User talk:WhatamIdoing

If you expected a reply on another page and didn't get it, then please feel free to remind me. I've given up on my watchlist. You can also use the magic summoning tool if you remember to link my userpage in the same edit in which you sign the message.

Please add notes to the end of this page. If you notice the page size getting out of control (>100,000 bytes), then please complain at me. I'll probably reply here unless you suggest another page for a reply. Thanks, WhatamIdoing

supplemental tag

My small change to a template seems to have caused a small problem at 2 pages...this needs to be addressed. Odd that it took so long for the problem to arise since the change..how can we make this more clear.....we link to WP:CON that explains that all these Page's have the same status as an essay....but I guess the template is not clear on that. What do you think is best here. This does not effect that many pages...as its the cat with the least amount of pages in it. --Moxy (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2017 (UTC) Pls see Wikipedia talk:Project namespace#Supplemental pages.

I really don't know, Moxy. As you probably guessed, if I had a great solution, then I'd have suggested it already. I actually like your change on the more theoretical side, but the process of sorting through which ones "should" say which things (and wondering whether anyone who cares about that page will complain if it is corrected) makes me feel tired.

(Why it took so long for people to notice is an easy question: WP:Nobody reads the directions, and they definitely don't read them more than once.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 10:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

You are very welcome. I'm super happy about your work there, and as there's relatively little that I can do to help you beyond cheering from the sidelines, then I'm going to cheer as much as I can.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to RfC about including Wikibooks in cross-wiki search results

Hello. You were involved in the previous discussion about cross-wiki search results, so I invite you to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Should Wikibooks pages be displayed in search results. --George Ho (talk) 16:20, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Usage of RFC

I don't know why RFC is unnecessary, but I removed it as you wished me to. BTW, I already notified some related WikiProjects about the discussion, so that should suffice. If RFC is unnecessary, but no one else participates, how else would others know about one discussion without notification? --George Ho (talk) 18:34, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for removing the RFC tag.

It doesn't matter if anyone outside that group knows about that discussion. Nobody outside that group needs to know about that discussion, because nobody outside that group gets to make that decision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome. I immediately read WP:requests for comment#Before starting the process... I guess I must take a self-note on this one. --George Ho (talk) 18:45, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

thanks

Thanks for the edit with summary "Clarify the person you're supposed to be discussing things with" though this was never in any question in my mind. Its possible we see things differenty the moment a 3rd party enters the D, but for the nutshell, I do think your clarification might help newbies. Thanks. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 03:01, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello

I don't know anything about becoming an administrator for the ht wikipedya and remembered you mentioning it sometime in the past. I am not sure what djames question is about. Can you hold my hand through the becoming-an-administrator-process?

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 21:28, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Go to w:ht:Wikipedya:Paj_Kominote#Sesyon_2017 and copy what Aliceba wrote in a new section. Only write about you and your translation work and your accounts, instead of about her work. Begin with "I am applying to become an admin... and go on until you feel like you're finished explaining. Post it at the bottom of the page.

Ping me when you're done. I'll do the rest (just like I'm doing for Aliceba). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Isn't that crazy?

Out of all the womens health topics, you would have thought that pain managment during childbirth would have been written years ago. Thanks for the image.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 21:07, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I can be surprised by any gap in our coverage of anything related to babies and children any more. Back labor happens in 30% births, but the article didn't exist even three years ago, and it's still just an 8-sentence stub. Articles get written when someone cares, and it seems that more of our editors care about sports than about complications of childbirth. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I have unreviewed a page you curated

Hi, I'm PRehse. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed, Serious Hazards of Transfusion, and have un-reviewed it again. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

PRehse (talk) 06:27, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you check to see whether editors are autopatrolled? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:43, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Some slight concerns

Hello! I've been pretty happy about the time that I've been able to put into the ht wikipedya but have some slight concerns that you probably already know about. First of all, a lot of the articles that I would like to translate have referencing problems. I haven't followed the continuing development of MEDRS but my impression is that most med articles were written before MEDRS and now a lot of medical editors are playing catch-up to bring the references up-to-date. I've done this for a few articles. The one that comes to mind is MRSA. I had to literally 'scrub' the article from all primary sources. Jtydog was very active in this edit-a-thon and we worked together very nicely. But it took a lot of effort. I keep looking at articles that I want to translate and see that the referencing is not very good. Breastfeeding comes to mind, for example. Gestational diabetes is another. Do you think this is just because there are not enough of us to keep up with all the updating of references? I really don't like to translate an article unless, at least, the referencing is good. Are my standards too high?

Second concern - I hesitate to add more content to the ht wikipedya because there is still no admin in place that can block vandals from removing all the content that I have translated. I don't want to see the hours (days really) of work disappear in just a few hours. I know you are working on that. I guess I just wanted to explain why I have delayed adding more content. Keep up the good work.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 12:33, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Barbara,

I read my usual list backwards today, so I'm seeing this just after I passed the RFA list off to the Stewards. We should have two admins at htwiki soon.  :-)

Vandals at htwiki are unusual, and all you have to do is revert them, so I encourage you to not let that stop you.

I think that the main reason that the articles you want to translate are not well-developed (or are even non-existent) is because they're about pregnancy and children, which has historically been uninteresting to Wikipedia's mostly male, mostly childless editors. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT(Simplified)#OBGYN.2FPeds has a list of articles in that area that are allegedly in good condition and therefore ready to translate. Both Gestational diabetes and Breastfeeding are on the list. If they're not in an acceptable condition now, then their presence on that list should certainly be discussed. For "big" subjects like gestational diabetes, the entire article can be sourced to secondary sources, so it probably should be. For "small" or quirky subjects, the use of primary sources can improve the article, although they should not exceed half of the article (and ideally would be much less).

Breastfeeding is not exclusively, or even primarily, a medical topic, so sourcing rules are different for each sentence/subtopic there – but that's primarily a difference of using independent, secondary, medical sources for the exclusively medical content, and using equally good independent, secondary, non-medical sources for the non-medical content (e.g., how women feel shamed if they can't breastfeed).

I'm really not sure how the RTT lists were determined. There seem to be quite a few rare diseases, and things listed under "Emergency medicine" that I'd have put under Ob/Gyn/Peds, and things under Ob/Gyn/Peds that I'd have listed under something else (like Marfan syndrome, which is usually diagnosed in young adults and which is 50–50 male/female). But looking over that page, if you haven't already, might save you some prep work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

About breastfeeding...if you take a look at the editing history you can see that I did a substantial trim because it was my judgement that the sources were inferior and not MEDRS. My opinion is that sources for a topic like this may not need to be from MEDRSs for the socio-psycological perspective, but it had better be better than an UNDUE from the NYT. Interestingly enough, I got a thank you for that edit. I know I can find better sources (I have a Pitt library card).

I had the same curiosity about how the RTT lists were determined. Well, I found out the answer and it doesn't matter. Many of the RTTs are out-of-date. All of them seem to come from a male perspective - this is an opinion and impossible to prove just like suspicions that content may come from a POV. The non existent article on Pain management in childbirth is, in itself, a statement about priorities, isn't it? I didn't even check to see when the RTTS were created but they were created by a single author and not copy-edited by any others.

As for the exclusively medical content, I was set straight during the massive update I did to MRSA. I included non MEDRS to support content if the major focus was animals. Oh no. My edits were reverted by two editors that insisted that since animals harbor MRSA that could pass it on to humans, then MEDRS applies. So the miniature consensus that formed on the MRSA talk page was that if content impacted human health in any way, then it's time to use MEDRS. The questionable term here is 'health'. If the content is related to health, is it required to use MEDRS? Except for history, the vast majority of content on Breastfeeding should be sourced as highly as it can.

Think about this: If a RTT was written by one editor and then translated in a hundred languages without question or review, could this even be a good thing? ...one editor's decision on what should be translated and what should not? Since you are cognizant of some aspects of translation efforts, perhaps you might be a little uncomfortable at this point. Basically there should be a consensus and discussion of what med topics should be translated. It should not be the decision of or the content created by one editor. I registered my concerns and was kindly told that I could translate whatever parts of a medical article that I wished. So I have.

Here is good example of my independent and female perspective. Rabies is one of those articles that has been determined to be needed in all languages - I heartily agree. But knowing Haiti and the tragedy of rabies prevalence there, an article on rabies is not good enough. An article on rabies prevention is/was needed. An article on dog bites is/was needed. Vaccination information needed to be expanded for readers of kreyol. My perspective of a woman/mother/grandmother is: babies/children/anyone should not have to die because the information did not exist in their language. The opposite is true of creating an article on Lymes disease. It doesn't exist in Haiti and so we are supposed to translate an article for a global audience on a disease that exists in NE US? Even the women's health articles that have been identified as needing global translation have a huge flaw. Descriptions of human disease assumes the knowledge of anatomy and physiology. It does no woman any good to know about pelvic inflammatory disease if she doesn't know what a uterus, peritoneal cavity or fallopian tubes might be. I feel the same way about writing about fertility treatments in kreyol. As far as I know, there are no facilities (except in Petionville maybe) in all of Haiti to be treated for infertility. If you are a well-to-do woman in Haiti and you want to be treated for infertility you go to Miami, not Wikipedia.

What a lovely rant I've just had. There really are no other editors that care about this topic. Thanks for reading and all that you do.

The Very Best of Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 20:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I took your one suggestion

You mentioned that many med articles do not exclusively contain medical content. I have come up with a set of search aids that take your observation into account. See the talk page of Breastfeeding difficulties and tell me what you think.

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 13:34, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

That's being discussed at WT:MED now; let's centralize. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Hard spaces

Hey WAID the software is adding hardspaces on its own such as in this edit[1]

Can you have this looked into? Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:37, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Doc James, those were non-breaking spaces before. WikEd simply turns them into their HTML character reference name (on edit, which is somewhat suboptimal, but I don't know if anything can be done about that), rather than letting them persist unknown to the common editor. Then, they can be removed, because they are obviously inappropriate there. --Izno (talk) 00:43, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Izno the Q is what is adding these "non-breaking spaces"? I have seen them a fair bit lately. Does VE add them? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

So far as I understand, most appearances are accidental, either being copied and pasted from somewhere by accident or by what is apparently a trivial process of creation on Mac computers. VE does not add them any more than the normal editor adds them. --Izno (talk) 01:22, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Doc James in that diff, did you do anything other than change "patients" to "people"? Jytdog (talk)

The only think I did was change pt to people using the old editor. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Izno is correct about the Non-breaking space. I don't think that it's actually possible to insert non-breaking spaces in VisualEditor right now; I believe that they're getting automatically stripped.

I can, however, tell you a highly reliable method for stopping those conversions of invisible and usually harmless non-breaking spaces into HTML: Stop using WP:WikEd. Or at least beg the WikEd maintainers to stop doing this conversions outside of the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah it is the WikEd tool. Will ask. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:23, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

This edit by User:Barbara (WVS) has added a bunch of hidden hard spaces and it was using VE.[2]

Barbara do you copy and paste the text from another editing problem? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:48, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question, but if I add content+ref to one article and the same content and ref is appropriate to include in another article, then yes, I suppose I do. But I just use the Cntrl C keybord shortcut to do it. May that is what is happening. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 21:00, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

How did you conclude that those are non-breaking spaces? When I look at the article, the text breaks in the places where you say that there are non-breaking spaces present. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes if you go here[3] and search for the text "humans infest any other host species" you do not see the  

But than with WikEd they appear. "the [[body louse]] and the [[crab louse]] The"

WikEd says they preexisting and they are just converting them to visible?[4] So how does one stop the invisible hard spaces from being added? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Filled out a phabricator ticket here to try to get this problem fixed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:51, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

At the Signpost this was a problem and we discovered a simple search-replace workaround for users with MS Word. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Recent DYK Nomination

Hello! Your submission of Serious Hazards of Transfusion at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! ―Biochemistry🙴❤ 20:50, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck but claims to be an expert...

I was considering asking for a topic ban with regards to our dear friend at WT:V, but after having approached two editors about it, one deleted my comment without responding and the other said they didn't feel they could support such an action at this time. I note that they've been rather quiet for the past couple of days, but I wonder whether that simply means that when they return, it will be with a vengeance. In any case, just wanted you to know that if you're considering such an action, you're not alone in that consideration. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 17:17, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, WhatamIdoing. 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 at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Trusttri (talk) 03:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not very interested in being interviewed. Good luck to you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Serious Hazards of Transfusion

On 13 September 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Serious Hazards of Transfusion, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the UK organization Serious Hazards of Transfusion discourages hospitals from using some blood products donated by women? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Serious Hazards of Transfusion. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Serious Hazards of Transfusion), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Alex Shih^Talk 00:04, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Family Guy lead, redux

Please see Talk:Family guy#Participant survey, about resolving questions not resolved in the earlier RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Bonjou

I was going over recent changes on the ht wikipedya and found this. I think I might know what this page is about, but I am not sure if I have a role in it. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 01:04, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Those people are m:Global renamers. It's a special user right. Local admins can't do it any longer because of m:SUL. Generally, you can ignore those changes (although if an account gets renamed into something obviously inappropriate, then you should get in touch with the global renamer directly). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Good news for me. I was afraid that I had do something else... While I have your attention, I would like to know how to delete an article. There are a few of them that have recently been created that I don't think can remain in Wikipedya. I have posted the proposed deletion (or not) discussion on the talk page to get community consensus. I seen no need to block anyone but their 'article' might not be appropriate for an encyclopedia. Thank you. I'm sorry if you didn't count on having to 'train' a new administrator. Is there a WP page that explains how to delete an article (after discussion, of course)? Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 19:27, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't mind answering questions. It looks like Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Deleting has the instructions that you need ...assuming that the two wikis are set up the same way, which might not be the case. So if that doesn't work, then let me know, and I'll find another set of directions.  :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	For protecting Wikipedia's universality! Magioladitis (talk) 22:09, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

well done

I am not into barnstarts - but you need one for your judicious negotiating the conversation at Medicine project - keep it up ! JarrahTree 03:55, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewing

Hello, WhatamIdoing. I saw your comment over at VPM. Would you please consider becoming a New Page Reviewer yourself? Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; currently Wikipedia needs experienced users at this task. (After gaining the flag, patrolling is not mandatory. One can do it at their convenience). But kindly read the tutorial before making your decision. Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 19:28, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

No, thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, WhatamIdoing. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks!

I appreciate the info you’ve provided me, on the discussion about external links. And for being a rebuttal to people treating Wikipedia like a delicate flower rather than a platform to educate and inform. Tmbirkhead (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Tmbirkhead (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Holiday Cheer + a barnstar

		The Happy Holiday Barnstar
		How about combining a Barnstar with a Christmas Card? That is why this message is appearing on your talk page. Simultaneously and at the same time, this barnstar is conferred upon you because during this past year you worked and contributed your time to improve the encyclopedia. You also have received far too little recognition for your contributions. In addition, this is a small attempt at spreading holiday cheer. I've appreciated all the things that you have done for me. The Best of Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ and Merry Christmas 01:01, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Urinary frequency

I did a little improvement. All disorders and symptoms related to urination are defined differently as far as I know. I wasn't interested in the discussion on the med talk page for my own reasons but there seems to be a general lack of understanding of incontinence and urinary disorders. I expect that understanding will begin to improve as more editors enter their 50's. Experiencing all things urological will generate a keen interest in these topics. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ ^{and Merry Christmas} 23:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Barbara (WVS), what I stated in the WP:Med discussion has nothing to do with a lack of understanding. It has to do with this MedlinePlus article and other sources seamlessly covering the two topics (the ones I proposed be merged) together, and you and I having a different opinion on merging. I am almost always for merging when there is no need for two separate articles. You are not. And as noted in that discussion by others, the two topics I proposed be merged, are, as Doc James stated, "slightly different symptoms but often go together." If they did not, MedlinePlus would not have put them together. Furthermore, there are indeed urination terms that are defined similarly and/or are used interchangeably and some sources note this and/or caution against this. As for weighing in on the discussion, you are correct that there continues to be tension between us, and it has been made abundantly clear to you why that is. But you chose to weigh in on that aforementioned discussion anyway and edit the articles I highlighted. So that was your choice. And, for the record, I did not follow you to this talk page. WhatamIdoing's talk page has been on my watchlist for years. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:38, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

? ...ummm. I just worked on an article that WAID had worked on. She invited other editors to improve it and I think other related ones. I don't mean to offend anyone. WIAD suggested improvement and I improved. I left a message here to let her know that had worked on it. If there are things you would like to discuss with me, please feel free to bring it to my talk page. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ ^{and Merry Christmas} 00:51, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Barbara (WVS), I didn't dispute that WhatamIdoing invited others to improve the article. Above, you implied that I started the merge discussion due to a lack of understanding. That's not the case. Above, you stated that you weren't "interested in the discussion on the med talk page for [your] own reasons." It's obvious you were referring to our issues with each other. If you don't mean to offend, then it's best not to refer to me in subtle ways. If you must talk about me, then do it off Wikipedia. Converse with WhatamIdoing via email if you must; I couldn't care less. Many people converse with me about editors via email all the time. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:57, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

No, she didn't. She implied that the general public, which has nothing to do with you personally, doesn't understand much about this subject, and I happen to think that she is entirely correct on that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, you can think what you must, but I have ample experience with Barbara's posts having much to do with me. And if the above had nothing at all to do with me, she would not have stated what she stated about not wanting to comment in that section for personal reasons. Not to mention...her commentary about terminology was in direct reference to mine. I already know you feel the need to protect her at every turn and disagree with me at every turn these days. This will mark yet another disagreement. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't defend anyone at every turn – not even myself. I would, however, appreciate it if you didn't attack people on my talk page, or keep insisting that "it's obvious" that comments not directed at you and not naming you are about you. People will think you're either paranoid or astonishingly self-centered, and I don't want that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure it's endearing to some that you think you have more knowledge than I do on the editing behavior of one my past stalkers, but you do not. There is no one who has thoroughly reviewed the history between Bfpage/Barbara (WVS) and I who would state that I am being paranoid or astonishingly self-centered. But it is certainly something my past stalkers have argued after stalking me, only to be admonished and sanctioned and/or blocked at WP:ANI. And, yep, that goes twice for Barbara (WVS). I suppose you would be the odd woman out claiming "I don't see it." But that is not surprising. Either way, calling a matter out for what it is does not fall under any definition of "attack." I stated that her initial above post is partially about me. You state that you don't see it. So, again, I disagree with you. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:03, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

You are entitled to your opinion.

I'm telling you that it's my opinion that if you keep insisting that "it's obvious" that statements with no apparent connection to you are actually all about you, then you should expect people to take your stated beliefs into account when they form your opinions of you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, "no apparent connection to me" despite the thread in question being a thread I started, despite Barbara (WVS) being one of my past stalkers (one a number of editors expressed alarming concern about) and someone who is prone to making vague references to me (since 2015, mind you), and despite the fact that Barbara (WVS) and I still continue to be in heated disagreement with each other every now and then (including recently), which is why it is logical to conclude that this is the reason she was apparently hesitant to continue commenting in the aforementioned thread (even though she ended up commenting in it anyway)? Got it. If someone wants to form illogical opinions of me regarding this particular matter, I'll simply chalk it up to them not knowing any better. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:34, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Flyer, almost everyone has been in heated disagreement with you at some point. Getting people to disagree with you seems to be your super power.

I suggest that you stop posting comments on my talk page about whether I, or anyone else, should agree with your belief that you are entitled to feel aggrieved about Barbara's comments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Seasons' Greetings

...to you and yours, from the Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:36, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Merry X-mas

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2018!

Hello WhatamIdoing, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2018. Happy editing, Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:20, 25 December 2017 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

HNY

Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2018, —PaleoNeonate – 22:32, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3

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

• Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [5]
• There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [6]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [7][8]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [9][10]

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

18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

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Hello, WhatamIdoing. 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 at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 09:09, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind, that may very well have been the dumbest question I've ever asked. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 08:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I liked it. Did you get my reply? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Nope. Figured you were just busy. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 18:34, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I've just copied it to Special:EmailUser for [User:Seppi333|you]]. Please let me know if it still doesn't arrive. I had fun writing it, so it'd be a shame to lose it.  :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Caution

While you are completely in the right to alert other related P&G talk pages about the RFC at NCORP, please be aware the message should be neutral per WP:CANVAS; some of your messages like the one to WT:V seem biased. --Masem (t) 06:40, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I thought it was important for the regulars at WT:V to know which parts of that proposal were directly related to their area of interest. Most of the proposal (e.g., whether we should describe notability standards for sports organizations at WP:ORG vs WP:NSPORTS) is unrelated to the concept of verifiability, and I didn't want anyone to think that I was spamming that page for a proposal that had no specific connection to how we define and describe reliable sources.

From my POV, this proposal largely feels like a case of Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard: Some editors have some ideas (some, but not all, of which are the same as some of the other editors' ideas), but what they're writing down isn't what they really want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:19, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand your edit summary

I don't understand this summary. [11] I not was contesting the IP's interest in the article. I was contesting the addition of what appear to be inappropriate Wikiproject banners to this and other articles by an IP who is not a member of the projects. If members of the projects in question think the articles are valid topics for their projects and want to take them on then that's up to them. That's why I linked to the articles from the projects. Meters (talk) 05:37, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Meters, I mean that the IP doesn't have any right to contest the WikiProject's interest in the subject. (But the thanks are due primarily to you, and I can see how that was confusing.) BTW, I'm reverting your removals on two articles, because I think (having been a participant at WPMED for more than a decade) that the group is still interested in supporting those. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

The IP didn't contest it. The IP added the banners. It's not appropriate for an IP who is not a member of a project to add those banners. If 'you are a member of both of those projects and want to justify to your other project members why you think these belong then that's up to you. Meters (talk) 05:45, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Have you read the official guideline on this point? It's perfectly fine for good-faith non-participants to add tags. For many projects, that is a primary way for WikiProjects to learn about new articles that they are interested in. It is not, however, okay to re-add – or re-remove them – if a project objects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:48, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Given the responses, clearly some members do object. And I don't see your name on the list of members of WikiProject Law, so why are you restoring that one? I have no irons in this fire, so I'm done with this. If you want to defend what looks like an edit warring warring POV pushing IP to the members of the projects, have at it. You restored the banners, so it's your responsible for them now. Meters (talk) 05:56, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

So far, I see one participant objecting, and three supporting. I'm happy to take responsibility for those odds. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:17, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I add WikiProject tags to some articles too though I am not a member of any WikiProject. --Gryllida (talk) 04:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you!

WhatamIdoing, thank you very much for the barnstar. I am still wrestling with the topic. -SusanLesch (talk) 14:26, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome. Good luck as you keep figuring it out. :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Osmosis concerns

User talk:Jimbo Wales#Osmosis: Wikipedia medical articles hijacked by paid editors working for private foundation

I see that, for medical articles, Wikipedia is no longer primarily a collaboratively edited text & image encyclopaedia, but a platform for documentaries created by a private third party. Videos which Wikipedians have no ability to edit, nor our readers any ability to verify facts against sources. This is not Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 11:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Colin,

I'm always happy to hear from you. I wonder whether it might be an exaggeration to say that we have no ability to edit these videos. Surely the license is not -ND? Or is your main concern that it'd be difficult to add material that matches (e.g., to re-phrase a sentence, because you'd have to get the original voice actor to read the new version)?

It feels like there are a lot of concerns getting mixed up together, so I'll give you an example: I understand that User:The Interior has an interest in, and more than just a little skill with, creating videos. He's a long-time volunteer and an admin here. What would it take, from your POV, for a video that he created and uploaded to be desirable in an article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

There are indeed multiple concerns. The paid-for editing. The proxying for a commercial organisation that sells medical videos. The edit warring to retain content under dispute. But even if we did not have these concerns, I think video for Wikipedia should largely be of a short-clip variety. It should concentrate on a single detail (or at most a related few) such as a person having a seizure, or an animation of a neuron firing. This level of content can be sourced, if requested/required, and replaced if challenged. Here we see extraordinary reluctance by Doc James (and other WP:MED) editors to remove "useful" content because it is an all-or-nothing. The video covers the whole article topic, and so for some readers will replace it. I see this as a content fork where an article topic is formatted as a video rather than text, and thus becomes owned by one person, and where none of our content or editing behaviour policies are being applied. Anyway, I don't want to have 10 discussions in 10 places. The main discussion is linked above. I'm rather shocked that anyone on Wikipedia might think that this was a good idea. It is "collaboratively edited" by "volunteers". -- Colin°^Talk 18:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Wrt editing the videos. I am aware they are CC BY SA. But they are top and tailed by Osmosis credits. Anyone inserting new material would have problems. It would no longer be an "Osmosis" video. How would they indicate which parts were made by whom? We have no diff for webm. And of course I do not sound like the narrator, nor have access to their visual library to produce the same visual fee. Take "Epilepsy". How to I amend the outdated term "complex partial seizure". On a wiki, which this is, I can click Edit, replace the text and click Publish changes. How to I replace the "for doctors" language "patient" with "person with epilepsy"? I cannot collaboratively edit this material, which covers the whole article topic. It may be free educational content, suitable for Commons, but it isn't suitable for Wikipedia. Where's the WM:MEDRS sources, WhatamIdoing? What was the point in creating that guideline if any private organisation and embed unsourced medical content on Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 18:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Waid, as always I have found you to be both very knowledgeable and to have a lot of just plain old good common sense. I have complained about the breastfeeding video due to several egregious problems (as documented on the talk page). Doc James has both brushed them aside and said that the video can be fixed - that was four months ago. I can hardly say how thankful I am to Colin for bringing up this problem. It just does not make any sense at all to be so strict about backing our information with acceptable sources--except for the videos. Today I again deleted the video, hopefully thanks to the ongoing discussion it will stay deleted. Gandydancer (talk) 18:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Gandydancer, I would very much appreciate if you could join the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. I too agree with your assessment of WhatamIdoing. Another voice with concerns would be useful, as the current contributions by WP:MED members there have been defensive and non-constructive. -- Colin°^Talk 18:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's another concern, WAID. While working to return to active medical editing, I have found myself spending excessive time on debacles like this to the extent that it is hard to get work done. When did we stop caring about our core content? What I have gone through on the talk page of DLB is ... not a good thing. Endlessly working through issues that are driven by off-en.wiki endeavors, while I am trying to do a much-needed major rewrite of a seriously outdated article. These videos are a big problem everywhere I see them, and they are a timesink, and our efforts at WP:MED need to somehow be redirected back to the big picture-- our content. This should not be an editor problem-- we should be able to delete them according to various policies and guidelines, without seeing edit warring from Doc James to keep in COI paid editor content. Every place I look, it seems that the project has lost its way-- a "way" established by Colin when he started MEDRS. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Colin I see that user: Clayoquot has responded on Jimbo's page. I will add more if it seems appropriate. It was your commentary on Jimbo's page that gave the the "courage" to delete the breastfeeding video. I've worked with Doc James long enough to know that until now a delete would have been reversed in short order (and perhaps it will be shortly). He rules the roost when it comes to medical articles. Gandydancer (talk) 19:07, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

In the category of practical strategizing, I think that it would be good to make a list of all the problems, and then pick one that we want to solve (first). Here's a list that I've seen mentioned here so far:

• Sourcing: We currently have no viable sourcing models for long/complex videos. We barely have a viable one for static images. IMO this problem can be significantly mitigated with Colin's suggestion of using only small/focused clips.
• Collaboration: Something made by one person, and that (in practice), really can only be changed by that one person, isn't our model. Long/complex video is obviously hard this way, but it's not unique, as some complex diagrams have the same problem.
• Third-party: Osmosis doesn't feel like a regular contributor. It feels like a completely separate entity, with a separate process.
• Updates: Updates to any kind of audio is hard. Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia is really no different in that regard. c:Commons:Sequencer was limited and now seems to be dead. Updates to most video (beyond "insert this new clip" or "delete those four seconds from the middle") is more difficult than making equivalent changes to a static image (which, in turn, is more complicated than changing words). In many cases, updating the graphical part of a video is basically impossible for non-professionals and/or without original source files.
• Few alternatives: We're not going to find a lot of people to re-create a long video, just to change a few words here and there. I don't think that video is unique in this regard, but this problem means that the "hard to update the original" problem is a serious one. In many cases, the realistic options are update the original – or live with its flaws. We feel "stuck" with whatever we've got.
• Internationalization: Anything with spoken words is hard to translate, and therefore not ideally suited for a global movement. Even if you get a translation, and get a recording, you can't necessarily just stick in the new soundtrack and expect it to fit perfectly, especially on a long/complex video. (OTOH, I know some folks who don't speak English natively, and they very much prefer spoken English to written English, so being able to do all things for all people might be ideal.)
• Promotional feel: Spamming your name at the start and end of a video feels promotional. (Of course, that's also solvable on our end: We can trim those logos out of the videos.)
• Proper credits: There's probably a workable system for this, but I don't know what it is. Detailed notes on the File: page would probably work for most purposes.

Does that sound like a reasonably complete list of the problems? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

1. Placement (who gave videos a place in the article leads and based on what?)

2. And I am reading that the sources and text for each video are available somewhere ... ?? Where, how do I access? I would love to see them, because there are errors in those videos that cannot possibly have come from MEDRS sources. Why aren't they posting a template to an article talk page, letting editors know they are working, and proposing sources? Why aren't they posting the text of their videos, since those are available, to the article talk pages, so we don't have to sit through the thing to point out errors?

3. Style; they don't have an encyclopedic tone. All of this amounts to, editor consensus. As with any image or EL. Which leads to ...

4. The problem pointed out by Gandydancer. We have one editor who reverts at will, and moves so fast that it is impossible to get him to slow down, listen, understand, recognize the damage this is causing. Losing Colin to medical editing was no small thing. I let the prostate situation go, and moved on to an article I should have been able to update in peace ... and hit the same wall. Problems in the lead, one editor, driven by non-en.wikipedia interests, all pointing back to one place. When did an off-Wiki venture become something we were all expected to accept, with no consensus, and enforced by edit warring? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:04, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

1. Placement: I'm not sure where else to put a "whole subject overview", if not in the lead. (Well, I might put it in ==External links== – as a link – myself, but if you wanted a long, whole-subject video about Scary Disease, then you couldn't really stick it in a particular section, because it's not just about symptoms, or diagnosis, or prognosis, or whatever. (This is another solid reason to favor Colin's suggestion of not using long, whole-subject videos.))
2. Sources and text: The narration in the video will be just as free as the video itself, so we could post the transcript, e.g, in the File: page. Links to the scripts for this particular outfit's videos have been posted (in advance/for comments) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis#Pending videos scripts in the past. I doubt that most video contributors would do the same, but we could make a transcript.
3. Style: No matter how much we might agree, a guideline of "we don't like this company's style" isn't going to get us very far. I've seen many complaints about images that were "too amateur"; presumably the problem here is "too slick"? What would you recommend to would-be creators of video content in terms of style? Speaking for myself, I don't know enough about videos to write even a basic advice page.
4. Individual editors: I think that the problem of video is separate from the problem of behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

1. PLACEMENT: Different media fit different places (I would always put them in EL, but each one may differ). Curiously, per the list posted at WT:MED, this whole project was predicated on them getting priority placement. Odd. Why does Doc James believe he has the power to grant that?
2. SOURCES/TEXT: This video contributor is using Wikipedia to make money, so I don't think it's too much to ask them to post a talk page template: a) announcing their plans, and that includes b) the text, and c) their sources. We are not beholden to them; they are to us. If we had a provision where the script is posted on article talk, it might not be so onerous to have to educate them in medical content.
3. STYLE: But, we cannot then be forced to put their ugly irritating video in the lead. If the ugly is in External links, less jarring. But then ... there's the rub ... since they get revenues from their placement, of course, the fight to keep the ugly critters in the lead. Like any content, editor consensus-- who gave them preferential seating, and with what authority?
4. EDITOR BEHAVIOR: Well, since the Doc just accused me of falsehoods in a post at WT:V, at least I now know where the sources are (I have never been involved in any way with images), and my point is made. Like any content issue on Wikipedia, give us the source, we can debate them, and then delete the inaccurate text with consensus. Only in this case, the inaccuracies are imbedded in a video, we don't know which source supposedly sources which text, so we have to delete the whole video. The behavior problem is that one person seems to believe he can act without consensus. And call people liars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

And yet you continue. You simple make stuff up as you go along "this whole project was predicated on them getting priority placement" is BS. But whatever. The number of different locations you are taking this up now numbers 5. Talk about moving fast... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Doc, what do you mean by "the number of different places you are taking this"? Could you please calm down and use some logic? I have taken it exactly NOWHERE. I have responded when I have seen it on talk pages I have watch listed for decades. I woke up this morning intending to finish the DLB article, since I have to be at the clinic all day tomorrow (aggressive prostate cancer because of delayed diagnosis, remember), and this was the last thing I expected to occupy my time with today. Please be more careful with your accusations. I have taken it nowhere, and the placement was from the working list posted by Ocaassi at WT:MED. "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate". Making stuff up? Five places? Me taking it? Logic. Please calm down. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I very much like your list above. I knew there were still some rational level-headed people left on the project. In contrast I have received no end of personal attacks from Jtdog and Doc James. I have lost count of the number of times "bullshit" is mentioned, and there are some people who need to put a few coins in the swear jar and go sit on the naughty step for a while.

I am planning to start an essay to address the issue primary of long videos. As you say, some of these issues affect other media too. This can concentrate on areas where I hope there is a chance of progress, whereas the other concerns of content created by private foundations, of COI editing, proxy editing, paid editing, edit warring and bullying are ongoing and well known to many on Wikipedia who seem to be in no rush to do anything about it. The WP:MED deity-bully is a problem for others to recognise and solve.

I think the main emphasis should be that it is through text alone that Wikipedia is collaboratively edited. Text is also by far the primary means of delivering educational content. It is an encyclopaedia, after all, not a TV station or YouTube channel. It is only via text that we can provide in-text citations to sources. It is only through text that we can examine what changes each editor made. Text is the only content actually hosted on Wikipedia (with the exception of some non-free images, and whatever images have not yet been transferred to Commons). We only have editing and behavioural policies for text.

One big issue is that of watchlists. It is by watching articles (and examining the diffs of edits) that our content is cared for by long-term Wikipedians. This is simply not possible for AV media. The videos on Commons have a contribution history of one [12]. Therefore they are (likely to be) on only one person's watchlist. A person who edits Commons infrequently, and not since 22 Feb, and who may change jobs and retire his account. We then have videos that could be modified by anyone at any time and without anyone on Wikipedia being aware. Unless you sit through all 8 minutes of each one.

Another issue is that even if it was practical to edit the videos -- let's say that someone developed an open set of graphic design tools and a text-to-speech narration, with full source-materials uploaded. Commons is not a collaboratively edited project. It is just a file repository. See Commons: Overwriting existing files. Unless you are making the most minor and non-controversial change, Commons does not permit you to overwrite an existing file. You must fork and create a new file. This file in turn has exactly one watchlister and the person watchlisting the previous file is left dangling, as their content is no longer used. Of course, the Commons guideline is frequently ignored and anyone with nefarious reasons to edit a video would not announce their edit by replacing the article link to a different file.

Commons hates when Wikipedia content disputes spill over into Commons. So dealing with edit behaviour issues is complicated. Commons is not concerned with the pillars of Wikipedia such as neutrality, verifiability, etc.

The CC licence requires that when an editor creates a derivative work, they document what changes were made and which content is produce by whom. It also requires all editors are given equal billing in any credits. On Wikipedia this is done via the file history and diffs to show what each editor did. For media, we have no diff. Unless editors wish to fill the file-description page with tedious "At 3m20s I changed the words "patient" to "person with epilepsy"" notes... not going to happen.

These are the problems. And I'm sure there are more. My mind boggles that anyone considered this suitable for Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 08:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOTYOUTUBE

I have created Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube. It is a start. Constructive supporting edits are most welcome. Anyone with opposing views is of course welcome to create their own article, or rant on the talk page. -- Colin°^Talk 12:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I had a look (too quick towards the end), and I think it's a great place to start. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I am thinking of taking another approach. It has struck me that the entire focus of WP:MED, relative to what it was in the days when we got MEDMOS and MEDRS up to guideline status, has switched from wikipedia-internal content and article improvement drives, to wikipedia-external applications, collaborations and approaches.

Now, whether one stands on the side of either set of efforts or foci having been helpful or harmful, it is clear we aren't talking to each other or having any sense of what the others are up to, or so disturbed about. Specifically, I see no recognition from the proponents of external efforts of how much the proponents of internal article content creation and improvement drives believe that the medicine project, and medical content, have been damaged by the externally oriented efforts. They probably say the same about those who think like me (although most of us gave up and left). I know that most of them (not all, and this project should deal with its abusive members) are undeniably acting in good faith and mystified about why some others are so upset about guidelines we helped create being undermined, along with quality content we helped build. Doc James specifically said on my talk page that he has no interest in building what I consider to be featured content,[13] and that got me thinking. I'd rather work 1,000 days to build 1 article like nothing else that can be found on the internet; he'd rather work on 1,000 articles in 1 day-- broadly sums up very different priorities.

So, if I were to build the history of the medicine project, and explain it from that angle, would that be helpful, or just create further division? See my sandbox: how on earth did we get here from there? Can this approach be used to build understanding and bring some WP:MED project focus back on internal collaborations to build quality content? This is not it, and I'll take it to FAR if we get through the video business. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

He doesn't exactly say that, Sandy: "I would rather have 1,000s of decent understandable and accessible medical articles than one perfect and overly complicated one." Many of us decide that improving a range of articles is more efficiently useful than concentrating on one FA at a time. Johnbod (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I realize I was overphrasing, for a reason. He believes quality leads=quality articles. I don't. Obviously we don't see eye to eye, and what I hoped with the post above was to find a way towards that. I see now it is not likely to be possible; he is too invested. I wonder if he might be able to feel this from a different skin if he had ever built a Featured article, and had to watch it be taken apart by outside interests. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion, "perfect and overly complicated" isn't possible. If it's overly complicated, it's not perfect.

You have an interesting point about a shift in focus. The change that strikes me is the shift in attitudes about altmed and commercial interests. If you think back to the homeopathy and Scientology wars, it doesn't really seem plausible to feel even more embattled, but I think that some folks actually do. I'm no longer surprised when plain factual statements, such as "Chang Gung Memorial Hospital is the largest hospital in the world" (it is) get tagged as being "promotional".

We've also gone from thinking that evidence is good when it exists to sometimes writing articles as if evidence is the only thing that should be included. MastCell has said that under that enforcement model, many of his early contributions would have been rejected. And given all the everything, "evidence only" often means writing for and about developed countries. It doesn't matter if 100 million people use ____ for the common cold; all that matters is whether Science Says™ that it works.

I was involved in GA for a few years, but I don't feel like the FA process was necessarily as good a match for this subject area. FAC seems to be better suited to history than to topics whose information changes every few years. I never recommend that anyone take a medicine-related article to FAC; if asked, I'd probably discourage them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, so much for shift in focus. I am at clinic now (they have comfy chairs!), so wasted what time I had when I coulda been working on the DLB article. I was going to work that up before I had to leave (hour drive each way), and then try to smooth it to something ... peaceful. And then I went over to WT:MED, and found an impetuous, poorly formed RFC. I now recognize the arrogance that Graham speaks of. So, I am very sad to see the destruction of MED. I no longer go there for help-- instead, I just ask the world class experts at a top hospital in the US, where I now get to spend my time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I wish you fewer medical experts in your life, and only undeniably happy news from them.

Ignoring WT:MED for a day or two is probably a good idea. These things usually have a way of working themselves out, and when they don't – well, sometimes we have to screw up before we can get things right, and cogent arguments don't usually change the course of a determined mob anyway. Fixing up DLB will have long-term benefits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you :) I'd like to get my seven more journal articles worked into DLB, go back and smooth out the prose (I chunk in factoids first, then go back and fix), and be done here. I am enjoying the medical experts in our life, if not their conclusions :) What a joy it is to be working with the people who are tops in their respective fields (too many different fields involved here :) That I hit this video thing when only wanting to fix DLB is quite the bummer! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:17, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Medical experts make fine neighbors, and people you run into in the grocery store, and that sort of thing. BTW, I've left a note for you on the talk page of your new article, about whether the umbrella term includes more than just the two conditions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

My med neighbor makes a strange neighbor, because of the privacy issues they have as a family ... apparently, they get knocks on the door in the middle of the night, from people wanting free or otherwise help, so they have extreme privacy issues (see the same in veterinarian friends). I couldn't answer the question, but it makes me think that, in the past I would have taken a question like that to WT:MED, and I no longer bother. I can try to work on that, but it would be at most next trip to clinic, which is an hour drive ... awaiting MRI results now so we can proceed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:08, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Also, out of my depth at corticobasal syndrome and corticobasal degeneration. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I pinged a few folks to the new stub; maybe we'll get a response.

BTW, have you ever seen the automated who-works-on-what reports, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Neuroscience? If you start with the name of a relevant WikiProject, it's a quick way to see who is currently editing related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

That's cool! Being mostly away for three years, I am having to re-discover the old tools, but the new ones are awesome. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:32, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Re: Small thing

Thank you very much for your kindness explaining this to me! You're right, I want to know. I thought they improved the presentation, oops ... I have removed the blank lines of my messages here.

Best regards. --BallenaBlanca 🐳 ♂ (Talk) 19:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

You are very welcome. It's just one of those awkward little details about MediaWiki. Thank you for being gracious about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Re. VE in wikt

(here phabricator/T169741.)
Hi WhatamIdoing, and thanks for your interest in the matter. Your say:
- "The system should stop dumping new editors into the visual mode."

OH YES PLEASE!!!

- "Any editor who wants two tabs can go to https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Spécial:Préférences#mw-prefsection-editing and choose "Show me both editor tabs"."

I got enthused reading that. But I can't see any such option "Show me both editor tabs", neither in fr nor en wikt. ???

- " Perhaps this information could be posted to the village pump"

New editors don't know about the village pump; + knowing about it does not mean they are likely to go there. I don't : I never managed to find any answers in the village pump unless someone pointed them out (but more often elsewhere than the pump).

- "or even added to https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Modèle:Bienvenue ?"

it's better than the village pump - but still only a one-off indicator/help. It's not even a help anyway, please see last paragraph here. In wikipedia it's already happened multiple times that for reasons unknown to me the editor switched back "on its own" to VE. The only way I'd feel reasonably (but not quite completely) safe from VE would be having to go to some remote place in Preferences in order to turn it on (not 'off'). I'd prefer not having any tab that offers it (since it's so unhelpful for wikt edit anyway), same as in fr wikipédia where I have only one tab called "Edit" so there can be no mistake (maybe there is a way to get that ?) ; or as second proposition having the 2-tabs choice.

- "...disregard a community recommendation if they believe the result will be worse for the target audience."

precisely. I can't believe that anyone in their right mind could think that VE as it is now (for fr wikt and in slightly lesser measure for fr wikipd) can do anything but impair and actually prevent editing. So the "misunderstanding about process", well who cares about process when it's so obvious? The obviousness of it is the reason why I thought Deskana was asking for some admin or similar process to be followed.

Better drop that one, I don't think I can understand.

What happened when I tried to use that VE is a long (and depressing) story. The summary of it is that try as may, I did not see anything transmitted from the edit boxes to the actual page. So to me there is nothing "visual" to it, this is specialist language and newcomers can't be expected to know what it means. I've had to put a sticker on my comp' that says "NO "Visual Ed"" because my natural tendency is to trust you guys and I must remind myself that that "visual" is not what it says it is. You just can't expect newcomers to understand what each corresponds to. That's why you are 100% right when you say 'stop dumping new editors into the visual mode', and I.T. being unpredictable for many of us it's also right to give a tab on the same screen to get back to the useful editor when the other one accidentally kicks in.

Thanks much for your attention. I hope it'll get sorted soon. Best wishes for the day :) Pueblopassingby (talk) 12:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Pueblopassingby, and thanks for your note. I know what you mean about village pumps not always being the way to get information to people, and especially to new editors.

Do you have the visual editor disabled in prefs? Un-check "Désactiver temporairement l'ÉditeurVisuel tant qu’il est en version bêta" to get the drop-down menu with the option for two tabs. There is also an option for always and only giving you the wikitext editor, which some experienced editors prefer. You can still use the pencil icon to switch, but every single time you click the Edit button, it's guaranteed to start in wikitext.

Switching to wikitext as the default is just a bandage, but I feel like we need some first aid right away. Do you remember the little glowing blue dots on the edge of the Cite and Link buttons, the first time you open the visual editor on a new Wikipedia? (If not, try https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?uselang=fr and open the visual editor to see them.) I'm wondering if Wiktionary needs a little glowing blue dot that highlights the pencil icon, so people can more easily find the "escape hatch" and switch back to the wikitext mode. What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Whatamidoing, thank you for your feedback, its always interesting to get some.

I opened your link of course: weird that the article is in russian but the rest (tabs and all around the article) is in french... Interesting - and useful, would it be only to know where the way out lays !

flashing blue dot/s

Ah, I see now what you meant about the flashing blue dots. I didn't understand it when you mentioned it in the devs page, Tried to get them but I really am no good at that sort of manip', so couldn't, so made no comment about it.

As a new editor I wouldn't know what it is that they underline, so it would scare me more than inform me (scare of making a mess of some unknown sort). I feel that a small popup on hovering over it would come handy, such as "Insert an external link" or "Cite your source" or similar - something short but explicit. I think it will be the same comment re. popup for a flashing dot by the "Edit in wikicode" tab. Providing which, and providing that there are only a few of these dots (lest one gets lost in their abundance), yes it would come handy, I think. I'd guess 4 dots may be a maximum tolerated by the eye (in the physiological sense of perception-cum-assimilation process).

"Edit with wikicode" vs. "Edit (with Visual Ed)", more clarity in presenting both

Continuing on what I said in the last paragraph of my first post, because I just had another example of it with that here linked page. In it there is the 2-tabs choice. One tab says "Modifier (Edit)", the other says "Modifier le wikicode (Edit with wikicode)". So I had to think again which was which, and had to look at my little note stuck on my comp' to make sure (yes of course my middle name is Dummy... so be it, I'm not alone). New editors won't have a little note, and the way it is presented clearly makes it look like "Edit" is simpler than "Edit with wikicode". Which it is not at all : one is mildly difficult for newbies and one is impossible for even non-newbies (of the people I've been in touch I don't know anyone who actually uses it, for that 'near-impossible' reason precisely). So the presentation of both tabs is really treacherous, and will be so for a long time yet because it'll take a few years (by the feel of things) before the VE is properly adapted to its purpose and really makes editing easier. Treacherous things do not carry a good feeling (= carry bad feelings) and I think bad feelings have no place here (well, you know what I mean). I think it would be much clearer if the "Edit" tab was called "Modifier avec VE (Edit with VE)". Thus it would not look like the normal and easy way to edit is there and nowhere else. It would sure save me from having to think about which is which - I'd probably even not need my little comp' reminder anymore :)

I feel that that would go longer towards making things clear, than the dot would. From what I understand, the dot is only there the first time. The tabs are there all the time. Just because one has made one edit or a few edits, does not make one proficient in specialist language - as my own experience demonstrates.

Thank you very much for your attention, much appreciated. I do hope that this will be resolved soon and am ever so surprised that such a minor point would meet so much resistance. Cdt, Pueblopassingby (talk) 15:12, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Another mess

Perhaps you would be able to recruit someone to sort the mess at Frontotemporal dementia? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:58, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

PMID 27042904 is from a kind of mediocre journal (=not bad, but not necessarily good, either). Are you satisfied that its contents are typical of other sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I haven't taken it any further ... I just needed to link to FTD from DLB, so needed a correct definition. On DLB, the articles published in that journal have been on par with everything else I've read. No time to sort FTD ... Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	barnstar นี้ได้รับรางวัลเพื่อรับรู้ถึงผลงานที่ดีโดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งกับวิกิพีเดียเพื่อให้คนรู้ว่าการทำงานหนักของพวกเขาจะเห็นและชื่นชม Lovelynam27 (talk) 08:21, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2017 Cure Award

In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 02:54, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

BTW, there's a script that would let you send multilingual messages across all wikis at once, and would manually strip the translate tags for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Perfect. Will try to figure that out for next year. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:25, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Radiologically Isolated Syndrome - clarification on the term "clinical event"

Hi WhatamIdoing, so the article I wrote was just about to appear on the DYK section of the front page (exciting!), but it got pulled back just before it went up as Gatoclass wanted some clarification of the hook. I believe I have addressed his concerns, both in the article [14], and in the DYK nomination page [15] for the article, though if you think you can improve on my explanation of the term 'clinical event' in the article, feel free to improve on it, as it would be most helpful. Kind regards Calaka (talk) 00:44, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

There was another issue with the term 'rare' and so I decided it was best to remove that from the hook and explained my reasoning for it. Always happy if you have any thoughts or suggestions to the DYK nomination process. Hopefully Gotoclass will be able to look through it soon.Calaka (talk) 00:27, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science

Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:16, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:41, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-21

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.

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

17:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

There is a mop reserved in your name

You are a remarkable editor in many ways. You would be a good administrator in my opinion, and appear to be well qualified! You personify an administrator without tools, and have gained my support; already!

I was flabbergasted, like never before, to learn that you are not an admin already. If it's not personal, would you mind telling your stalkers and me why you are not? I think you would easily succeed an RfA, and I'm certain you'd be an excellent administrator; just as you are a colleague extraordinaire! Sincerely.--John Cline (talk) 09:19, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the compliments. I'm not interested in considering RFA. I find that being employed interferes with editing Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-22

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

• You can now use global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week. [16][17]
• It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked. [18]
• Wikidata now supports lexicographical data. This helps describe words.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups. [19]
• Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script. [20]
• There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this. [21]

Problems

• Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations. [22]

Changes later this week

• There will be a new special page named PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the password rules for each user group on that wiki. [23]
• A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (calendar).
• Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [25]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles. [26]
• A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development. [27]
• Some wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July. [28][29]

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

12:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-23

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 MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different. [30]
• Planet Wikimedia collects blogs about Wikimedia. It will now use the Rawdog feed aggregator to do this instead of Planet. [31][32]
• Redirect links in Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again. [33]

Problems

• You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if your wiki is one of them.
• MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late. [34]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This is planned to happen in June or early July. [35][36]

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

21:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-24

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

• In the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome. [37]
• There is a new version of Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis. [38]

Problems

• The MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design. [39]

Changes later this week

• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June. [40][41]

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 June. It will be on all wikis from 14 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on 18 June at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to move local wiki files to Commons and keep their original data intact. This is planned to come to the first wikis in June.

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

21:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-25

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

• Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [42]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [43][44]
• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [45][46]
• All wikis that have not already done so will switch to use the Remex parsing library on 5 July. This is to replace Tidy. You can help fix remaining errors. [47]

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

21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Invite

Hello! I thought you might be interested in joining the Gun Politics Task Force. We work on coordinating, expanding and improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics broadly related to governmental regulation of firearm ownership. If you would be interested in joining feel free to visit the Project Page. Thank You!

75.145.160.153 (talk) 18:28, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-26

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

• PAWS, our JupyterHub system, got an upgrade and a logo. Several bugs should be fixed.

Problems

• When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [48][49]

Changes later this week

• Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [50]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Examples

Good point, on |+ Examples. I think I would have done this in prose, though: "Examples are provided in the tables below", instead of redundantly using the same caption over and over.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:28, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I have three browsers open today (*sigh*), and I was in the wrong one.

It'd probably be better to have unique captions on those tables. I understand that having actual captions is important, as the equivalent of "skimming" (skipping down to the next element) means that you would miss some descriptions in text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Identifying reliable sources (history)

Don't know if you're still watching that essay, but there's some new desultory talk on its talk page about promoting it to a guideline. I just made this edit to address some of the things you and I raised back in 2012 the last time this came up. You'll recall that the effort to promote it died out back then, so there's not been any real need to address these issues since it's only been an essay since then. Frankly, I don't think that there's going to be any real effort to promote it this time, either, but just in case... There's other issues which also need to be addressed (conflicts between scholarly and popular sources being the main one), but this edit hits the worst ones, I think. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:42, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-27

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

• The database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [51]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [52]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-28

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

• WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [53]
• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [54]
• All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [55]

Problems

• When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [56]
• Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [57]

Changes later this week

• When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [58][59]
• On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [60]
• When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [61]
• Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [62]
• When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [63]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [64]
• Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [65]

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

23:09, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Esterel

My point is that you are asserting that Esterel is an old, obscure language suitable only for simple things like traffic light controllers. That is what Gerard Berry would find humorous.

In fact, Esterel is a modern, actively used family of languages used for incredibly complex things such as the 120 million lines of code that run an Airbus 380.

Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbelknap (talk • contribs) 23:31, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that I ever said that it was suitable only for traffic light controllers, or even that it was suitable only for simple things.

And, yes, it's an old programming language, just like Microsoft Word is old, and it is not a common language, just like any number of other computer programming languages. There are an order of magnitude more universities (still) teaching Pascal than Esterel, and you go up another order of magnitude for those teaching Java. There are more schools teaching COBOL and Fortran than teaching Esterel. That makes Esterel "uncommon". None of these are derogatory terms. If anything, people interested in well-paying careers should consider learning uncommon programming languages, because "uncommon" translates to better pay and better job security.

That said, if you've got a decent source for Esterel being used in the A380, then please add that fact to the article. That would help people understand what it's useful for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-29

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

• You can now use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [66]
• You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [67]
• You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [68]

Changes later this week

• Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [69]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
• You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:24, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

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

• When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [70]
• Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [71]
• Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [72]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

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

Recent changes

• The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [73]

Problems

• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [74][75]
• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [76][77]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.

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14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Your edit at VPM

Re Special:Diff/852742770, not sure if you noticed, but that discussion was closed. Did you want to move your comment to the active discussion at Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators? I said the same thing there, so your reply as worded will still make sense. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:15, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I discovered that it had been closed after I posted. Having an auto-resolving edit conflict skip you past subsequent changes is one of the risks of forgetting to click the big blue button in a tab for a couple of hours.

I will probably post some thoughts there, but not until I've finished reading all of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-32

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

• Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [78]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [79][80]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-33

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

• CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [81]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [82]

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

17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-34

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
• Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [83]

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16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science

Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 17:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

This nomination needs a new hook proposed if you wish to pursue it; please stop by as soon as possible. Thank you. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-35

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

• You can now see moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [84]
• Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [85]

Problems

• Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [86]

Changes later this week

• The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [87]
• AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [88]
• Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [89]
• Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [90]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Jeffrey Drebin

Thanks for the feedback over at WP:Medicine. I'm not sure if you saw my reply there, but I removed the link to the search results and replaced it with the authority control template. Do you have another minute to review my proposed draft to see if it's in a publishable state?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not interested in supporting articles about people like him. I believe that if people like him understood that Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing, then they wouldn't want one.

BTW, have you heard of the Wikipedia:Voice intro project? Helping people make a good recording might be a useful value-added contribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-36

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

• There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [91][92]
• There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [93][94]
• You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [95]
• wp10 in ORES is now called articlequality. [96]
• When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [97]

Problems

• UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [98]
• You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [99]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also see the presentation.
• The RelatedSites extension will be removed from Wikivoyage.
• Unused projects on the Wikimedia Cloud virtual private server will be removed. This will happen in October. Projects can be marked if they are being used. [100]

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16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

The source's audience must also be considered

Hello WAID,

It's been a while. I miss our conversations.

RE: "The source's audience must also be considered"?

I dislike the wording and tried to improve it. User:TonyBallioni quickly disagreed (I am guessing thinking of this discussion).

To my surprise, WikiBlame blames you for these words. Your edit was to make a quite differently structured paragraph. I note that you introduced the tricky semicolon, which I find confuses unfamiliar readers.

Can you comment on my thoughts, that passive "must"s are a poor way to write guidance? It reminds me of an old professor espousing opinions on how things must be done, disconnected to what people doing things are actually doing. When the doers meet the rule espouser, they communicate inefficiently, because the passive "must" doesn't speak to modifying a behaviour. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:04, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I like must because it is stronger, and in this area, stronger words in guidelines are needed lest they be read as not really having any weight. That this line in particular has been stable for a decade I consider a good thing (I didn’t realize it was pre-rewrite) I also generally find the passive voice clearer in these situations and find obsession with eliminating it in writing to be bad writing myself, but that’s a personal tick from my academic background TonyBallioni (talk) 06:10, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I think the passive voice is usually easier. However, from academic/adult educator experience, I found that a passive tense assertion "This must be done" (and compare Passive-aggressive behavior) is much more likely to intimidate, and for the recipient to go silent, and walk away. In contrast, "You must do this" is much easier to question, and is more likely to lead to discussion, which is more likely to lead to understanding. But compare "Do this" with "You must do this"?

(1) "The source's audience must also be considered" vs

(2) "You must consider the source's audience" vs

(3) "Consider the source's audience"

I find "must" to lends itself to bullying language. I find that (1) inspires the dismissive response "I did". (2) inspires the defensive question "Why", and (3) inspires the question "how". With the third choice of language, I find it leaves question begging, "how do you assess the source's audience, and I think that is a very good question for WP:AUD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Hello again, SmokeyJoe. I do miss our conversations, and I'm so glad you brought this one to me. Perhaps you remember how much I love a discussion on this sort of subject.

I think your three options cover the territory. Although I have a small bias towards re-writing policy sentences into the active voice, your (2) feels a bit strong. Perhaps it truly is necessary (e.g., at AFD) for someone to consider the source's audience, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you personally have to be the person doing it. I'm therefore leaning towards your (3), which provides the instruction, albeit in a less forceful way, which might not satisfy TonyBallioni. And perhaps he is right to be dissatisfied.

So thus I ask: Exactly how necessary is it to consider the audience? Consider the case of a rather biggish small business (e.g., a small regional pizza chain with 300 employees). Imagine that a new editor is a fan and wants to figure out whether the company could have a Wikipedia article. Is it absolutely critical for this newbie to consider the audience, or just a good idea? How often do we think good-faith non-paid editors would make the wrong choice if they don't do this? Are good-faith volunteers even the correct people to write this advice for? What do you think? (P.S. No fair telling the newbie to list the company at Wikivoyage instead, even if that's what I might do in practice. ;-) ) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science

Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Boud (talk) 01:04, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-37

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

• When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [101]

Problems

• Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [102]
• Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [103]
• <maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [104]
• {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [105]
• When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [106]

Changes later this week

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
• Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 Septmber at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers work on making the wikis work better on mobile phones. There is a list of common problems when making content easier to read in the mobile view. You can add things to the page and ask others to help.

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

22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-38

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

• The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [107]
• MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [108]

Problems

• You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [109]

Changes later this week

• Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [110]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.

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

21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-39

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

Changes later this week

• The preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [111]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-40

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

• Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [112][113]

Problems

• New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [114][115]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

JDRF Edit Hi! Friendly reminder to check out my updated edit on the JDRF talk page! I pinged you, but am uncertain if you saw it. Your suggestions were greatly appreciated and I included them in the update. Let me know if you have any further thoughts, or if you find it is good as is, feel free to put it up! Thanks again for your time, patience, and assistance. ElisabethF (talk) 15:01, 4 October 2018 (UTC)