User talk:Waggers/Archive 29
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The Signpost: 30 April 2019
[edit]- News and notes: An Action Packed April
- In the media: Is Wikipedia just another social media site?
- Discussion report: English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages
- Featured content: Anguish, accolades, animals, and art
- Arbitration report: An Active Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Mötley Crüe, Notre-Dame, a black hole, and Bonnie and Clyde
- Technology report: A new special page, and other news
- Gallery: Notre-Dame de Paris burns
- News from the WMF: Can machine learning uncover Wikipedia’s missing “citation needed” tags?
- Recent research: Female scholars underrepresented; whitepaper on Wikidata and libraries; undo patterns reveal editor hierarchy
- From the archives: Portals revisited
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #031, 01 May 2019
[edit]Back to the drawing board
[edit]Implementation of the new portal design has been culled back almost completely, and the cull is still ongoing. The cull has also affected portals that existed before the development of the automated design.
Some of the reasons for the purge are:
- Portals receive insufficient traffic, making it a waste of editor resources to maintain them, especially for narrow-scope or "micro" portals
- The default {{bpsp}} portals are redundant with the corresponding articles, being based primarily on the corresponding navigation footer displayed on each of those articles, and therefore not worth separate pages to do so
- They were mass created
Most of the deletions have been made without prejudice to recreation of curated portals, so that approval does not need to be sought at Deletion Review in those cases.
In addition to new portals being deleted, most of the portals that were converted to an automated design have been reverted.
Which puts us back to portals with manually selected content, that need to be maintained by hand, for the most part, for the time being, and back facing some of the same problems we had when we were at this crossroads before:
- Manually maintained portals are not scalable (they are labor intensive, and there aren't very many editors available to maintain them)
- The builders/maintainers tend to eventually abandon them
- Untended handcrafted portals go stale and fall into disrepair over time
These and other concepts require further discussion. See you at WT:POG.
However, after the purge/reversion is completed, some of the single-page portals might be left, due to having acceptable characteristics (their design varied some). If so, then those could possibly be used as a model to convert and/or build more, after the discussions on portal creation and design guidelines have reached a community consensus on what is and is not acceptable for a portal.
See you at WT:POG.
Curation
[edit]A major theme in the deletion discussions was the need for portals to be curated, that is, each one having a dedicated maintainer.
There are currently around 100 curated portals. Based on the predominant reasoning at MfD, it seems likely that all the other portals may be subject to deletion.
See you at WT:POG.
Traffic
[edit]An observation and argument that arose again and again during the WP:ENDPORTALS RfC and the ongoing deletion drive of {{bpsp}} default portals, was that portals simply do not get much traffic. Typically, they get a tiny fraction of what the corresponding like-titled articles get.
And while this isn't generally considered a good rationale for creation or deletion of articles, portals are not articles, and portal critics insist that traffic is a key factor in the utility of portals.
The implication is that portals won't be seen much, so wouldn't it be better to develop pages that are?
And since such development isn't limited to editing, almost anything is possible. If we can't bring readers to portals, we could bring portal features, or even better features, to the readers (i.e., to articles)...
Some potential future directions of development
[edit]Quantum portals?
[edit]An approach that has received some brainstorming is "quantum portals", meaning portals generated on-the-fly and presented directly on the view screen without any saved portal pages. This could be done by script or as a MediaWiki program feature, but would initially be done by script. The main benefits of this is that it would be opt-in (only those who wanted it would install it), and the resultant generated pages wouldn't be saved, so that there wouldn't be anything to maintain except the script itself.
Non-portal integrated components
[edit]Another approach would be to focus on implementing specific features independently, and provide them somewhere highly visible in a non-portal presentation context (that is, on a page that wasn't a portal that has lots of traffic, i.e., articles). Such as inserted directly into an article's HTML, as a pop-up there, or as a temporary page. There are scripts that use these approaches (providing unrelated features), and so these approaches have been proven to be feasible.
What kind of features could this be done with?
The various components of the automated portal design are transcluded excerpts, news, did you know, image slideshows, excerpt slideshows, and so on.
Some of the features, such as navigation footers and links to sister projects are already included on article pages. And some already have interface counterparts (such as image slideshows). Some of the rest may be able to be integrated directly via script, but may need further development before they are perfected. Fortunately, scripts are used on an opt-in basis, and therefore wouldn't affect readers-in-general and editors-at-large during the development process (except for those who wanted to be beta testers and installed the scripts).
The development of such scripts falls under the scope of the Javascript-WikiProject/Userscript-department, and will likely be listed on Wikipedia:User scripts/List when completed enough for beta-testing. Be sure to watchlist that page.
Where would that leave curated portals?
[edit]Being curated. At least for the time being.
New encyclopedia program features will likely eventually render most portals obsolete. For example, the pop-up feature of MediaWiki provides much the same functionality as excerpts in portals already, and there is also a slideshow feature to view all the images on the current page (just click on any image, and that activates the slideshow). Future features could also overlap portal features, until there is nothing that portals provide that isn't provided elsewhere or as part of Wikipedia's interface.
But, that may be a ways off. Perhaps months or years. It depends on how rapidly programmers develop them.
Keep on keepin' on
[edit]The features of Wikipedia and its articles will continue to evolve, even if Portals go by the wayside. Most, if not all of portals' functionality, or functions very similar, will likely be made available in some form or other.
And who knows what else?
No worries.
Until next issue... — The Transhumanist 01:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
May 2019
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:UK trams. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. You have been warned abut this before. Just stop it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:51, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- BrownHairedGirl, I have not been "warned about this before" - please provide evidence of that claim. Further, please specify where I have made any personal attacks. I have commented on the conduct of some editors who seem to be engaged in behaviour that goes against guidelines such as WP:GAME and WP:POINT, and I have commented on the current state of things in general terms, but as far as I'm aware I have not attacked any individual personally. Please slow down and show a bit of WP:AGF. WaggersTALK 15:04, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- Waggers, you have been warned at the MFD discussions where you made the personal attacks.
- I am not going to spend tine diff-farming. You know what those attacks are.
- If you have specific evidence that an editor is engaged in WP:GAME and WP:POINT, then I urge you to take it to WP:ANI ... but unless you have such evidence, then stop making smears.
- I have shown plenty of good faith, and I am not going to be lectured on AGF by an angry and abusive editor who has repeatedly responded to my carefully-researched MFD nominations with back of malicious falsehoods. You are a WP:ADMIN, and admins are
are expected to lead by example and to behave in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others
. - Repeatedly lashing out in anger, and making unfounded personal attacks which extend even to
madness
, is in no way compatibly with the standards you are required to uphold. - So I won't warn again. Stop attacking, stop smearing, stop misrepresenting other editors, and start discussing with civility instead of venting. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:27, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- BrownHairedGirl, OK, I'll say it: nominating hundreds of portals for deletion in rapid succession so that editors don't have time to conduct their own research before the MfD closes, then citing the fact that so many of those MfDs have closed as delete as support for your actions - THAT is gaming the system. And when people try to game Wikipedia, a project I love, of course it annoys me. But I am being civil, I am not angry (I am very disappointed) and I have made no personal attacks. I'll ask again: show me where I have, or withdraw your unfounded accusation. You too are an admin and should be behaving better than this. WaggersTALK 15:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- Waggers, the two nominations on which most of them have been based were two mass nominations which I advertised at WP:CENT and at WT:WPPORT, and which had record participation: see mass nom one, and mass nom two.
- The many many other nominations of portals based on a single other page can be verified by any other editor in a matter of seconds, simply by open the edit link on the portal page and verify that the list is indeed made off a single template.
- The more recent nominations that I have made of manual portals on the basis of abandonment or narrow scope are all thoroughly documented with links and diffs, precisely to enable to quick and easy verification.
- So your claim that this is some sort of gaming the system is nothing other than dishonest, lazy smear made because you either haven't followed the links or are ignoring what you found there.
- There is nothing in the slightest bit civil about making such lazy, unfounded slurs. You are behaving despicably. Clean up your act, fast. --15:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- The problem is not verifying, the problem is volume. You've just said it yourself - there have been "many, many nominations". I'm busy in real life and frankly don't have the time to go through your "many, many nominations". Doing so takes me away from creating an encyclopaedia, including the content showcases and navigation tools that are part of it, which is what I'd rather spend my limited time on Wikipedia doing. As I've politely requested several times now, a far less aggressive approach would be very welcome, building consensus for what standards to judge portals by before making "many, many nominations" in a short space of time. It would also save a lot of time and needless aggravation. If you genuinely can't see that, I'm very surprised. WaggersTALK 16:07, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- Waggers, if you are too busy to review nominations, then no problem. Plenty of other editors are assessing and verifying them, and a truly massive amount of effort have been expended on scrutinising a tidal wave of spam whose creator built in between 60 and 120 seconds each (Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)). Wikipedia does not rely on the personal, individual scrutiny of you or any other editor; it is crowdsourced and the crowd is at work.
- See an example which I just dug out the inform a related current discussion: WP:Miscellany for deletion/Glorified navbox microportals for universities. Or try a few more from the 18 April from my list of nominations, e.g. MFD:Portal:Jaguar Cars, MFD:Portal:Watercraft, MFD:Portal:Thrissur, MFD:Portal:Weasels. Your insinuation that discussion on those MFDs is somehow deficient is unfounded.
- As to your request that a
far less aggressive approach would be very welcome
, Christ give me strength, and give you a mirror. The automated portals have had vastly more scrutiny at deletion than in their drive-by creation. If you want to see the sort of piss-poor crap which has been cleaned up, see e.g. MFD:Portal:Palace of Versailles, MFD:Portal:Lusaka or the portal-to-nowhere at MFD:Portal:University of Fort Hare. Yet you claimed that this isjust as harmful, if not more so, than TheTranshumanist's ill-advised creation spree
, and that I wastrigger-happy
at MFD:Portal:UK trams to nominate a portal which ad been abandoned for twelve years, and yo accused me of WP:GAMING the system. - You write of
building consensus for what standards to judge portals
, but don't even acknowledge that I did just that in the two mass nominations; you still sniped at me over other nominations which explicitly referenced that consensus. - It's all very simple: if you clean up your own shoddy act, and drop your barrages of bogus accusations, then you won't get angry replies from me. The aggression you are seeing is your own reflection. You are lashing out in anger, and I have no intention of being a passive punchbag for your repeated slurs, smears and falsehoods. I have had far too much of that already from the fans of the portalspammer, and I am serious when I say cut it out, Or I take this further. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:31, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- The problem is not verifying, the problem is volume. You've just said it yourself - there have been "many, many nominations". I'm busy in real life and frankly don't have the time to go through your "many, many nominations". Doing so takes me away from creating an encyclopaedia, including the content showcases and navigation tools that are part of it, which is what I'd rather spend my limited time on Wikipedia doing. As I've politely requested several times now, a far less aggressive approach would be very welcome, building consensus for what standards to judge portals by before making "many, many nominations" in a short space of time. It would also save a lot of time and needless aggravation. If you genuinely can't see that, I'm very surprised. WaggersTALK 16:07, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- BrownHairedGirl, OK, I'll say it: nominating hundreds of portals for deletion in rapid succession so that editors don't have time to conduct their own research before the MfD closes, then citing the fact that so many of those MfDs have closed as delete as support for your actions - THAT is gaming the system. And when people try to game Wikipedia, a project I love, of course it annoys me. But I am being civil, I am not angry (I am very disappointed) and I have made no personal attacks. I'll ask again: show me where I have, or withdraw your unfounded accusation. You too are an admin and should be behaving better than this. WaggersTALK 15:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- BrownHairedGirl, your language here - "your own shoddy act" / "your baragees of bogus accusations" - is appalling and itself is a personal attack. Please stop doing that and, as I have requested many times now, be civil.
- You're mainly talking here about User:The Transhumanist's mass-creation of portals, which rightly needs to be cleaned up; however many of your deletion nominations are for portals that are nothing to do with TTH's overenthusiastic creation spree.
- Instigating a deletion discussion with names like "glorified navbox microportals" does not make for a constructive, neutral discussion - it's a clear attempt to introduce bias and a thinly veiled attack on the people who have worked on those portals, even if it is for just a few seconds at a time.
- All I'm asking is that you treat people you disagree with with a bit of respect rather than deliberately using language that you know is going to antagonise them. If you can't be civil, I suggest you refrain from participating until you can.
- It's interesting that you talk about "barrages" and "lashing out in anger" - when the barrages have been barrages of deletion nominations, and every single time I comment on one I'm inundated by replies from yourself and and handful of other portal-haters refuse to accept the notion that someone might be so bold as to disagree with them.
- I've now asked multiple times for evidence of the personal attacks you've accused me of making, and you've provided none. I therefore consider the warning you've placed above withdrawn.
- If you're willing to change your tone and engage in a constructive conversation about how we take things forward then great, but otherwise I think we've said all there is to say here. WaggersTALK 11:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Waggers: you really don't get the problem with your conduct, do you?
- You object to a description like
glorified navbox microportals
which summarises the problem I see with the content, and you try to misrepresent that as a personal attack ... while you liberally spew out smears and personal attacks such as accusing identifiable editors of "deletion spree" and bogus accusations of bad faith such as "gaming the system etc". You really genuinely don't seem to understand how and allegation of "gaming the system" is allegation of systematic bad faith which as a personal attack unless you have some good evidence ... and you continue to try to smear me as a "portal-hater". - As above, clean up your act, or I escalate. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:14, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
- I have not "smeared you" with anything. I have used the term "portal haters" it's true, but without attributing it to any individual editors. How you self-identify is your own decision.
- If you're willing to change your tone and engage in a constructive conversation about how we take things forward then great, but otherwise I think we've said all there is to say here. WaggersTALK 11:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
- There's no smear or personal attack in pointing out the vast number of portals nominated for deletion lately, and I believe "spree" is a perfectly apt word to use for that.
- You've still not provided any evidence of the personal attacks you've accused me of, so this conversation is closed per my previous comment and I would be grateful if you would now cease this unconstructive harassment. WaggersTALK 21:50, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 special circular
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Administrators must secure their accounts
The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.
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This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
[edit]ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
- Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.
Technical news
- XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.
Arbitration
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions
; administrators found failing to have adequately done sowill not be resysopped automatically
. All current administrators have been notified of this change. - Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
Miscellaneous
- A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
- A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.
Timeless Newsletter • Issue 4
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Welcome to the fourth issue of the Timeless newsletter, with a cat! Or maybe not.
Un chat qui miaule???
It's true! The angry cat, a fundamental part of Timeless, has resulted in confusion and bug reports all across the projects and phabricator. And now it shall be immortalised forever in the new, shiny Timeless logo.
Updates:
After putting off the project for three months because I got hit in the head with a flight of stairs, and then putting off the project for another two months while working out what the status of the grant was, I have now put off the project even more in order to focus on my other project for a bit. So progress lately has been a bit whims-based as a result:
- The project now has a logo. For some reason.
- The angry cat in the background is now customisable! Behold: not a cat. What would you like to replace it with on your project?
- I broke, unbroke, and then sort of sideways broke all the form styles. Help.
Radar:
- The French Wiktionary voted to set Timeless as their default skin, with results possibly as you might expect: I ran away and hid, and the WMF said no. A bit of discussion later and we largely agreed that all else aside, this is a bit of a branding issue, but we love the enthusiasm! Also the bug reports that inevitably come out of such a discussion. I'm still working on properly going through those.
- Theme support is still stuck in limbo, but now we have another skinning RfC. tl;dr, we wanna replace the entire skinning system, and Skizzerz'll write a prototype later.
I will be fully resuming work on Timeless next week, or maybe the week after, depending on what madness (or illness) comes out of the Hackathon in Prague. Please come talk to me there to discuss strategy!
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The Signpost: 31 May 2019
[edit]- From the editors: Picture that
- News and notes: Wikimania and trustee elections
- In the media: Politics, lawsuits and baseball
- Discussion report: Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia
- Arbitration report: ArbCom forges ahead
- Technology report: Lots of Bots
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey
- Essay: Paid editing
- From the archives: FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
Administrators' newsletter – June 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).
Administrator changes
Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
- An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
- An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.
Technical news
- The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
- Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.
Miscellaneous
- The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
- The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.
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The June 2019 Signpost is out!
[edit]- Discussion report: A constitutional crisis hits English Wikipedia
- News and notes: Mysterious ban, admin resignations, Wikimedia Thailand rising
- In the media: The disinformation age
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Traffic report: Juneteenth, Beauty Revealed, and more nuclear disasters
- Technology report: Actors and Bots
- Special report: Did Fram harass other editors?
- Recent research: What do editors do after being blocked?; the top mathematicians, universities and cancers according to Wikipedia
- From the archives: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching
- In focus: WikiJournals: A sister project proposal
- Community view: A CEO biography, paid for with taxes
Administrators' newsletter – July 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).
Administrator changes
- 28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam1 • Flyguy649 • Fram2 • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe
- 1Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
- 2Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.
- In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.
- The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
- The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
- A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.
Technical news
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
Miscellaneous
- In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.
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The Signpost: 31 July 2019
[edit]- In the media: Politics starts getting rough
- Discussion report: New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban
- Arbitration report: A month of reintegration
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Community view: Video based summaries of Wikipedia articles. How and why?
- News from the WMF: Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way
- Recent research: Most influential medical journals; detecting pages to protect
- Special report: Administrator cadre continues to contract
- Traffic report: World cups, presidential candidates, and stranger things
Administrators' newsletter – August 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
- A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.
Arbitration
- Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.
Miscellaneous
- Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
- The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
[edit]Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 00:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2019
[edit]- News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings
- In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff
- Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users
- Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes
- News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Timeless Newsletter • Issue 5
[edit]Welcome to the fifth and final issue of the Timeless newsletter!
Progress was made. True story.
I am happy to announce that after about a year, this delightful project in which absolutely nothing has gone according to plan is coming to a close. Or at least, the grant-funded portion is. Which means we will now be resuming our regular schedule of random whims-based development, you probably won't notice any difference whatsoever unless you use MonoBook, and there's a report.
What's new from the past two months:
A lot less than we'd hoped, frankly. We:
- Fixed various bugs, some of which even weren't for stuff I'd just broken two patches previously.
- Resolved sundry compatibility issues for other extensions, templates onwiki, whatever, largely by removing dumb crap from the css.
- Implemented some shiny new features you'll probably hate or just never use or actually see, like click-toggled dropdowns, icons everywhere, and options to select a default layout or set an image for the site header wordmark.
- Brought the total number of open tasks on the Timeless workboard down to 70.
We also wound up with:
- Patches resulting in RelatedArticles working in MonoBook, and FlaggedRevisions showing up in Minerva, unless someone actually managed to turn that off as well. (Blame T181242.) It's possible we went a little overboard with the whole 'let's close all the tasks!' sprint.
- An unfortunate repeated discovery that themes (the Night/Winter variants I keep insisting will happen at some point) are still pretty far off on the horizon. Um.
- Possibly a quite a few more bugs coming your way. This month, and especially the past week, have been a bit of a mess, development-wise. While hopefully none of the worse issues make it to production, please keep the reports coming for whatever you do find and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can. Y'all've been amazing about this, and it's really appreciated.
And I guess that's that. I'm really bad at reporting, and this is a report. For the purposes of the grant, this was a requirement, but do you want me to keep trying to send these out?
Administrators' newsletter – September 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).
Administrator changes
Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
Floquenbeam • Lectonar- DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
- Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime
Technical news
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.
Arbitration
- A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Miscellaneous
- A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
[edit]Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:32, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
AfroCine: Join the Months of African Cinema this October!
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Greetings!
After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which have been dedicated to creating and improving content that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. Join us in this global edit-a-thon, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
- Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
- Diversity winner
- Gender-gap fillers
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2019
[edit]- From the editors: Where do we go from here?
- Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup
- Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads
- News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green
- Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Matthew Kelly
[edit]I am at a loss to understand your insistance on publicising this unfortunate incident in Matthew's life. The whole truth is sometimes not the truth at all. You, no doubt, have your reasons and I hope they make you happy. Whatever they are they seem at odds with Wikipedia's aims of making the world a better place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charterhouse55 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
- Charterhouse55, Wikipedia's aim is not "to make the world a better place". As a neutral encyclopaedia our role is not to airbrush "unfortunate incidents" out of peoples lives, but to accurately reflect what reliable, published sources tell us about a subject. Please see WP:CENSOR for more information on this. WaggersTALK 11:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2019
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories
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- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
Technical news
- As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.
Arbitration
- The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
- The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future
, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
Miscellaneous
- The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.