some weeks making smaller edits and improvements to existing articles to gain an insight into how things operate here. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-07

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 wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [26]

Changes later this week

  • 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).
  • The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [27]

Future changes

  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [28][29][30]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatives

Good day. I am pessimistic about the long term well being of Wikipedia because of recent revelations of POV distortion and subsequent structural failures in handling that (on top of so many from time immemorial!) in Holocaust topic area. Just in case, there are alternatives such as Atsme's Justapedia and the unreleased tomus.xyz which one day might become a better form than Wikipedia ever is. 133.186.215.90 (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Editing news 2023 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

  1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
  2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Screenshot showing the talk page design changes that are currently available as beta features at all Wikimedia wikis. These features include information about the number of people and comments within each discussion.
Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Editing news 2023 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

  1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
  2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Screenshot showing the talk page design changes that are currently available as beta features at all Wikimedia wikis. These features include information about the number of people and comments within each discussion.
Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from ChampCali (23:38, 22 February 2023)

Why is the article that I submitted on Matt Slater today being redirected to Matthew Slater --ChampCali (talk) 23:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@ChampCali It looks like you usurped the title Matt Slater last year in order to use it for your own article. That was maybe not the best way of approaching things, so someone replaced it back. You can still find the text of your article either in the View History tab for the redirect page, or in your own User Contributions. I suggest you take that text and put it into a new or a Draft article which you can create or submit at WP:YFA. That page will then be reviewed, feedback given, and if/when accepted it will be given a non-conflicting title (such as Matt Slater (sports executive). Alternatively, you could raise this at WP:Redirects for discussion. Assuming the person you wrote about meets our Notabilty criteria, this is all easily resolvable. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:00, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Cillian cole (13:41, 24 February 2023)

How to insert tables in wiki pages sir ? --Cillian cole (talk) 13:41, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Cillian cole. Welcome to Wikipedia! Tables are not the easiest things to work with when you've hardly edited before. I always advise people to start by experimenting with creating or editing an existing table in their personal sandbox. In desktop mode, click the User icon and then 'sandbox'. See Help:Table for a 'how-to' guide. For simple tables, I find using our 'Visual Editing' tool a lot easier than Source Editor - though you have a lot more fine control with the latter.
If you find an article containing an existing table that you'd like to have something similar in a new article, you could copy the 'source code' by clicking 'edit source' and then pasting that in your sandbox to experiment with. It's best not to work on tables in a live article until you are really sure what you're doing. But, of course, you can always check and then revert your own edit if it doesn't work. You do that via the 'View History' tab of the page you're working on and simply click 'undo' against your last edit. I hope this helps. Regards from the UK. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:32, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red March 2023

Women in Red Mar 2023, Vol 9, Iss 3, Nos 251, 252, 258, 259, 260, 261


Online events:

See also:

Tip of the month:

  • Mobile phone readers may only see the article "lead" – take some time to make it shine!
    Include something to keep people reading.

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 12:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2023-09

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

  • Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [31][32]

Changes later this week

  • 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).
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [33]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
  • Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
  • The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-10

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 Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
  • On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [34]

Changes later this week

  • 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).
  • A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [35]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jman143 (09:24, 9 March 2023)

hello. how do i add pictures to an existing article? --Jman143 (talk) 09:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jman143 Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. There could be two answers to this question - it depends what image you want to add. The first part of the answer is that you are not permitted to upload copyrighted images, pictures found on the internet (most will be copyright), pictures taken by other people, found on Facebook, etc. This is a common mistake new users make. However, if you have a photo that you have genuinely taken yourself, you are permitted to upload and release it to Wikimedia Commons. I can explain that process if you wish.
But before doing so, please let me know me what article you want to add a picture to, and whether you own the copyright of it. I can then advise you further.
The advice I would then give you can be found in 'ANSWER 2' here. Please follow and read that link, then come back if you have any further questions. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:42, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A cup of tea for you!

It was nice to put a face to the name at the meeting with the WMF. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss Likewise! Sorry I had to shoot off, too (I felt very scruffy as well!) Do you know if there is a link to view the rest of the meeting? I've not checked the Growth page yet, though. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:15, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A link to the recording is here. The talk page also has other links so you might want to check it out sometime. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Hispanic Empires (18:55, 11 March 2023)

hello. How to create an article that does not have the word draft behind. Long live the wine and regards Hispanic Empires 18:55, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Hispanic Empires. I'#m afraid you cannot create an article in the main part of the dictionary until you are 'autoconfirmed' - that means that you need to have an account here for at least four days to be able to do that. Even then, you are best advised to create a 'draft' and submit it for review and feedback at WP:AFC when you're ready. You'll even find a 'wizard' tool to help you. You'll get useful feedback via this route, and someone will move it to mainspace for you if it meets out Notability criteria.
Should you choose to try to start from scratch with a brand new article, you do face a much greater chance of it being 'Speedily Deleted' if it fails. You would need to ensure you have sound, reliable and independent sources for an article. You can find more help and guidance at this page. On the whole, the best advice I can give it to take your time and to learn how things operate by making smaller edits and improvements to existing articles first. Does this answer help you? Nick Moyes (talk) 20:33, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes If it helped me a lot, thanks, Long live the Wine and Greetings! Hispanic Empires 01:54, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-11

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 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).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [36][37]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hartley High School

That was compassionate of you. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 09:42, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes I worry I'll be taken to ANI for being compassionate on some days and too stern on others. I guess my variability balances itself out! Nick Moyes (talk) 09:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
However, I see now you were engaging with this editor. I have no objection if you wish to alter or completely remove my block. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Better to err on the side of kindness. They did try to engage and were genuinely flummoxed. No. I was going to SPAMUBLOCK, My neurodivergence or whatever they call it these days makes me blind to compassion. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 09:48, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-12

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

  • Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [38]

Changes later this week

Meetings

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary

Precious
Four years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:08, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Abby1111111123 (21:12, 24 March 2023)

Hi, I created a biography page, I'm not sure if it's published or if it'll appear on google when someone searches for it. Can you please guide me? --Abby1111111123 (talk) 21:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Abby1111111123 Welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for your question. You created a CV about yourself in your sandbox. That is neither acceptable as an encyclopedia entry for Wikipedia, nor is it acceptable for any userpage either. This is not LinkedeIn, and we are not here to help you WP:PROMOTE yourself. I shall be deleting that page imminently. I'm sorry to disappoint you. However, should you ever choose to write about a Notable subject, please read this guidance and then consider creating a draft at this page. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:12, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Hispanic Empires (18:35, 25 March 2023)

Hello, how can I block or delete the user page like you do? Greetings Sandman Black ¡EXIT LIGHT ENTER NIGHT! 18:35, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Hispanic Empires Only administrators can do that. I had been editing for 10 years here before I felt ready to seek the approval of the community to be trusted with admin rights. That said, any user who understands our policies can use WP:TWINKLE to flag up pages of concern for admins to consider and act upon, if necessary. Hope this explains things. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:23, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red April 2023

Women in Red Apr 2023, Vol 9, Iss 4, Nos 251, 252, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266


Online events:

See also:

Tip of the month:

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Question from Amrapali1973Gupta (04:11, 28 March 2023)

How can I move one person's page if he / she has changed his name, surname or if his / her name's spelling has some mistakes? --Amrapali1973Gupta (talk) 04:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Amrapali1973Gupta You can find full details at WP:MOVE. As a brand new user you might prefer to post your reasons and supporting evidence at the article’s Talk Page, and let another editor rename the page. All users must be WP:AUTOCONFIRMED before they are permitted to do this action. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #25

Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Celebrations

Leveling up release

5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February

  • In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
  • Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.

Recent changes

  • Add a link
    • Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [40][41]
    • We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
  • The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [42]
  • Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
  • Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1177 § ‎Richard Cadman Etches

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1177 § ‎Richard Cadman Etches. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nick. I noticed this while checking on a different question on that archived page. The OP apparently added a new response directly to the archived discussion thread, and I'm not sure whether you saw it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-15

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

Problems

  • There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [49]

Changes later this week

  • 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).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [50][51]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-16

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

Problems

  • At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [55][56]
  • For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [57]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:53, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
  • There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-17

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

Problems

  • Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [59]
  • For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [60][61][62]

Changes later this week

  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [63]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:02, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red May 2023

Women in Red May 2023, Vol 9, Iss 5, Nos 251, 252, 267, 268, 269, 270


Online events:

See also:

Tip of the month:

  • Use the Google translate app and camera on your phone to translate text from an article or book

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 18:29, 27 April 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Question from NeglectedDragon364 (19:29, 29 April 2023)

Hi, I’m new on wiki and just want to know the basics, can I get any tips? Thanks for anything! --NeglectedDragon364 (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@NeglectedDragon364 Welcome to Wikipedia. I'll leave you a separate welcome message on your own talk page which has a link to our tutorial which should help get you started. I always advise making the very smallest/simplest edits to begin with - perhaps looking for spelling or grammatical errors in articles about topics that interest you.Here are a few other tips:
Leave a short 'edit summary' to explain the rationale for any edits you make, especially if they're changing existing content. Never add 'facts' that you happen to know - always base changes on already-published and therefore checkable sources such as properly published books, journals, or quality websites (not personal blogs, Facebook pages etc).
If you feel you want to make a major change - perhaps a contentious one - it can help to raise the issue first on the article's talk page and get consensus to make the change. Not everyone may agree with what you feel should be altered.
It's very common for a new editor to have some of their first few edits reversed because they don't always know of our policies or guidelines - never get annoyed or angry at that. Simply drop by the reverting editors talk page and ask them for an explanation as you' like to understand what you did wrong.
We work by collaboration, not confrontation. So good luck, and do pop by or ask at the Teahouse if you need further help. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:38, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-18

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-19

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

Recent changes

  • Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
  • When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [69]
  • The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced. [70]
  • Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Wikipedia that uses preload=MediaWiki:July. [71]

Problems

  • Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [72]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
  • Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [73]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-20

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

Problems

  • Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [78]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [79]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bill Rambo (18:16, 17 May 2023)

Hi, Nick. I have a picture of my grandfather, Victor Clough Rambo, meeting Helen Keller in India in 1955. It is a family photograph, and I tried to upload it to Dr. Rambo's page, but I was refused, as its suitability for Creative Commons could not be determined.

Any suggestions?

Bill --Bill Rambo (talk) 18:16, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Still Busy?

Hello, are you still available for tips and feedback? Or are you still busy as of 2023? You have been 'mentoring' me for a while and just, for some time, disappeared. BloxyColaSweet (talk) 23:40, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Sorry - I've only just seen this as I've been away for the last week. Yes, I am very busy in real life, doing a lot of major building upgrades and redecorating at home over the last few months - not to mention a few long-term health concerns in the family. However, if you need any specific advice, do let me know and I'll try and see if I can help you. I don't have that much free time to offer general mentorship right now, but if you have difficulties, I'll promise to do my best for you. Just let me know. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:34, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-21

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

Changes later this week

  • An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [82]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).

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

16:53, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

TheWikiWizard - May 2023

Hey, Nick Moyes! Here is the May 2023 edition for the TheWikiWizard!

Humor

  • Now is the time to start writing those Christmas cards and do the Christmas shopping! Come December, you can sit back and edit Wikipedia! ;)
  • When it snows in December/Winter, stock up the snow in your freezer, so when it gets hot you can do a snowball fight in the summer!

Wiki(P/M)edia News

  • A conversation with trustees event took place on the 18th of May. You can read more details on the event here!
  • On the English Wikipedia some RFAs which took place the past few months. You can see the full details at the RFA main page.
  • There is a event (Conference) that is taking place in city of Belgrade. More details on the event can be found by clicking on the link!

Editor's Notes

  • I apologies for the delay in the issues, however I can guarantee you that I am always thinking of TWW and haven't forgotten about it :) School's so busy!
  • If you want to help out TWW, let me know!
Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here

To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.

  • Please note: Sometimes the system may deliver the issue twice for you, but I only send it once. I'm not sure what the issue is so I apologize for this.
Hope you enjoyed this issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your Teahouse response

I am way behind reading the archives but just saw this. I'm not sure what you intended to say but it was not "Wikipedia is only in English" and just in case someone else reads that, it probably should be fixed. I know they say don't edit the archives but I have done it to correct links or in a few cases incorrect information.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:05, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vchimpanzee Thanks, but please don't edit it. Any error in my poor choice of wording is irrelevant, and after 18 months nobody is going to read it and get the wrong idea about Wikipedia. But thank you for drawing it to my attention. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:34, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hate to just leave a mistake, but like you say if no one sees it then it doesn't matter.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:32, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

About that user you blocked for spam

You blocked 3CR Radical Radio Community Melbourne (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for spam - can you please revoke TPA and email? This account is not just any old spammer but it’s actually a community global banned LTA - WP:LTA/HOY to be specific. -- Shadow of the Starlit Sky 23:05, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red - June 2023

Women in Red June 2023, Vol 9, Iss 6, Nos 251, 252, 271, 272, 273


Online events:

See also:

Tip of the month:

  • Looking for new red links? Keep an eye out for interesting and notable friends, family, or associates of your last article subject, and re-examine group photos for other women who may still need an article.

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 09:16, 28 May 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Growth team newsletter #26

Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

One million Suggested Edits

We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!

  • The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
  • Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
  • Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
  • Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)

Positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.

  • The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [83]
  • The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
  • The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image

Other updates

What's next for Growth?

  • We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-22

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [89]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
  • VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [90]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
  • As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

  • Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-23

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

Recent changes

  • The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
  • Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [91]
  • Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [92]

Problems

  • For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [93]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
  • Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [94]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My recent edits

Hi Nick, Sorry about some of my recent edits on AIV, I am still a relatively new editor. I will take some time to familiarize myself about the process as you mentioned


Thanks,

𝑭𝒊𝒍𝒎𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔𝒔 (talk) 15:02, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, Filmssssssssssss. I'm grateful you want to help keep vandalism down, so please don't let my 'steer' put you off. Just shout if you need any other help. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:40, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-24

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

  • The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [95]
  • The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [96]
  • The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [97]
  • The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [98]

Problems

  • For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [99]
  • Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [100]
  • Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [101]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
  • VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [102]

Future changes

  • From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Hello Nick Moyes,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

Tech News: 2023-25

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

  • Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [103][104]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
  • There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [105][106]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-26

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

  • The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [107]

Problems

  • Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [108][109]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
  • The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [110][111]
  • Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [112]
  • All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [113]
  • The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [114]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red July 2023

Women in Red June 2023, Vol 9, Iss 7, Nos 251, 252, 274, 275, 276


Online events:

Tip of the month:

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 07:44, 27 June 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

New pages patrol needs your help!

New pages awaiting review as of June 30th, 2023.

Hello Nick Moyes,

The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:

Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

added Novem Linguae
removed

Bureaucrat changes

removed MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-27

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

The Citation Barnstar
Thanks for fixing the citations in my draft! QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 13:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Shashi Dharan TP on User:Shashi Dharan TP/sandbox (04:02, 8 July 2023)

Hi , good day, how to create hyperlink on Sandbox and how to save what I have written on my first time creating a page? --Shashi Dharan TP (talk) 04:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Shashi Dharan TP, and a warm welcome to Wikipedia. I have just placed a welcome message on your talk page with a very useful link to get you to learn about editing.
Every edit you make is visible on the internet - whether it's on your userpage, your sandbox, or in an article. So the blue 'Publish' button is really just a 'Save' button. Click that, and whatever you've written will be saved on that page.
We have two types of hyperlink on pages. One is called a 'wikilink' and that is simply a link to another Wikipedia page. You can either click the 'chain' icon in the editing tool to add a wikilink, or you can place two square brackets around the correctly spelled word. Both do the same thing - just like this link to the article about the Earth.
The other way to use a link is to use it within a citation to a reliable source. When you click the 'Cite' button in the editing tool, you will see a box into which you can add that hyperlink to a non-Wikipedia page. The little magnifying glass next to it allows you to try to get the software to auto-fill the rest of the reference for you, based upon that link. But it doesn't always work perfectly, although it helpfully cuts down on the amount you have to manually add to make a really good reference (citation).
It is a bad idea to try to create a completely new article when you've only just arrived here - we have many rules and guidelines that must be followed. Our advice is always to start small, and gradually learn the basics. When I train people, I first get them to edit their userpage, saying just a little about themselves and their interests in wanting to edit Wikipedia. (Don't reveal personal details as anyone can see it, and it's not necessary).
I then get them to fix errors or add small, verifiable bits of information to an existing article and to support their edits with a WP:CITATION to a Reliable Source. For a new article about something, you would need to read and understand our Notability Criteria, and then find three or more independent sources that talk about that topic in some detail. You can get more advice on that by carefully reading this advice page. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 09:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions § AutoWikiBrowser

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions § AutoWikiBrowser. After our lovely discussion at WT:AWB, I went to check your account and noticed you're an administrator. I still want AutoWikiBrowser rights to make redirects, so can you please review my request to see if I can get these rights? QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 22:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@QuickQuokka I'm afraid I'm going to stand aside for that request for two reasons. Firstly, I don't feel I'm experienced enough in AWB to say 'OK' and let you loose on it and, secondly, I worry that you're making a whole load of unnecessary redirects based on minor variant spellings. I'm not convinced this is appropriate or necessary (multiple redirects to Spank and some spiderverse page seems like trivial examples for me to cite), so your use of the incredibly powerful AWB could potentially be an issue. That's not to say I don't trust you or your motives- more that I don't trust myself to give you that right and to justify doing so. I'd prefer a more experienced admin to decide. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Nick Moyes: Hey now! I don't just make redirects about spankings and Spider-Man! I also made Cum gutter!
But in all seriousness, I understand and respect your decision to not give me the rights. --QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 23:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

The Civility Barnstar
For your help at the aforementioned WT:AWB QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 22:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-28

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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
  • Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments. [118]
  • Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [119]
  • The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
  • The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [120]
  • Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [121]

Future changes

  • There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [122]
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

username stuff

To be clear, I think your call not to block is totally inside admin discretion, offensive usernames in particular are a very grey area. I created {{UAA-no edits}} as an educational tool for responding to these premature reports. My personal thought process on these things is also memorialized at User:Beeblebrox/rough guide to username blocks. Maybe it is time for broader discussion of how we handle the really nasty stuff? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I'll take a look at what you wrote later. I often ask myself whether, by blocking a no edit offensive username, I'm encouraging editors to report unecessarily. So when I don't, rather than simply add the 'wait' until they edit notice which the reporter probably won't see, I try to ping the reporter so they get alerted to my decline and appreciate the reasons wI/e make our decisions. (I'd be happy to block every offensive username if the guidelines encouraged that. Last time I read them I felt they didn't)
.
BUT...I do think it's time for that broader discussion. I really do think that now that Wikipedia has come of age, we/WMF should permanently delete from view all those blocked usernames which don't have any edits to their name, yet are of a deeply sexual or offensive nature. Leaving them on show for all the world to see serves no purpose other than to meet the perverse aims of those who created them in the first place, and it brings us into disrepute, I feel. It would only take one article in a popular tech journal of major newspaper to really show how easily we allow offensive terms to proliferate in view of anyone who went looking for them. (In the early days of the 'Reply' button they were showing up in the username look-ups, but I've not seen that lately) Should there ever be a broader discussion on this topic, count me in, or feel free to quote what I've just said. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Joseph Connor draft

You really think it's COI? I have AGF so far, and it sure looks to me like nothing more than a dedicated fan. Is there anything I missed? 〜 Festucalex • talk 15:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Festucalex it might be - hence my question to give them a chance to answer - it's the images they've uploaded to Commons that concern me. Yes, it could be a fan. But the images could be that of someone connected to this person. The image used on page 14 here goes back to 2017, and this user has (let me AGF) taken it and supplied it to Connor (see here on Instagram), or has acquired the full version from another social media space and uploaded it to Commons. Asking the question about COI seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances. Certainly many other images are copyright and should not have been uploaded in the first place. Quite an impressive actor though, even if not yet notable! Nick Moyes (talk) 16:47, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I myself have tagged the image used in the draft for deletion over at Commons. I still think this editor found the images online and fundamentally misunderstood what the CC0 license is. A paid editor would have had permission to use the images, I think. 〜 Festucalex • talk 17:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-29

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
  • MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [123]
  • The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [124]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red 8th Anniversary

Women in Red 8th Anniversary
In July 2015 around 15.5% of the English Wikipedia's biographies were about women. As of July 2023, 19.61% of the English Wikipedia's biographies are about women. That's a lot of biographies created in the effort to close the gender gap. Happy 8th Anniversary! Join us for some virtual cake and add comments or memories and please keep on editing to close the gap!

--Lajmmoore (talk) 11:01, 18 July 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2023-30

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

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Lincoln Briggs on Image Packaging System (15:07, 25 July 2023)

Hello friend , family --Lincoln Briggs (talk) 15:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Lincoln Briggs. Welcome to Wikipedia. What exactly is your question, please? The topic looks highly technical, and the page not at all well-cited. Were you looking to try to improve it? I'll leave one of our standard welcome messages on your talk page which contains a link to start learning how to edit Wikipedia. It's best to start slowly and get familiar with how things work by making small edits before setting off hurriedly to make big changes. If I can help you further, I will. regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:15, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Nordbjerg (12:37, 26 July 2023)

Hi Nick,

I'm trying to update the performance section of the Ethereum page - it starts off kind of weird ("the problem arises" with no context) and is factually incorrect.

I wanted to add more context on the current state of Ethereum - the roadmap has moved away from the sharding concept mentioned in that section to something dubbed a "rollup-centric" roadmap. I cannot really figure out when exactly that happened, so I am basically unsure how to source it:

On Ethereum.org (https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/#what-about-sharding), this is mentioned:

"Sharding is splitting up the Ethereum blockchain so that subsets of validators are only responsible for a fraction of the total data. [..] layer 2 rollups have developed much faster than expected and have provided a lot of scaling already, [..] This means "shard chains" are no longer needed and have been dropped from the roadmap."

Can I cite this as a source? How would I put it in a sentence? Most of the sentences are like "As of [year]", "In [year]", but there is no specific year. The best I could find is https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-rollup-centric-ethereum-roadmap/4698

Generally - are there good guides on here on how to cite different types of sources, e.g. undated ones?

Thanks Nick --Nordbjerg (talk) 12:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Nordbjerg. Gosh, I feel out of my depth in trying to understand what your question is about. Firstly, I'd say you should never use or cite discussion fora. They cannot be treated as Reliable Sources because they are user-generated (just like Wikipedia is, and we never cite ourselves here, either)
If it were important to find when a website first made some statement, you could go through the archived version on The Wayback Machine to find the earliest mention and cite that link. If you're uncertain whether a particular statement is a widely held view, or just one perspective from a wideer range of good sources, there might be a way of stating that one particluar website stated "XYX". The citation would include an access date to at least pin it down in time a little bit. e.g. According to Ethereum's own website, sharding is defined as meaning "xyz" [ref to Ethereum website].
Now this is too technical for me to comment on in detail, or to offer a form of words you could deploy, but it's often best not to charge in and change an article in a major way of you're not sure you've interpreted something correctly. Instead, it's often best to raise the issue on the article's talk page. Explain what your concerns are, what sources you're relying on and what you would like to change it to. Leave the thread open for a week and watch for any comments. We work by consensus (rather than assertiveness), so wait and see what comments you get back. If, however, either no response after 7 days, you could WP:BEBOLD and simply change it with a clear edit summary and await what happens next. If it's reverted, you could discuss with the reverting editor their reasons and your hopes on making improvements to the page.
I'm not really sure I've fully answered your questions, but let me know if it's helped or not. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:39, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #27

Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Annual plan for Growth

We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.

Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:

  • Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
  • Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.

Suggested edits

The new "Add an image" section-level task

We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.

Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [125]

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.

Mentorship

The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.

More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [126]

The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.

Positive reinforcement

We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.

In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.

Growth contributes to IP Editing migration

The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:

  • the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
  • change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [127]

Community Configuration 2.0

We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:

  • We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [128]
  • We have started to investigate design improvements. [129]
  • We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [130]

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Illusion Flame Teahouse message

Hi Nick, I'm presuming that you didn't mean to post a Teahouse welcome on Illusion Flame's user page, as opposed to their talk? I have reverted the edit. Thanks, Schminnte (talk • contribs) 21:12, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Schminnte Thanks. Dealt with. (It's been a long and tiring day of cleanup and very repetitive editing!) Nick Moyes (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Understandable. Thanks for all your help with newer editors (including me not that long ago it seems! I knew I recognised that username). All the best, Schminnte (talk • contribs) 21:16, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Soccerpuppets on Vanessa Peters (04:56, 3 August 2023)

Hey I was copyediting this article about Vanessa Peters, the musician, and the original author put two spaces after every period. I know some people prefer this, but should I copy this style as well? Thanks --Soccerpuppets (talk) 04:56, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there Soccerpuppets. Great question! Double-spacing is a gradually diminishing habit, especially amongst North American editors. See MOS:DOUBLESPACE which explains that if anyone does type double spaces into an article, they render on the page as single spaced. Therefore, that tells me that single spacing is the correct approach to use.
BTW: I noticed in a recent edit you changed 'both sides of the Atlantic' to 'globally'. Whilst I take your point, I would suggest that "in North America and Europe" would have been much more appropriate in that situation, as it's probably not referring to including China, Russia, Asia, Africa and South America etc. But it all depends what the cited source says.
Another PS: your username might draw attention to yourself as it tends to suggest a cynical use of a new WP:SOCKPUPPET account to avoid a block. You might like to address that issue by saying something on your userpage about your rationale and motives for wanting to contribute to Wikipedia, and why you chose that name. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thanks for the answer for single-spacing and "globally" word choice. This is very helpful in my journey to learn how to edit wikipedia pages effectively. Also, I understand your point about my username. I watched a video about long-term abuse yesterday which inspired to start helping out on wikipedia, and I felt choosing a satirical username would remind me of why I started. I did not know about the user bio, I will update that as soon as possible. Thanks again. Soccerpuppets (talk) 17:24, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Parthenon646546 (07:13, 3 August 2023)

Hi please teach me how to begin editing because i am not able to find arti le with any grammatical mistake --Parthenon646546 (talk) 07:13, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there @Parthenon646546. Thanks for your question and welcome to Wikipedia. I will leave an automatic welcome message on your talk page which includes a very helpful link to help you learn how to edit. (We have two different editing tools you can switch between, if you find one is not to your taste)
If you have good English language skills, and want to improve the readability of articles here, you might wish to follow the guidance at WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors which focuses on improving the wording of articles.
In desktop view, you will see you have a Tab next to your user page and talk page, called 'Homepage'. That offers you tailored suggestions for editing to help get you started. These are always small edits which are perfect for learning. I see you're on a mobile, so look for the very small link at the bottom of every page. It lets you switch your phone from mobile editing mode to 'desktop' editing mode. (It's something I always do on my tiny iPhone screen. Mobile view is great for reading articles, but not so useful for making edits to improve a page.)
You might also like to visit WP:Task Center for ideas of the type of editing you might like to do. Let me know if this helps and how you are getting along. Learning to edit Wikipedia is a bit like learning to drive a car. Start slowly and move off gently until you've mastered the basic controls before you drive at high speed. Obviously, knowing where to go is important at whatever speed, so I hope my reply has been of some help to you. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please remove edits to Michael P. Grace II

The removing of so-called coatracks has made the article unorganized...Work as a theater producer is now under Music Work. Please remove the edits if possible. Starlighsky (talk) 21:53, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Starlighsky The WP:COATRACK content was veering off-topic. I only removed one sentence and a supporting citation to Wikipedia, which is not acceptable. The rest of my edits were simply logical headings and sub-headings, and very wording minor tweaks. TBH: I doubt this person is notable by our standards, but keep working on it and digging out better sources of info on him. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you saying. However, it put theater work under the heading of music work. I can fix it as entertainment industry work, but it damaged the article when the so-called coatracks were removed.
All in all, I understand what you are saying and will keep working on it. Starlighsky (talk) 22:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I just saw you fixed the issue, thanks Starlighsky (talk) 22:17, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) @Starlighsky OK, thanks. I was trying to be helpful and supportive for you! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Starlighsky (talk) 23:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from A C006 (15:29, 5 August 2023)

hello how can i create an article --A C006 (talk) 15:29, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there @A C006:, what would be the subject of your article, and what published sources do you have to base it on, please? I can probably help you better if you give me some idea what it's about. But, fair warning, trying to create a brand new article from scratch is extremely difficult if you've never spent any time getting to understand the basics of Wikipedia editing. Making small edits on existing articles and learning to add citations to support new content is a very good way to learn.
I'll leave a welcome message on your talk page with links to learning to edit. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from TerDevor (01:31, 6 August 2023)

Hello Nick! I would like to create/edit Wiki pages for Companies. I feel that a lot of information related to companies is a little dated. Is that ok to do?

Terrance --TerDevor (talk) 01:31, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, TerDevor. Creating articles about companies is a task fraught with many difficulties. First off: Wikipedia is not here to serve as free promotion for them. If you either work for, or are being paid to write about businesses, you have a Conflict of Interest. Paid editors are obliged by our policies to declare who is paying them, or they get blocked. See WP:PAID for advice on this.
We reject all articles which fail to meet our Notability Criteria for Businesses. This is the bar you have to get over in your sourcing thaqt demonstrates the notability of a company. You cannot rely on demonstrating notability by citing the business website itself, or press releases, or insider business magazines. The business must have been covered by at least three mainstream media reports, in detail and in depth, and not just by insider business newsletter or paid-for articles, or interviews with CEOs etc.
My advice would be to stick to other topics, and to learn the basics of editing first. i.e. work on improving existing articles and learning how to add citations to support unsubstantiated factual information presented in those articles. See WP:TUTORIAL and WP:YFA for further guidance. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:03, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-32

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

Recent changes

  • Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [131]

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

added Firefangledfeathers
removed

Interface administrator changes

added Novem Linguae

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Help - TruxtVerified

I am a new host at Teahouse, I installed Scripts you provided. But when I click invite, that message come to me only. Help me to fix this issue. TruxtVerified (talk) 08:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@TruxtVerified It works for me. I've just gone to your talk page and successfully used the 'Invite' button to leave you a TH invite (You can obviously remove it now). I assume you didn't try to use it whilst you were on your own talk page? As I'm not a whizz with scripts, once you've investigated by removing and reinstalling it, and still find there's a problem, I suggest you post your query at WT:TH as there are some (like Sdkb) who are pretty good with scripts.
But feel free to test it by leaving me invites - I'll know what's going on and remove them later.
Please note: I'd not realised the teahouse badges were still in the 'active' section of that page, so I've just moved it down to the inactive section as these were used a lot in the very early days, but are no longer needed.
Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It works, Thank you for you attention. A good friendship starts here❤️TruxtVerified (talk) 11:21, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Extended confirmed user

Hello Nick Moyes, i am a new user on Wikipedia and I am editing Wikipedia for past approx 20-30 days and I have more than 300 edits , i want to know that when will I become a Extended confirmed user on wiki and what are the benifits of this. and I also want to design my user page like many other Wikipedians but I don't know how to do that ? WikiAnchor10 (talk) 14:03, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@WikiAnchor10 Please read WP:XCON to appreciate the significance of Extended Confirmed rights. You will need an account that has been active for at least 30 days (today or tomorrow, probably) and have made 500 edits. So you've a little way to go on the second bit.
If you find a userpage you like, you could look at the source code they've used to create it and copy and modify it to suit your interests. (Don't just paste in another person's userpage - that might rouse curiosity,. but modify it to suit (and perhaps also credit the source in an edit summary))
Alternatively, take a look at Wikipedia:User page design guide for various ideas you could try out. I hope this addresses your queries. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:22, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks WikiAnchor10 (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please review User:Artecollectic/sandbox for copyvio again

The source text appears in full on Fridays(!)otherwise the para you removed would have been sufficient. This is a 100% copyvio I'm afraid! There is history on the creating editor's talk page. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:17, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It has since been deleted. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 09:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for updating me. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:21, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-33

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

  • The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available. [132]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [133]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Apex101 (20:05, 17 August 2023)

hello --Apex101 (talk) 20:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Nabi Bux Zardari (08:25, 19 August 2023)

I am Unable To Create knowledge panel please Help me.. --Nabi Bux Zardari (talk) 08:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Nabi Bux Zardari The true “knowledge panel” is found on Google Search results, and often incorporates Wikipedia information. We have no control over how Google uses our data. Here, we use Template:Infobox to create a INFOBOX in an article.
Please check those out for guidance. As I am away from home right now until Monday, please seek further help at the WP:TEAHOUSE. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:55, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-34

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Question from Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (06:11, 22 August 2023)

Hi Nick,

How can I tell when creating an article, whether I have included sufficient secondary references to qualify my subject as having received significant coverage?

I have recently had an article declined for this exact reason, and although since then I have added more secondary references, I cannot tell whether it meets the threshold. Since I don't want to go through the whole rigmarole of being rejected and having to resubmit, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me some assistance before the article is reviewed.

For reference, here is my draft article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Kate_Andrews --Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bill Wilson AKA "CIA". I can't do much to help you with only those sources, I'm afraid. They're all just brief mentions of her, and none show an in-depth, independent article about her. As such, she fails to meet WP:NBIO. Your only course of action is to do further research, or wait until such sources are published. That is often the issue with news outlets and journalists - they're the ones who might make news stories available that you can use, but they rarely get written about in detail themselves. Sorry I can't assist you , though I have done some minor copy-editing of the draft and have marked where factual statements about a living person need to be supported with a citation. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response Nick,
If a could ask you a further question, my draft of the Kate Andrews article was modelled after this one on Katy Balls, yet I am not sure which sources in the Katy Balls article would qualify her as a notable person if my Kate Andrews one doesn't qualify. Is it just a case of an article being wrongly accepted? Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 10:46, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" It could well be. I'm not going through each of the refs in that article, but they all seem fairly short. See WP:NJOURNALIST for our notability criteria about creative professionals. Don't give up though, and keep working on it and looking for other sources. A year or so ago I created a page about journalist, Olga Rudenko from the Kyiv Independent, but by then then she had featured on the front cover of Time Magazine! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:36, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers! Thanks for your assistance, Nick Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 14:24, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 2023 at Women in Red

Women in Red September 2023, Vol 9, Iss 9, Nos 251, 252, 281, 282, 283


Online events:

Tip of the month:

  • The books she wrote might be notable, too; learn 5 quick tips about about book articles.

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Victuallers (talk) 16:54, 25 August 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Question from Alexandrachudinova (21:30, 25 August 2023)

How to publish a biography on Wikipedia? --Alexandrachudinova (talk) 21:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Alexandrachudinova. Thank you for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia. I can see that you attempted to use Wikipedia to publish an article about yourself, and that it was (quite reasonably) deleted. (I happen to be an administrator here, so can view your deleted page)
Simple question: Are you notable (as defined by Wikipedia)? See this page for our notability criteria for living people, or WP:NARTIST for creative individuals.
If you can find three or more independent sources that talk about you in detail and in depth, then you may well meet our notability criteria for having an article about you. If not, just forget it. This encyclopaedia is not here for WP:PROMOTION. You would obviously have a Conflict of Interest in trying to write about yourself, and it's not always a good idea, anyway (see WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY).
Finally, I always advise any new editor to spend time learning how to make small edits to existing Wikipedia pages before ever trying to create a new article. It's like a brand new learner driver setting off at 100 km/hour and trying to avoid crashing. It's very difficult! Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Nick Moyes,
My pleasure for your full answer.
I have a question. The process of submitting the articles can be much easier than right now.
Do you have an opportunity to submit a suggestion for Wikipedia?
Have a nice day.
Respectfully,
Alexandra Chudinova Alexandrachudinova (talk) 13:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexandrachudinova I am afraid I do not quite understand your question.
If you want to make suggestions for the way Wikipedia operates, these can be raised and discussed at 'the Village Pump'. There are different places for those discussions, depending on what your idea is. So read that page carefully.
If, however, you just want to submit a new article, the best route for you would be to start work on a 'Draft' article, then submit it for review and feedback when you are ready. Go to this page to find a 'wizard' to help you get started. But I should warn you that creating a new article from nothing is one of the hardest tasks here. It is often best to spend time first making smaller improvements to existing pages, and getting to understand how things work.
The most important thing for any new article is that it must meet our Notability Criteria, and be based upon Reliable Sources. If you can't find sources to show that a topic is notable, then we cannot have a page about it here.
I hope one of these replies addresses your question. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-35

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

  • As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis. [144]
  • All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [145]
  • Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [146]
  • Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [147][148]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
  • New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
  • All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks. [149]

Future changes

  • The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
  • A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jessica36363 on Advertising revenue (06:32, 29 August 2023)

How can I post an advertisement --Jessica36363 (talk) 06:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jessica36363 You can't - we do not permit advertising here. See WP:NOTADVERT. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source requirements for new topics (eg: Artificial Intelligence)

I just tried to edit this page Facial recognition system, by adding a much needed section on AI based facial recognition. Since AI is kind of a new an evolving topic, many researchers opt to self publish their work on arXiv, create their own project pages, or share their works on self published blog posts. I understand that these may not qualify as reliable sources according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and I do understand that there sometimes is a fine line between self-promotion and supporting a contribution. Can you help me improve my contribution (the AI section for face recognition) [150] ? Thanks! Nuwiz (talk) 14:46, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Nuwiz, thanks for reaching out. Whilst I'm afraid I don't have the time to help improve your contributions, I can confirm that blogs and promotional links to company websites are never accepted here. I realise that AI/facial recognition is a cutting-edge, rapidly developing field. But we cannot accept such primary sources from a company website (it comes over as WP:PROMOTION). Instead, we need secondary sources which have reported independently on those developments. Wikipedia only collates and presents what others have reliably reported already. If that means waiting, then so be it.
On another note, I'm afraid I need to advise you that your account name breaches our policy (WP:USERNAMES) on two points. It appears to represent or promote a company website, and it could therefore also have multiple users accessing it. Please permanently abandon that account, forget its password, and create a new one which is neither promotional, nor suggestive of multiple users accessing it. It faces being blocked for those two reasons alone, I'm afraid.
Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:12, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Kebede Michael

Hi Nick,
You said to drop you a note – unfortunately, this indeed appears to be a slow motion edit war. The two Rwandan IPs (41.186.194.39, 197.243.109.58) are likely the same person on different devices/connections, given previous overlap also at Menelik II and the tendency to paste the same prepared arguments in their edit summary. They might be trying to make some valid points, but the message keeps getting truncated, and attempts to direct them to the talk page failed.
Cheers, 2406:3003:2077:1E60:EDE9:C688:2C0C:D5F5 (talk) 05:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've blocked two IP addresses for slow burn edit warring and given low-level page protection to the article for 6 months. That'll impact on you as you're not editing from a registered account, even though I can see you've been active on this IP range since March 2021. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:26, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
  • A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

  • Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-36

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

Problems

  • The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [155]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [156][157]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mrs.Stina (19:40, 8 September 2023)

Hello. I am wanting to add a Rosenwald school to the " List of Rosenwald Schools". The school is listed in the article, but it is not listed on the table showing the schools. I want to add this beautiful restored school to that list. --Mrs.Stina (talk) 19:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia, Mrs.Stina, and thanks for your question.
The page entitled List of Rosenwald schools was not protected, so you are able to edit it yourself. (You did not need to make this request)
Alternatively, you could leave a clear explanation of what you want doing on the article's Talk page (it's called an EDITREQUEST).
If you have a photograph that you have personally taken (i.e. you own the copyright of it - rather than simply taking it off the internet - then you can upload it to Wikimedia Commons, and from there embed it into the List article.
I have left you a standard 'welcome' message on you talk page with links to help pages which will help teach you the basics of how to edit Wikipedia. I will keep a watch on List of Rosenwald schools, so if you get in a muddle trying to do it yourself, I might spot the edit and fix it for you if I can. If you make a real mess of an edit, you can go to the 'Page History' Tab and find your edit at the top of the list of every single edit to that page. Look along that top row and you'll see an 'Undo' link to revert any change that you did not intend to make.
I hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from The Soup Person (21:49, 8 September 2023)

Hello, I am hoping to edit the "Soup" article, as the information in that article only mentions soups in North America, and there is also a missing page I would like to create, "Íslensk kjötsúpa", and I see that to edit the "Soup" article I have to have 4 edits at least. There is no question here, I just wanted to inform you of my intention on Wikipedia. Good day, and goodbye. --The Soup Person (talk) 21:49, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@The Soup Person OK, thanks for letting me know. Please ensure you use at least three reliable, non-promotional citations to support any new article. As creating a page from scratch is one of the hardest tasks here, I advise you to get a little editing practice on existing articles beforehand. You can create a draft article (and work on it until you're ready for it to be reviewed) with our wizard tool at this page. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:41, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Liverbrads1 (05:51, 9 September 2023)

What questions will you answer? --Liverbrads1 (talk) 05:51, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Liverbrads1. I'll try to answer any problem you have that relates to editing or using Wikipedia, or if you need guidance about interacting with other users. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol | October 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Articles will earn 3x as many points compared to redirects.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-37

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

  • ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [158]
  • When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [159]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
  • The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
  • As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [160]

Future changes

  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [161]
  • The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Autopatrolled?

Hi Nick. I noticed that you had given Theresearchroom and Shling00 the autopatrolled right. Since they seem to be brand-new editors who wouldn't meet the requirements for autopatrolled, I'm guessing you meant to give them confirmed instead? Just figured I'd check. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Extraordinary Writ Thanks for flagging this. They were at a training session I was helping with a few months ago, and I'm trying to remember why I need to change their rights. I think it may have been to do with access to translation software. But I'm sure you're right to flag this up as an administrative error on my part. I will look into it and fix it (though I can't do it right this minute). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:59, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
 Fixed Nick Moyes (talk) 10:43, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-38

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [164]
  • All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [165]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from KuzynPedia (14:38, 19 September 2023)

Are you a bot or no? --KuzynPedia (talk) 14:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@KuzynPedia No, I'm a real human being. You can read about my interests and my involvement with Wikipedia over 13 years on my userpage. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

BLP issue

This looks like a pretty serious BLP infringement (uncited claim of major criminal activity by someone identified by full-name, and possibly even a public person), not mere vandalism. Could you explain your thinking why it does not merit a rev-del? DMacks (talk) 23:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good question; thanks for asking. I've no objection to it being revdelled, but my feeling was that it was a random sentence added to a random article with no connection to that name and with that name not being findable online (I did take time out to search for it, and found nothing, apart from a similarly named American individual). Hence why I said "I don't think REVDEL is quite warranted" (my subsequent italics) as it seemed like a vandalism-related edit unrelated to the article, and thus already removed from view. But I was borderline, and might have felt differently on a less busy day, so please revdel it if yo disagree with my comment. I guess "better safe than sorry" is not a bad approach. I'll leave it to you to decide. But if you do, should you not then really also seek WP:OVERSIGHT in this instance? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I may jump in as the person who originally suggested revdel (though I'm not an admin), thanks to both of you for bringing this up and laying out your reasoning. I didn't want to dive into the question at the teahouse because of streisand effect concerns, but it looked to me like potentially defamatory material, and the reason revdel came to mind is that the user looked like they were trying to not just get it deleted from the page, but (perhaps quite reasonably) to get it struck from the page history. I was also considering suggesting oversight. If somebody else doesn't move forward with that I'm happy to request oversight if you think it might be warranted. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol newsletter

Hello Nick Moyes,

New Page Review article queue, March to September 2023

Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!

October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.

PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.

Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.

Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.

Reminders:

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Kenneth Hatley (01:40, 23 September 2023)

Thank you very much. I need. Help in writing in Wikipedia. I have had a career in the Music Industry and film soundtracks. I have a lot of significant artists I have worked with, Produced, and Managed, as well as partners in projects, such as film soundtracks, concerts, studio musicians, and songwriters that my songs were with Richie Havens, Country Star Razzy Bailey, Johnny and June Cash, Willie Nelson I have worked on projects with these artists. --Kenneth Hatley (talk) 01:40, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kenneth, thanks for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia. I'll put a welcome message on your User Talk Page with a few useful links to getting started with editing Wikipedia.
It sounds like you've known lot of famous people in your time, and you probably have some great photos of them that you've taken? You could really help out by checking their Wikipedia pages and seeing if you have photos of these artists better than the ones already there that would improve the articles. Providing you own the copyright as the photographer, you could upload these to Wikimedia Commons (via this link) for use in Wikipedia articles.
If your question relates more to you wanting to write an article about yourself, then I should point out two things. Firstly, the subject of any new article must meet our 'Notability Criteria'. This means that the world at large must have noticed and written about them in independent mainstream publications. For musicians and artists, the specific criteria for acceptance can be founds at WP:NMUSIC. Sources such as music books and mainstream magazines and newspapers are acceptable sources, but user-generated content such as WP:IMDB or personal blogs and websites are no regarded as sufficiently reliablet.
Secondly, we very strongly discourage anyone from attempting to create an article about themselves. Not only is this an extreme Conflist of Interest, it is sometimes not a wise thing to do (see WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY). If someone is notable (by Wikipedia's standards, then there's a good chance another, unconnected editor will want to write about them. Of course, if you feel you do merit a page here on Wikipedia, you can make that suggestion (and include a few links to good sources) at Wikipedia:Requested articles/music.
I hope this answers some of your questions. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nick,
Thank you for the advice. Yes I have many years throughout my career. I certainly understand that it is dangerous territory when one writes their own biography. As a professional in the industries of Music and film, I understand and have been diligent to back up any projects and achievements, good or bad Richie Havens advised me in the early 80's. Richie said get everything in writing, besides the contract, but put it in as a letter to certify any project, Richie further stated, we go to have facts with us, because there are too many liars out there that will try to claim it was not you. Richie, was a partner and the God Father of mny son. Richie was our my first Producer in Nashville in a band called the Raven, though the albu mnn did not getr off the ground, and the band lasted, but mine and Richie's relation almost until he passed away. David Carradine was another one, very much like Richie. When David went top Bangkok and was suspected murdered, after the Bangkok Police gave me five different stories. I had just spoken with David a day or two and was very positive about another film and the sound track he and I were going to do the Production and composing, unfortunately when he went to dinner out of the hotel, to meet with the film producers. After the evening, and dinner David had to walk back to the hotel. However, the Chauffeur had driven away. When David got to the hotel, the camera was on and saw him come in, when he went to the elevator the camera went blank. I received a call fom a Director in L.A. , Lance Miccio he called me at about 5:30 a.m. in the morning. I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico on business with an Executive Producer. The first words out of Lance was, "Kenny I am so sorry", I asked him what was he sorry about enough to wake me up; then the words that came out of Lance's mouth put me in a state of shock, his words "Kenny, I am sorry about David's passing, I asked him what was he talking about, he said David was dead the maids found him in his bedroom, with him tied up in the closet. Kenneth Hatley (talk) 01:59, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Kenneth Hatley - those are sad stories. I think David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu was utterly wonderful. I was glued to that series and really admired him, as well as the character he payed, when I was a kid growing up in the mid '70s. As you say, to know him personally and to lose him in that way must have been shocking for you.
From a Wikipedia perspective, those personal stories - no matter how valid - can never be used unless they were properly published in quality newspapers, or equivalent. But if you need any specific advice on adding content here, do let me know. Or, if I should not respond in due course, feel free to seek help at The Teahouse - a place designed to help newcomers who are struggling with the intricacies of editing. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-39

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 Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [166]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
  • The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
  • Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

  • New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [167][168]

Meetings

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Halabi51 (15:37, 27 September 2023)

1) MARIO VARGAS LLOSA Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru (born March 28, 1936) is one of the most popular contemporary Latin American writer, who is also an active political activist. Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. The major themes of his novels are centred around human tragedies and loss of identities under dictatorships, and the helplessness of the oppressed in temporalities of totalitarianism --Halabi51 (talk) 15:37, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Halabi51. Welcome to Wikipedia! Do you have a question about the article on Mario Vargas Llosa? If so, please explain clearly what help you need. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:33, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (19:54, 28 September 2023)

Hi Nick,

When it comes to articles about towns and other such places, would it be off-topic to mention nearby services like hospitals and schools solely because they are the closest available services of their kind to the settlement in question? --Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 19:54, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" I presume your query relates to the article about Helensburgh, which I see you've been working on. Before I answer your question, I should point out that I can see quite a few issues with what's in that article already- though probably not all of them are as a result of your own attempts to improve the page.
At a quick skim through, I can see (in these edits of yours that the page contains lots of factual assertions without backing them up to proper citations. Instead someone has just linked to a business website within a citation, and one (the Outdoor Museum) is to a domain that isn't even functioning any more). That's not the right way to do it. It looks like you've started to move things around and tidy things up, as wellas improving the encyclopaedic tone. This is a good move. Editors have obviously added all sorts of details (presumably from their personal knowledge, but not given any links to enable someone to WP:VERIFY them. Just a link to an organisation is not sufficient. There is quite a bit of WP:TRIVIA which you could remove, such as the mention of who the museum's designer is. One citation is just an external link which needs to go; the other is a good one which verifies that the museum was 'award winning' - but it's not in the right place to support the statement about awards, whereas the whole sentence isn't needed. The actual word changes you have made have all improved the encyclopaedic tone of the article - so well done on that front.
I would urge you to continue cleaning up the page and improving its encyclopaedic nature. Regarding schools and hospitals: well, yes, there's a danger that it becomes non-encyclopaedic by adding such stuff, and reads like a list of minor local facilities. Saying that the town is served by a major hospital and a key railway station may be valid, but listing all the schools probably isn't. Maybe cite a link to show which education authority it falls in. It's a balance between not bloating an article with WP:TRIVIA and keeping it trim, well cited, and with every factual statement supported by a Reliable Source that can be checked to verify the statement is correct.
I'm not sure this was quite the answer you expected, but let me know if you want any further guidance. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:59, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for going the extra mile and reviewing the actual article, Nick.
Firstly, I completely agree with the article's referencing issues. Just so you know, most of assertions predate my editing. The only reason why I didn't address them was because I thought it better to deal with the other problems first, such as the structure, outdated information, informal tone, etc... My thought was to not go too mental to begin with and just deal with the most striking problems, then decide on the references and trivia later.
Secondly, regarding the hospitals: in the article, there is mention, for instance of Paisley and Vale of Leven hospitals - both of these hospitals are, of course, not in Helensburgh. This is the problem that I have: should the article be concerned with what is strictly in Helensburgh - in which case neither hospital should be mentioned - or rather, that, but also what might be relevant to the Helensburgh residents (in which case they would be mentioned)?
Once again, thank you for your comment, that was really great! Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 21:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" You're welcome. And, yes, I see the things I dislike did predate your edits. (I've upgraded the article's quality rating and left a note on the talk page with my concerns.) Think of the article, not as a resource for local people to find out where they can access resources, but more for anyone else who does not know Helensburgh to find out things that are worth knowin about the towng. Looking at it that way, thenI'd suggest leainge out anything not related to directly to the town.
One tip can be to raise issues of concern , and your proposals to address them, as a note on the talk page. If nobody objects to your proposals, then go ahead and make them. We work by consensus, but if nobody offers alternative approaches, then simply WP:BEBOLD.
I don't know how committed you are to the idea of improving this article. But should you be, then once you've made all the basic improvements and additions that you think need doing, you could ask for 3rd party input at WP:PEERREVIEW. You could set an ambition to bring it up to WP:GA status, for example. But only submit it once you'd put in as much work as you think is needed to fix the basic things first. I worked on enhancing this article for months and months before getting a GA rating. It was a fascinating, in-depth exercise that was most satisfying. But it doesn't appeal to everyone! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:16, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Nick, that's cleared things up.
For future reference, is there a page on Wikipedia that I can consult for future queries like these - the suitability of content, lets say? I am aware of the Help section, but it seems intimidating to navigate (which is why I ended up asking you!) Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 06:23, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" Yes, Bill. The best place to ask any question, day or night is The Teahouse. It's friendly forum designed to help new editors when they encounter problems. You may find me there, too, but there are over 80 'Teahouse Hosts' available to answer queries. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:00, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Testing from SAAO

This is a test from SAAO to see if this works 155.232.7.202 (talk) 09:15, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That works fine, thanks. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:38, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Thanks

Absolutly no problem here! Simply, the short notice entailed the serious risk that the request would not be processed. I, who fortunately live in the CEST/CET time zone, noticed the urgent request just before going to bed and immediately processed it. Luckily the deployment slots were free this morning! Let's say that luck did a lot :P Wish you a great Editathon and a nice day ;) Superpes15 (talk) 09:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Man was born to suffer why woman are born for grace

Man was born to suffer why woman are born for grace Halabi51 (talk) 10:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

  • Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (01:10, 8 October 2023)

How can I deal with Vandalism? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 01:10, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Thanks for your question. As a very new user yourself, first spend a bit more time simply learning the basics of editing. I've checked some of your contributions and not all were that appropriate. this, for example could be considered by some as unhelpful, bordering on vandalism. Yet you probably did it through Good Faith. But not to worry - new users make mistakes and need to learn (hence why I mention this), and why I welcome your question.
To answer your question more directly, I suggest you take a long read through this page: WP:VANDALISM) and follow some of the links to get a grasp of how Wikipedia defines and deals with vandalism. Then, after a bit more experience of editing, you could enroll at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Academy (there are minimum requirements of being able to show 200 WP:MAINSPACE edits first).
If I could make one suggestion: I would like to see you adding a very brief WP:EDITSUMMARY to all your edits, rather than simply reverting people with no explanation. That's pretty bad form and doesn't either help people learn, nor does it explain your motives for making any given edit. By guiding and steering people towards the right way to edit, we can change poor editing behaviour into really helpful editing., and I appreciate your interest and willingness to help out.
If you have favourite articles that you are concerned about (maybe they are your pet subjects, or maybe you've already suspected bad faith editing happening there) you could add them to your WP:WATCHLIST, and then view recent changes to those articles, or even get notifications of changes, if you modify your Notification settings in Preferences. You can then revert and warn an editor if they continue making bad faith edits. You could enable WP:TWINKLE to help you inform and warn users more easily and quickly, placing a series of increasingly firm notices on a vandals talk page before you ever consider reporting them for administrators to take action at WP:AIV. As an admin myself, I get irked when a user gives a final warning to a vandal editor and then immediately reports them to AIV. I expect that editor to watch the actions of that person and only to report them after they have continued with further bad editing activity.
On othre thing you might lie to look at as the live upodates of all edits at Special:Recentchanges. I use these settings to reveal the most likely bad faith edits. It is never wise to lurk at the top of the page - most editors tend to watch only these. Instead, go down the page to view older edits which might still be damaging, but which have been missed. Click on 'diff' to see their edit and then take time to assess and consider why those changes were made. e.g. Does it improve the page? If not, does it detract yet not appear like actual vandalism? view any edit summary; view the other Contributions of that editor; check their talk page for prior warnings; keep a Tab open with their contributions for half an hour or so (IP editors and brand new accounts tend to like causing havoc over a short period of time, and many stop when first warned. Make sure any warning you give is fair and proportionate, and that you explain why you have reverted someone. All things like this turn new editors into really helpful backroom folk. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:25, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I appreciate your help! and by the way, I am now autoconfirmed with 41 edits (As of right now the time I replied) :-) MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 22:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Editorrr164 on User:Editorrr164/sandbox (18:05, 11 October 2023)

Hello how can i create an article --Editorrr164 (talk) 18:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Editorrr164. Your edit to User:Editorrr164/sandbox makes no sense to me. Your sandbox is the right place to prepare a new article, but doing so successfully is the hardest task anyone can do here on Wikipedia. For a total novice, it is much harder, still.
Unless the topic can be shown to meet our Notability Criteria, then it cannot have an article on Wikipedia. Please read WP:NSCHOOLS to understand how that applies to educational organisations. Be aware that Wikipedia is not here to help you promote or advertise any organisation. See WP:PROMOTION. If you are connected to the school or college, you will have a 'Conflict of Interest' and must declare that on your userpage. See WP:COI to understand this guideline. Having understood and acted on those COI guidelines, and assuming you still feel the school meets our Notability Criteria, you may then wish to read Help:Your first article. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Doc Lusion (20:12, 11 October 2023)

Hi there. I would like to write a biography of a living physician with multiple citations, contributions and a long and illustrious career. How do I begin? Thanks. --Doc Lusion (talk) 20:12, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc Lusion The best way is to first spend time learning the basics of editing Wikipedia -especially understanding how to add content and to cite Reliable Sources to substantiate it. Then, and only then, is it sensible to attempt to create a new article about a person. They will need to meet our 'notability criteria' for living people, found at WP:NBIO. And you can create a draft article in either your 'sandbox' or as a formal Draft article and submit it for review and feedback. See Help:Your first article.
If you either are, or know, this person, or are employed by them, then you would need to declare your connection to them by following guidance laid out at this page. I hope this helps? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #28

Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community Configuration, concept A: Accordion style
Community Configuration, concept B: Dashboard style

Community configuration 2.0

  • Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
  • Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
  • Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.

IP Masking

  • The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
  • Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)

Mentorship

Scaling Growth features

  • We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
  • We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
  • At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.

Other news

  • We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
  • You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
  • After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Trizek_(WMF) Talk 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (01:10, 18 October 2023)

What exactly is a Steward? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 01:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Stewards are users with a very high level of technical access across all Wiki Projects and interfaces who help manage, maintain and restrict access to our platforms. There are only 31 stewards across the entire set of projects, and you and I rarely, if ever, need to worry about what roles they perform. However, you can find out more information here. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Ojando (22:42, 20 October 2023)

hi --Ojando (talk) 22:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, @Ojando. Do you need any help or advice on editing Wikipedia? Nick Moyes (talk) 00:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jrmango (22:32, 21 October 2023)

How do I create a page? --Jrmango (talk) 22:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jrmango. Just a quick reply before I head off to bed tonight: Pages can be created about NOTABLE TOPICS, but not just about any old stuff you happen to know or like. If you tell be the type of topic (person, place, film, musician, species, nebula, etc, I can point you to the relevant notability criteria (such as WP:NBIO, WP:NMUSIC, WP:NFILM etc).
You can create a draft article either in your personal sandbox or as a proper DRAFT and submit it for review and feedback when you think it's finally ready to go into the main part of the encyclopaedia. Please follow guidance and use the 'Article Creation Wizard' at this page. Everything you add to a page must be based upon properly published, good quality Reliable Sources. Follow the hyperlinks for all the information you will need to get you started. Regards, and good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Moderator Tools newsletter - Issue #1

Welcome to the inaugural Moderator Tools newsletter! We’ll aim to publish new issues whenever we have big new updates about the projects we’re working on.

PageTriage

PageTriage NewPagesFeed - October 2023

We’ve now wrapped up our work to support the English Wikipedia’s New Pages Patrol community by tackling some major technical debt in the PageTriage extension. The final project update gives an overview of all the work that we did over the past 6 months.

Automoderator

We’re currently working on a project called Automoderator, which will enable communities to automatically revert bad edits based on community-defined settings. We’re looking for input and feedback on our plans so far, and have a number of questions on topics we need patrollers and administrators to help us understand better. In addition to the overview and questions on the main project page, we now have two sub-pages with more specific information:

Automoderator - model testing tool screenshot
  • If you want to investigate Automoderator’s accuracy rate and check out how it would behave in practice, we’ve set up a testing process with data and scores so you can help us find new patterns we can take into consideration before Automoderator is deployed.
  • The measurement plan is the first draft of our plan to measure whether Automoderator is achieving its goals and not having negative consequences. Want to propose some data for us to capture to help evaluate this project? This is the place to go!

Other

Our team has also been working to ensure that software we’re responsible for is updated to support temporary accounts. We’ve made changes to PageTriage, Nuke, and The Wikipedia Library.

Although we have active engineering projects ongoing, we're always happy to chat about your community's content moderation tool needs - feel free to get in contact at Talk:Moderator Tools.

Read past issues or sign up to this newsletter here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red - November 2023

Women in Red November 2023, Vol 9, Iss 11, Nos 251, 252, 287, 288, 289


Online events:

See also

Tip of the month:

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 08:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (22:01, 26 October 2023)

Can Autoconfirmed users like me get the rollback user right, or do you have to be extended confirmed? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 22:02, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Extended confirmed is a rough indication of the amount of experience we would expect from someone requesting rollback rights, but is not 'set in stone'. Please read WP:Rollback so you are aware of what is involved. Note the section which states that "Rollback is not for very new users: it is unlikely that editors with under 200 mainspace edits will have their request granted."
I appreciate your keenness, but noting recent comments on your talk page, don't let your enthusiasm to revert vandalism blind you to good faith editing. Maybe also like to see WP:CVU and read WP:HATCOLLECTING. All the best, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from RobertoSanchez1990 (01:02, 27 October 2023)

Soccer player --RobertoSanchez1990 (talk) 01:03, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@RobertoSanchez1990 This makes no sense. Do you have a question for me about editing Wikipedia? Nick Moyes (talk) 13:03, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bobby Sh3p007 (20:32, 28 October 2023)

I used my IP for my first actual edit, and then read that creating a login would eliminate displaying my IP and just display my chosen User Name, however after completing registration it does not cross reference that my User Name is from that particular IP address, stating that I have 0 edits. Is there a way of fixing this? --Bobby Sh3p007 (talk) 20:32, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Bobby Sh3p007. There is no technical way to officially connect an IP address to a registered account on Wikipedia. You can create a userpage and disclose anything you want about your previous IP editing. Cullen328 (talk) 20:37, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Hi, Bobby Sh3p007. I'm afraid we can't 'merge' the edits from one user with those of another (or with an IP address). However, if you really wanted to link this account's edits with those when you were not logged in, you could easily add a note on your userpage stating that you formerly edited as IP 192.633.32.44 (or whatever it was). But it doesn't seem worth doing for just one edit, nor is it actually all that sensible to declare your real IP address that you're editing from. (Many registered users actually like to keep private the identity of their IP address and not link it to their account). Hope this (and Cullen328's reply) are of use. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:41, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Any advice?

I am debating whether or not to start regularly editing Wikipedia again. After looking at the contributions of my old account, I laugh at the foolishness of myself when I was immature and young. Based on my previous issues/complaints from three years ago, what are some specific things I need to improve on if I am to successfully return to this site? What was the main issue with my editing/behavior back then? What should I avoid? aeschylus (talk) 04:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Aeschylus Hi. You have two accounts and a large number of very small archive pages which I don't really propose to wade through in detail. But, at a skim through, I don't see much that you were doing wrong. Sometimes one can get sucked into spending ages working in areas of Wikipedia that aren't really that satisfying, yet one continues with it until one runs out of steam. If you're thinking about returning to activity again, decide what it is you want to focus on, and make sure you understand those areas well by reading all the relevant guidelines. This applies just as much to article creation as it does to dealing with vandalism, grammar and copy editing, article assessment or copyright work. For article improvement and creation, decide which areas you want to focus on - maybe making a 'to do' list to help you stick in a narrow area of the most important things for you. You can do that on your own, or get involved with some of the WP:Wikiprojects by working through some of their suggested areas to focus on. Not allowing yourself to get sucked down a rabbit hole is one tip to avoid losing the will to contribute.
Perhaps I could turn the question around and ask you to link to things that have bothered you in the past and which you'd like guidance on?
As an aside, if ytou do return to activity, do please find better archive settings which don't make innumerable tiny archives (one per month with one thread in each!). Such settings make it very hard for someone to look back through. Have a read of the settings at User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis. I'd suggest that |format=Y/F could do with being changed to |format= %%i to give you numbered archives (or at the most, have one archived talk page per year) and ensure that 'minkeepthreads' is set to something sensible, like |minkeepthreads=20 so that you've always got the last twenty topics available on your talk page. I tend to be a bit suspicious of users who archive everything off their talk pages all the time. It makes me wonder what they're trying to hide. OK, I do take things to extreme a bit myself so, if you look at my settings, I keep a large number of quick-to-refer-to threads on my talk page (50), and have | maxarchsize=200000 to give me a few large archives, not hundreds of tiny ones. This makes going back to look for a past thread and doing a Ctrl-F keyword search so much easier. For me, it would be a nightmare to have your archive settings; for you it's simply not needed.
Whether you're a new editor or not, the things to avoid are unreasonably accusing other people of doing bad stuff; being defensive and not open to listening to another person's point of view; failing to spend time to read policies and guidelines relevant to the area you're working on, and not being polite or welcoming to others. I didn't sense any great issue with your earlier interactions, though.
If someone challenges how you've made an edit, take time to read up and see if you've misunderstood something - and take the time to apologise if you have (I've had to grovel a few times over the years!) You handled a question about Mark Fowler (hitman) quite well. (I've since lost the link to one of those innumerable archives pages, so can't give you a diff), and you appear to have created some pretty good articles and DYKs in the past.
My feeling is that I don't see an issue with you returning to editing activity - and I think you'd be a net positive if you did. But it comes down to what you want out of it, what time you want to spend on this site.
I hope this helps a bit. If you want any further specific advice, do please ask. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:28, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback! I will follow this advice if I return. aeschylus (talk) 20:34, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Sunnykhurma (09:02, 29 October 2023)

Hello Nick, Hope you are well!

I need your help in updating one article. --Sunnykhurma (talk) 09:02, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sunnykhurma Please cold you give me a link to the article you want to update, and tell me what you want to add or change. Linking to a source would be extra helpful so that I can guide you most effectively. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for Reply, Draft:The Jalandhar Times Please go through with this and suggest to move this on main page Sunnykhurma (talk) 09:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sunnykhurma I'm afraid I won't do that as the draft does not show how the newspaper meet our [[WP:GNG| notability guidelines]. There are no references at all - and any you do use must be independent of the subject and have talked about this newspaper in detail and in depth. At the moment it is not written in a language appropriate to an encyclopaedia, and sounds more like an advertisement - and that is not our purpose. There are thousands upon thousands of local and regional newspapers around the world. Whilst most are reliable enough to be sources of references for use on Wikipedia, few meet the criteria of actually being notable themselves. See The Kyiv Independent as an example of one that is. Sorry I can't help you, but you are free to continue working to improve it. Finding good sources to use as references should be your priority. Without them, you would be wasting your time, I'm afraid. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Now, Please have look. I have modified the things which you suggest me to do. Please Sunnykhurma (talk) 17:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sunnykhurma All your sources are still based on The Jalandhar Times, or on its social media presence. To be notable, we need to see evidence that at least three other media outlets have written in detail and in depth about this newspaper. Simply existing is not a rationale for a Wikipedia article, I'm afraid. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMImXoQswoaG5Aw?ceid=US:en&oc=3
Will these links help? Sunnykhurma (talk) 17:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sunnykhurma No, they won't The first six all linked TO the The Jalandhar Times. I assume the rest will, too. We need sources that talk ABOUT The Jalandhar Times. There is a significant difference! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These Below links are talking about The Jalandhar Times
https://www.thecompanycheck.com/org/jalandhar-times/480e94c295 Sunnykhurma (talk) 18:02, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sunnykhurma I'm really sorry. All that link does is prove that the company exists - but that was never in doubt! Millions of companies, newspapers, shops and people exist too. Only a small number ever get noticed and written about by the world at large. Our notability criteria for businesses would be explained further at this page.
What you could consider doing is make mention in an existing article to demonstrate that the newspaper serves that region, alongside other newspapers and media. I assume Jalandhar#Media would be the place. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mariamkaram94 (18:57, 30 October 2023)

Hello, Why does Wikipedia keep deleting my translation? --Mariamkaram94 (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariamkaram94 I don't understand what you mean. We already have an article on English Wikipedia at Tantura massacre.
You appear to have created an equivalent article in German at User:Mariamkaram94/Tantura-Masskar, and appear to have successfully edited it after posting your question to me. To be frank: You should really be creating translations into Germans over at German Wikipedia. But, oh, I see you already are!
Assuming the version in German that you made here on English Wikipedia is no longer needed, would you like me to delete it for you? If you want to request deletion at a time of your choosing, just add {{Db-author}} to the top of the page, and someone like me will drop by and delete it for you.
Is there anything else you need from me? Nick Moyes (talk) 19:31, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
i was only trying to ass a German Translation to the already published article.
As far as I understood, it's now in my drafts and am blocked from publishing for 3 days till I finish my editing then it will be published.. correct? Mariamkaram94 (talk) 19:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mariamkaram94 You said "I was only trying to ass a German Translation" I presume you meant ADD a German translation?
If so, please stop! That's not the way to do it. You must go to German Wikipedia and add your article there, first checking all the sources you cite to ensure they genuinely support the text you have translated. Just literally translating word for word is sloppy and doesn't guarantee a good article. I do not know the rules governing German Wikipedia, I'm afraid. But here, brand new users should go through Articles for Creation until they're 'autoconfirmed'.
Having done that, and had it accepted on German Wikipedia (not here!), you can make a link using the 'add language' function. Because de.wiki and en.wiki use different 'skins' which give you a slightly different layout, on de.wiki it's on the lower left hand column in desktop view, whilst here it's on the top right, just about the 'View History' tabs etc. You can make the link from either page back to the other - it doesn't matter which you start from. You only need to do it once. Hope this helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and I'm pretty sure German Wikipedia would expect you to use INLINE CITATIONS. We certainly would! There are 28 inline citations in the English article; your draft in German has just one non-functioning reference right at the bottom. You're on the right track - but you've a fair bit more work to do to make this an article suitable for an encyclopaedia where each factual statement you add can be WP:VERIFIED to its source. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-44

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
  • Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [169][170]
  • Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months. [171]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

November Articles for creation backlog drive

Hello Nick Moyes:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 1000 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Kishan singh rathore jalila on User:Kishan singh rathore jalila (15:46, 3 November 2023)

Colified areas as that could be there in the evening of computer science and technology University admission coaching centre of the day --Kishan singh rathore jalila (talk) 15:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Kishan singh rathore jalila Hello. Do you need advice on editing Wikipedia? If so, please explain exactly what help you need. I cannot respond to a random string of words, as they simply make no sense to me. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stenelmis concinna

That was a lovely manifesto. Cheers, Crawdad Blues (talk) 00:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

added 0xDeadbeef
readded Tamzin
removed Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

added Pppery
removed

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
  • Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
  • Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
  • Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
  • Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
  • Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
  • An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Alieyah nicole (20:57, 7 November 2023)

Hello what can I do --Alieyah nicole (talk) 20:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Alieyah nicole. Sorry I didn't see your question until today - I'm afraid I was busy elsewhere.
The answer is very much that it's up to you. At it's simplest, you have a 'Homepage' Tab which offers newcomers some easy editing suggestions to get them started. Click that Tab; select the broad topic areas you might be interested in and scroll through what it offers you. These will be things like adding a link to other articles, or fixing grammar and spelling.
You could visit our WP:TASKCENTER, which offers categories of things people might like to do.
Bottom line: this is an encyclopaedia if 'notable things', collated from properly published sources. Nothing we add should be our own opinions or our personal knowldge. So, adding 'citations' to support statements which might be deemed questionable and currently cannot be verified, is a really useful thing to do.
I often suggest looking for topics on subjects that interest you, and reading through some of them, whilst asking oneself: "can I improve the sentence construction or readability?", or "are there big gaps in the article that I could find some books or good quality websites that would support the addition of new statements?"
If you wanted to tell me a bit more about yourself and yhour inteersts, I might be able to make further suggestiosn for you.
Meanwhile, I have left a welcome message on yor talk page with sme links to get you started, nd to teach you how to approrah editing with either of our two editing tools. gards, e Nick Moyes (talk) 20:25, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jackalope256 (04:42, 8 November 2023)

Hello! I was thinking about adding to the 'In popular culture' section of the Antidisestablishmentarianism (word) article, as the word was featured as an answer to the New York Times crossword earlier this year (09/19), and I was wondering if that was considered significant enough to add, or something I would be able to add. On the page currently is a usage of the word by Eminem, so it looks like appearances of the word are considered noteworthy, and the New York Times crossword could be considered to be pop culture. Thank you! --Jackalope256 (talk) 04:42, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackalope256 That's a really interesting question! My initial reaction was 'No - don't be daft!', but then I looked at Antidisestablishmentarianism_(word) and I've shifted my view to 'Errm, maybe - why not give it a go?'. But I'm very doubtful the edit would stick, because I suspect the word is used in crosswords and quizzes all the time, and wouldn't be seen as significant enough. I also wonder if there was anything significant in the actual clue that was given, as maybe that could be worth quoting? You'd use {{Template:Cite news}} to add the relevant details, ideally including page number if you know it. Good luck (though I'm not holding out too much hope! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:10, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Boxingrec2144 (14:53, 10 November 2023)

Hi I heard for boxing rec website I have to edit through a wiki account Is this true? --Boxingrec2144 (talk) 14:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Boxingrec2144. I really didn't understand your question until I went to our article on BoxRec. It seems they run a wiki about boxing. You can find it here.
Whilst it uses the same underlying software (called MediaWiki) that we use here on Wikipedia, the running of that project has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with English Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.
A wiki is simply a website that any user can sign up to and contribute to. So, yes, if you want to do more than just read content about boxing (i.e. you want to edit and contribute there), then you will need to sign up to their wiki, and follow their rules. Your account you've just created here could not be used to edit the wiki at BoxRec nor, indeed, many thousands of other wikis around the world.
Just to reiterate: the wiki being run by BoxRec has nothing to do with us here at en.wikipedia.org, and I would suggest you use a different username if you do want to contribute over there. BTW: Should you ever want to add information about boxers to English Wikipedia, BoxRec would definitely not be regarded as a Reliable Source that you could cite as a reference here. We do not accept citations to other wikis because anyone can add or edit information without any oversight or editorial control.
I hope this answers your question. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi thanks mate I understand that. I made a boxing rec page but can't figure how to do it as I go edit it asks me to log into wiki witch yeah isn't this wikki cause I still couldn't log in so I'm abit confused I just saw email for help and this was where I was sent. Thanks for your time Ill give it another go with your links you shared. Kind regards Brodie 1.147.112.154 (talk) 13:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Happy to help. I hope you get the other wiki sorted. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Meetups

I'm having a blast at WikiConference North America. I remember you saying once that I should really try going to a meetup or editathon at some point, way back when I was a newbie. I'm also pinging Xeno because I think you might be able to help him find something he's looking for given your past experiences. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Clovermoss Hi there - that's great to hear. I missed online Wikimania this year because my ISP went down for about two days at the start of the event, and I never caught up. But being at events in person is better - especially if there aren't too many air miles involved. I'm definitely intrigued as to what you're alluding to by your second statement, but if Xeno wants to ping me, or email me off-wiki they can.
I don’t know who @Xeno is. I don’t know what they want. If they're looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you, but which Xeno might need.
So go for it guys! Nick Moyes (talk) 20:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again Nick! I had typed this up yesterday, and I forgot to hit submit. Thanks for connecting us Clovermoss. What I was looking for was some kind of quick reference guides / cheatsheets / best practices on running meetups, edit-a-thons, that kind of thing. There's a lot of energy here in Toronto that we're trying to harness. –xenotalk 01:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Xeno That sounds wonderful (Please forgive the silliness above - I couldn't resist!)
I'm guessing you've already visited WP:EDITATHON and WP:MEETUPS? These are good places to start event planning
I will privately email you a link to a really useful 'Editathon Checklist' on Google Docs, put together by @Sara Thomas (WMUK). I don't want to publish it here as I can't seem able to make it 'read only'.
From my own, relatively limited experience of helping to run editathons, I've felt that two things were really important, but often overlooked.
  • Firstly, ensuring you capture the usernames of everyone who attends lets you monitor your event's success and support participants afterwards. Anything from a simple 'white board' to a properly logged event at the 'Outreach Dashboard' can be really useful (or even do both!).
  • Secondly, give participants something to take away with them towards the end of the event so they don't feel bewildered once editing on their own. For one event I made a 2-sided A4 handout in MS Word. I put the text HERE. With hindsight, it was probably too detailed and lengthy. I still like the idea, though.
Finally, HERE are some short notes and observations I made after attending my first Editathon at a major UK university. Having an admin present to support people to make brand new Wikipedia accounts was very helpful. But be aware that both live projecting or prepared screenshots from an experienced editor's account won't look the same as a those from newcomer's account. I created NM Demo 2 for that very purpose.
I hope some of this helps. Shout if you want any further thoughts. Nick Moyes (talk) 15:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the detailed write-up Nick. And also thank you for the Liam Neeson impression, we were laughing out loud here at the WikiCon NA/Toronto lobby party :). For now we’re starting with a Wikipedia Day meetup! –xenotalk 16:26, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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