User talk:Rcsprinter123/Archives/54

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

Problems

• Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [1]

Changes later this week

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [2]
• When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [3]
• On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [4]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [5]
• There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
• wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [6]

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00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Leeds Town Hall

Hi. Just letting you know that I have posted a comment about the above on J.Milburn's talkpage here, and he has suggested that I let you know. If you require further information or citations for the sculptors, please ask. Storye book (talk) 09:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Update: I'm currently working on improving the categorisation of Category:Leeds Town Hall in Commons - Its a longish job but I hope to finish that tomorrow and to upload a lot more pictures there. If there's time tomorrow, I'll add a paragraph on the article talk page, about the carving, in case there's anything that you might want to use. I hope that's OK. Cheers. Storye book (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Update 2: I have now tidied up the categorisation of Leeds Town Hall on Commons as far as I can at the present stage. I have worked out who all the keystone heads are, and labelled them accordingly. Sorry the one with the lionskin on his head was not Vulcan - it's Heracles/Hercules (my bad). The evidence is that Alexander the Great wanted to be seen as a Hercules, so he had images/sculptures made of himself with Hercules' lionskin on his own head. Interestingly, the Mawer Group sculptors took their idea of Hercules from Alexander. I hope to upload my remaining collection of images to Commons in the next couple of days, then as promised I'll write something useful on the LTH talkpage. Cheers. Storye book (talk) 19:15, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

Recent changes

• There is a new search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [7][8][9]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
• The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [10]

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17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [11]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes

• If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [12][13]
• You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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21:15, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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

Problems

• Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
• There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [14][15]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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 beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [16]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [17]
• There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [18]

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17:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

List of city and town halls in the United Kingdom

	The Original Barnstar
	Congratulations for your excellent work on List of city and town halls in the United Kingdom. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 13:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Dormskirk. You're most kind. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (note) 16:06, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

Problems

• There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [20]

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19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

Recent changes

• You can now use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [21]
• You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [22]
• You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
• When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [23]
• There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [24]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [25][26][27]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).

Future changes

• Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [28]
• The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
• For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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15:31, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

• The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [29]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [30]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [31]
• The font in the diffs will change. [32]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

List of city and town halls in the United Kingdom

Hi - I am thinking of adding a few additional historic town halls (with images and listed building details) to your excellent list. I hope you are OK with that. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 16:23, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Dormskirk. Thanks for your kind words on the list and for letting me know this. Please go ahead and I will let you know if I dispute any additions. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (converse) 16:28, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Great. Many thanks. Dormskirk (talk) 18:08, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi - I have added a few others at the bottom of the list for the moment. I think you have done a great job of selecting the most prominent ones. Some of the "others" may be worth promoting to the main list but I am concerned that if I add too many extra photos the page will become difficult to load. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 09:21, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we can have an "others" section, nor can we be judges of what is prominent enough to include. My only criterion when creating the list was the town hall had to have a standalone article (except a few in Scotland which you have now bluelinked - thanks). So everything in your new section ought to be added to the list. Where are the guidelines relating to maximum lengths and numbers of images? Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (utter) 13:52, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. I will start adding them to the list. I have seen some articles of over 300kb (see here). The town halls list is currently only at 54kb so there is still plenty of room. Many thanks. Dormskirk (talk) 14:49, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Leeds Town Hall/archive1

Apologies for never getting round to this - blame the good weather. Let me know if you are putting it up again at PR or FAC. Another heave should do it I think. Johnbod (talk) 01:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

That's okay, Johnbod. I'll make a move with it soon and let you know. Feel free to make improvements whenever you like! Rcsprinter¹²³ (notify) 16:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter

The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

• Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
• Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
• The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
• Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
• Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Hog Farm with 801, Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

DYK for St Augustine's Church, Wrangthorn

On 4 May 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article St Augustine's Church, Wrangthorn, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that St Augustine's Church, Wrangthorn, raised money for a stained-glass window in 1934, but ended up spending it on a church hall instead? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/St Augustine's Church, Wrangthorn. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, St Augustine's Church, Wrangthorn), 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.

— Maile (talk) 00:01, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19

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

Problems

• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [33]
• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [34]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [35]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).

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

16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Leeds Civic Trust

Hello! Your submission of Leeds Civic Trust 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! Ykraps (talk) 10:54, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Please see new note on your DYK nomination. Yoninah (talk) 19:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

Recent changes

• Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [36]

Problems

• Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [37]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [38][39]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [40]

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20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Happy Birthday!

Wishing Rcsprinter123 a very happy birthday on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Chris Troutman (talk) 15:05, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

Recent changes

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [41][42]

Problems

• There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [43]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [44][45]

Changes later this week

• The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [46]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [47]
• Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [48]
• Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Leeds Civic Trust

On 21 May 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Leeds Civic Trust, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Leeds Civic Trust has created a trail of rainbow plaques (example pictured) to commemorate individuals, significant places, and events which have contributed to the LGBT+ history of Leeds? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Leeds Civic Trust. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Leeds Civic Trust), 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.

--Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:01, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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

Changes later this week

• The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [49]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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

14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

• There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [50]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [51][52][53]
• The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [54]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [55]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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

22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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

• Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [56]
• Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [57]
• There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [58][59]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [60]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [61]

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21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Peer Review request

Hello. John Milburn recently did a peer review for the article on the Biblioteca Marciana (WP: Peer_review/Biblioteca_Marciana/archive1) and suggested that I contact you for further guidance prior to nominating the page for FAC. The article is currently a Good Article.

The Biblioteca Marciana is one of Venice's foremost monuments with a long history, an imposing building, and lavish art. My goal is to have the article promoted to FA and then nominate it for TFA on 25 March 2021 when Venice will celebrate its 1600th anniversary from the date of its legendary foundation on 25 March 421. The Marciana Library is ideally suited to commemorate the event since it is the only institution founded by the Venetian government that survives and continues to function today. I would like the article to present and cover all of the relevant information in a clear and meaningful manner, both for casual and advanced readers, and would appreciate any guidance and/or suggestions to further improve the article and make it a thorough source for information about the library. Venicescapes (talk) 18:29, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Venicescapes. I think the article is pretty good on writing and sourcing. I've left a few more comments on the Peer Review as you requested. Rcsprinter123 (confabulate) 19:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Your signature

Please be aware that your signature has a Missing end tag lint error.

You are encouraged to change

'''[[User:Rcsprinter123|<span style="font-size:10pt; color:#DC143C">Rcsprinter123]]''' [[User talk:Rcsprinter123|<span style="font-family:century gothic; font-size:9.5pt; color:#488AC7">(confabulate)</span>]]

to

'''[[User:Rcsprinter123|<span style="font-size:10pt; color:#DC143C">Rcsprinter123</span>]]''' [[User talk:Rcsprinter123|<span style="font-family:century gothic; font-size:9.5pt; color:#488AC7">(confabulate)</span>]] : Rcsprinter123 (confabulate)

—Anomalocaris (talk) 22:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for updating your signature! —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy First

Hey, Rcsprinter123. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Rcsprinter123/Archives/54,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more. ​

Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 17:18, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

• Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

• There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [62]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [63]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [64]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [65]

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

21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

Problems

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [66]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [67]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [68]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [69]

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

18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote

Dear Rcsprinter123,

Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 04:58, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter

The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
• The Rambling Man , with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
• Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Tutorial and/or image request

Hi I wondered if you could help me with creating a city-region image? It's for Greater Brighton City Region and would like its local councils placed on a map similar to File:Greater Manchester numbered districts.svg and File:Greater Manchester UK district map (blank).svg. I'm happy to get a tutorial in making them or if you would prefer to do it yourself. It would be most appreciated. Jonjonjohny (talk) 10:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Jonjonjohny, thanks for your request. I thought that it would be better to create a smaller scale map for this, to show more of a regional context as well as simply what the districts are, especially as they come from two different counties. I've created one showing the city region within the South East, and a close-up of the specific districts, which are both now on the article. Rcsprinter123 (yarn) 12:34, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Wow, thanks Rcsprinter123 they look really good! I'm impressed at how promptly you made them. I just realised though that they don't involve Arun district, would you be able to add those? Jonjonjohny (talk) 12:38, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

A good point, that's because the maps on the City Region's own site don't include Arun. Added now! Rcsprinter123 (orate) 12:57, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

• The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [70]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [71]
• The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
• Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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

20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Headingley Hill Congregational Church

On 8 July 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Headingley Hill Congregational Church, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Cuthbert Brodrick was invited to design Headingley Hill Congregational Church (pictured) after its committee rejected all of the entries in its architectural competition? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Headingley Hill Congregational Church. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Headingley Hill Congregational Church), 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.

 — Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens

On 12 July 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that a large, elderly, "decently-behaved" Russian brown bear once lived in the Leeds suburb of Headingley? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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

Recent changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems

• There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [72]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [73]
• Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [74]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [75]

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

19:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Dear Wikipedians and contributors, the open source Wikipedia review tool, previously "WikiLoop Battlefield" has completed its name vote and is announcing its new name: WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Read the full story on the program page on Meta-wiki, learn about ways to support this tool, and find out what future developments are coming for this tool.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the vote!

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 18:23, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Headingley Hill Congregational Church

Congratulations on the above article. I hadn't realised it was one of Brodrick's. I like Appleyard for the stone carving, although William Ingle was still alive at the time, and I can't really see the carvings in the Commons photos. But Appleyard was into grotesques as such, whereas although Ingle did do gargoyles he preferred natural animals to actual grotesques elsewhere on the building. Hence my guess. I have not yet found a contemporary article where the stone carvers are named. I have added (as citation) the only full article on the opening that I can find so far. I'll come and look at the building and hopefully photograph the carvings when I am free to do so. Cheers. Storye book (talk) 08:51, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Storye book, nice to hear from you again. Yes, many people probably don't realise it's by Brodrick, even as they pass it daily. He was an architect of smaller buildings just as much as the grand ones, yet also never particularly associated with the Gothic style. As you note, there is no information about the identity of the carvers, but if you could make an educated guess based on your observations of the grotesques when you visit them, I think that would be very interesting (not that we would have an RS to cite). I hope you don't mind, but I have changed the link for the 1866 article to a site which has no subscription requirement. Rcsprinter123 (commune) 12:19, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes I was hoping you would be able to make the link more generally available, like the foundation stone one. Brodrick certainly knew his neo-gothic, though - see the Barton upon Humber job, also the commonscat links below that section. He knew to let the stone carvers have their head, because they too knew what they were doing - to the extent that they fooled English Heritage (in its guide book) that what they had there were all genuine Romanesque carvings. Though there are plenty of clues. Even the woman at the desk in the church had spotted Queen Victoria in Elizabeth I's Armada portrait collar - put there I believe as a big hint about the rest of the carvings. But those by the Mawer Group are not grotesques (except maybe one by Ingle). You can see Appleyard's grotesques here, on Leeds School of Medicine (building by Thorp not Brodrick). That's why I thought the Headingley grotesques might be Appleyard's. Well, we'll see! Storye book (talk) 20:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [76]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [77]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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

• Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [78]

Problems

• Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [79][80]

Changes later this week

• Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [81]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [82][83][84][85]

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

16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Headingley Hill Congregational Church

I have photographed all of the exterior of the above church (the interior is not accessible). See Category:Headingley Hill Congregational Church. I hope you enjoy the grotesques - they are rather beautiful, I think, with their relaxed posture, like feral dogs enjoying a meal. I was rather pleased to see the four Evangelist symbols on the tower corners. I don't suppose many people had noticed them, and they're rather nice quality. Cheers. Storye book (talk) 09:25, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Storye book. Thank you for putting the time in to phtographing the building. They are indeed wonderful carvings, and photographs. You really do find every angle. Rcsprinter123 (articulate) 12:41, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Glad to be of service! Storye book (talk) 19:49, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31

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 Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [86]
• The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
• On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

• The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [87][88]
• Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [89]
• Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [90]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).

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

13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Maps in infoboxes

Hi, I like the map you added to Marshlink line .... except the images around it are now all screwed up, with two of them sandwiched together. I don't suppose you can fix that as well? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for spotting, Ritchie333. I've moved things around to avoid any sandwiching. Thanks for liking the map, too! Rcsprinter123 (discuss) 19:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Doncaster

Hi there I've changed the leading photo with a skyline photo of doncaster with minster and is an improvement over just the minster photo. You panoramic is on the economy tab so it hasn't been removed, just isnt leading photo. So please without any disagreements dont remove it unless you find an improvement. It's important to have the minster either in lead or near the top of the article as its one of Doncasters famous landmarks. Anyway your photo is still up and I've changed the leading photo so let's just leave it at that. It's a nice skyline photo with minster and town in distance. Have a good day now RailwayJG (talk) 17:33, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32

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

Problems

• All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [91]
• Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [92]
• There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [93]
• A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [94]

Changes later this week

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [95]
• Users' global.js and global.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [96]
• In the MonoBook skin, the searchGoButton identifier is now searchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27.
• Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses counter to prevent large archives was changed. [97]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).

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

15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Lincoln and Rotherham

I noticed you changed the photos. I've added back the Lincoln skyline and why you removed it I don't know. And Rotherham I've readded my photo. You called poor and that was uncalled for. I appreciate your collage but dont insult my photos. I haven't done it to you. It felt like a personal attack. I haven't done it to you and so please dont do it to me alright? Thank you RailwayJG (talk) 10:52, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

RailwayJG: I am not making an attack on you. The photographs you have been adding all have lower resolution, worse lighting and worse composition than what was already being used. I think most Wikipedians would agree with me. I recommend you read through WP:UKTOWNS#Lead image. How well it can represent the town and the aesthetics of the article must be considered over adding something simply because you took the picture. This is what I prioritise. Rcsprinter123 (pronounce) 11:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Rcsprinter123 thank you for clarity on your stance. Thanks for your feedback. It's just in past I've had people say poor and it never was elaborated on. And when it was it was like a dig at me. Appreciate your response. And your photos are good. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RailwayJG (talk • contribs) 13:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding. Rcsprinter123 (post) 16:26, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33

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

• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [98]

Problems

• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [99]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [100][101]

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

16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Wells House, Ilkley

On 15 August 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Wells House, Ilkley, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that because of its isolated, moorside location, Wells House, Ilkley, is the only building by Cuthbert Brodrick known to have been surrounded by a designed landscape? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Wells House, Ilkley. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Wells House, Ilkley), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34

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

Recent changes

• If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an undo tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [102]
• The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [103]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [104][105]

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

20:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Join the RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Hi Rcsprinter123/Archives/54,
you are receiving this message because you are an active user of WikiLoop DoubleCheck. We are currently holding a Request for Comments to define trust levels for users of this tool. If you can spare a few minutes, please consider leaving your feedback on the RfC page.
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. Your opinion matters greatly!
María Cruz

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to modify your subscription to these messages you can do so here.

Tech News: 2020-35

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

Changes later this week

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

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

17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-36

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

Problems

• This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [106][107]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
• HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
• Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Checking in

Greetings from Venice. Thank you again for your earlier review of the Biblioteca Marciana. It was very helpful in preparing the article for FAC, which hopefully will go well. I was visiting your talk page and noted that you’ve not been regularly corresponding. So, given the current health situation, I wanted to ask if everything is okay. I hope so. Venicescapes (talk) 09:22, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi Venicescapes. Thanks for your concern. I can assure you that no problems have befallen me; I simply don't get many messages to my talk page. I have been semi-active with editing, as you'll see on my contributions. Incidentally, good luck with that FAC - I know you've put a phenomenal level of work into the Biblioteca Marciana article and it deserves nothing less. Rcsprinter123 (articulate) 12:22, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that all is well. It's a very surreal moment, and one is never quite sure. I'd like to remain in contact. If you have any further suggestions for the Biblioteca Marciana, please let me know. Of course, if you'd like to weigh in on the FAC, it would be greatly appreciated. Most of the articles at FAC seem to be music, video, or military related. Renaissance libraries don't seem to pique much interest.Venicescapes (talk) 15:28, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Thomas Clapham

On 7 September 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Thomas Clapham, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that all three of the pleasure gardens run by the entrepreneur Thomas Clapham in Leeds and London failed due to debt and were sold for housing? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Thomas Clapham. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Thomas Clapham), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37

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

Changes later this week

• Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere. [108]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
• All MediaWiki API modules will now use watchlist instead of watch. This was inconsistent before. [109]

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
• OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change. [110]
• The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users. [111][112]
• Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
• Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a .menu class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can use nav ul instead. .vectorTabs and .vectorMenu will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.

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

15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38

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

Problems

• The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [113][114]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).

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

16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Scarborough Town Hall

On 17 September 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Scarborough Town Hall, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the only statue of a public figure in Scarborough is a memorial to Queen Victoria outside its town hall (pictured)? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Scarborough Town Hall. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Scarborough Town Hall), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:01, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [115][116]

Changes later this week

• The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [117]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).

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

21:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Forbidden Area (Playhouse 90)

Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 19:33, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40

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

• Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [118]
• Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [119]

Problems

• Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [120]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
• The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
• In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [121]
• You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
• You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

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

21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41

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 tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
• You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [122]

Problems

• There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [123]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [124]
• Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
• Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [125]

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [126]

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

16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Majestic, Leeds

On 8 October 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Majestic, Leeds, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the former site of the Majestic Cinema, Leeds, which was gutted by fire in 2014, will become the national headquarters of Channel 4? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Majestic, Leeds. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Majestic, Leeds), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42

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

Problems

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [127][128][129]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [130][131]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [132]

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

15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43

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 20 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 October. It will be on all wikis from 22 October (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [133]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [134]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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

16:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [135]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [136]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [137]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [138]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [139]

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

17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Location of photo on Poynton page

I noticed that you have reverted my changes concerning the location of the photo on the Poynton Wikipedia page. You state that the photo shows houses on Park Lane, whereas I contest that it shows houses on Bulkeley Road. My reasons for stating that it is Bulkeley Road include:

• The Wikicommons page for the photo states that it is Bulkeley Road
• The hairdressers ‘The Cut’ shown in the photo was definitely on Bulkeley Road (it was my regular hairdressers for around 10 years). It later moved to Park Lane and has now changed its name. But there is another hairdressers now in the location shown in the photo.
• The photo was taken from just outside Vernon Infants school (now closed) just where it changes to a lumber Road. That is why there are yellow markings on the ground.
• If you use Google Streetview from outside that school (

[140] ) and look towards Park Lane, then you can matchup the houses, lamposts, Keep Clear road marking and the Civic Hall which appears in the distance (note the Vernon Building Society building in the distance has now moved so that doesn’t match).

If you are still not convinced by my argument, then please let me know where exactly you think the photo was taken and what features match. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrianOfRugby (talk • contribs) 22:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for getting in touch, BrianOfRugby – you are right of course. I didn't realise that The Cut (which is on Park Lane and was my basis to change) had moved, and now that you point out the school markings and other features it is obviously Bulkeley Road. I can only apologise for the reversion and have reinstated your edit. Rcsprinter123 (collogue) 00:59, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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 no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [141]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [142]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [143]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [144]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [145]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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

16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter

The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by Gog the Mild (submissions). In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Hog Farm (submissions), HaEr48 (submissions), Harrias (submissions) and Bloom6132 (submissions). The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
• Rhododendrites (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2021 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:38, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [146]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [147][148]

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

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [149][150]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [151]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [152]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [153]

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

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed 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 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [154][155]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [156]

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

17:44, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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 put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [157][158]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [159][160]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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 Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [161]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).

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

21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [162]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [163]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [164]

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

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho

Donner60 (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec20}} to your friends' talk pages.

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

High Peak maps

Hi there. I'd question the use of the High Peak map in the infobox of articles such as Peveril Castle and Devonshire Dome. To my eye, the resulting maps are pretty unhelpful for anyone unfamiliar with the geographical shape of Derbyshire (i.e. most people who aren't local). I didn't want to revert without understandiung your reasons though. Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:49, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Dave. I think you have a good point and I wouldn’t particularly mind any reversion. It was just a case of trying out the new map, but probably the county scale is more appropriate. I don’t think there’s any particular guidance on it; some places use district maps and some use counties - probably more suited to denser urban areas than High Peak really. Converting to use Mapframe for more would be an idea, but it’s not a project for me to commit to. Rcsprinter123 (witter) 22:48, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [165]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [166]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [167]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [168]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [169]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [170]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [171]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [172]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

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

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

15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [173]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [174][175]

Changes later this week

• Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [176]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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

18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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

Problems

• IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [177]

Changes later this week

• You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [178]
• Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [179][180]
• Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [181]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [182][183]
• Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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

22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-06

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

Recent changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [184]

Changes later this week

• You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [185]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Future changes

• When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [186][187]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [188]
• Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [189]

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

17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Old Leeds Town Hall woodcut

You might be interested to see this set of details of an 1880 Town Hall event, taken from The Graphic. The full-sized image was already in Commons (taken from Leodis), but I found it in The Graphic and took close-up screenshots of the details. It's not very important, I suppose, but a nice curiosity - the stove pipe hats, murky polluted air, old Oxford place before the rebuild, mystery statue which I had thought would be the one of Victoria (now at Hyde Park) but isn't. I believe it's a woodcut because of the style of cutting, especially the sky. Storye book (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Storye book, how are you doing? I have seen the low res version before but not paid it much attention. It's certainly an interesting and atmospheric image showing a snapshot of the time. I think the statue will be Peel or Wellington who were out front with Victoria, both now on opposite corners of Woodhouse Moor. Rcsprinter123 (babble) 11:31, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes, Peel and Wellington, that makes sense. :-D Storye book (talk) 11:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07

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

Problems

• There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [190][191]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [192]

Changes later this week

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

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

17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Fingal County Council.svg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Fingal County Council.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Db-f5

Hi Rcsprinter123. When you nominate orphaned non-free files for deletion, could you please use {{subst:orfud}}? Thanks, FASTILY 00:21, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Fastily, I will try to. I always forget what the right template is because anything I would go back to check has been deleted. Rcsprinter123 (address) 17:50, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08

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 visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [193]
• The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [194]

Problems

• Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [195]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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

---

00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09

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

Recent changes

• Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
• A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

• There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [196]
• Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [197]

Changes later this week

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

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

---

19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
• Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
• Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
• Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
• The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
• Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
• Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
• Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
• Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!

I was going to thank the bot for this tremendous edit here (very useful, that page was growing out of proportions...) but obviously can't do that so here it is on a more personal note! Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:29, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

You’re welcome, RandomCanadian! The bot’s archiving away most days so that human editors don’t have to worry about it. Rcsprinter123 (shout) 01:25, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10

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

Recent changes

• Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
• Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [198]
• When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [199]

Problems

• Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [200]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
• The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [201]

Future changes

• There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
• Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [202][203]
• New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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

17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Primrose Hill Tunnel

On 9 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Primrose Hill Tunnel, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Primrose Hill Tunnel was the first railway tunnel to be built in London? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Primrose Hill Tunnel. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Primrose Hill Tunnel), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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.

 — Amakuru (talk) 00:04, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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

Recent changes

• Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
• Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [204]

Problems

• Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [205][206]
• You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
• You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [207]

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

23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
• The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [208]

Future changes

• Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [209][210]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [211]

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

16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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

Recent changes

• Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [212]
• IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [213]

Problems

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [214]
• Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [215][216]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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

17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Geograph photos?

Hi Rcsprinter123, I was just wondering if you can tell me how to add photos from geograph.org.uk please as I found some free to use as long as credited photos I wanted to add to my articles on St Mary in the Wood Church, Morley, Leeds and St John's Church, Goole? Do you know how to add them please. Regards RailwayJG (talk) 21:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

RailwayJG: On the Geograph photo page, click on "Find out How to reuse this image" in the grey box below the description, then scroll to the bottom of the next page. Press the "This search should find it if it has been" button to double check it is not already on Commons, then either follow the processes for download and upload or geograph2commons as linked there. Don't forget to add categories. Rcsprinter123 (lecture) 22:42, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the help :) RailwayJG (talk) 12:56, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Salford

Hi Rcsprinter I'm letting you know I've readded town to Salford. The anon keeps arguing city status for Salford but it's only the wider borough that has it. As similar with Stoke. Six towns but city status only applies to Stoke on Trent and not Stoke upon Trent which is the town named after. I get what the anon is saying of city but they made a comparison between Manchester and Salford. Manchester has always been a city and no towns formed it. But Salford was a town and borough. Only city status applied to the borough. Salford is more a large town and district of Salford borough then anything. What's your input? Regards RailwayJG (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

RailwayJG: I think that nobody sees Salford as a town. Although the city status does technically apply to the metropolitan borough, the central area by Manchester is widely considered a city, both politically and colloquially speaking. There is a stable version of the article and there is a reason why "town" is not in that version. Stoke is not exactly analogous. Rcsprinter123 (soliloquise) 15:24, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

So what is Salford technically then? Not a town or city but also not a district given its more the just that. There needs to be a term agreed either town city or settlement. Its seems weird to just say Salford Greater Manchester is West of Manchester as an intro. What exactly is Salford status? RailwayJG (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

• Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [217]

Changes later this week

• The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [218]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

• PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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

19:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Map

In this change you added a map; this is new to my limited experience. Could you please confirm how this was generated (placement of the boundaries, in particular). Thx.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 15:05, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Rocknrollmancer: The template {{Maplink}} calls up a set of data stored at Wikipedia:Map data/Mansfield (UK Parliament constituency), which is in the GeoJSON format and is essentially a load of coordinate points tracing out the boundary. I intend to add the map format to all 650 constituencies before too long, if nobody brings an objection. Rcsprinter123 (chatter) 00:20, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

ThanQ, I did look at the coords; would I be right to think it's a representative boundary rather than an empirically-correct depiction which would need to be drawn?--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 00:56, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, having the line completely accurate would result in a file too large for the software to handle and display, so the boundaries are slightly simplified – as long as you can tell it goes up this river and round that estate, a few tens of metres tolerance are fine. I'm not drawing the boundary though, I have a set of government-issued data with all constituencies as officially defined. Rcsprinter123 (remark) 01:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yep, thanks, the horse grazing and similar agricultural are unknowns, particularly where two or three districts come together near Pleasley. I'm glad you're enjoying it all - I struggle with wiki-tables!--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 12:42, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

Recent changes

• Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [219][220]
• If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [221][222][223]
• Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [224]
• The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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

16:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Misspell on File:Oxted line.png

Hi; just noting that Woldingham is incorrectly spelled Woldringham; and Dormans spelt Doormans. Not sure if this is something that can be easily fixed by yourself. Thanks Nightfury 12:42, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your eagle eyes, Nightfury. I blame the late-night cartography. Correct spellings have now been uploaded. Rcsprinter123 (spout) 12:53, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

Recent changes

• Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [225][226][227]

Changes later this week

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

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

21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

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

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

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

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

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

Tech News: 2021-18

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [228]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [229]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [230][231]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [232]

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

15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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

15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Tyne and Wear Metro.svg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Tyne and Wear Metro.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:46, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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

Recent changes

• There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [233] [234] [235]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [236][237]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [238]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [239]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Happy Birthday

Hey, Rcsprinter123. Just stopping by to wish you a Happy Birthday from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CommanderWaterford (talk) 08:30, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

CommanderWaterford (talk) 08:30, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

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

17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:IP Recent changes

I'm working through a list of anomalous projectspace pages and found Wikipedia:IP Recent changes. Are you or anyone else using this? If not, can it be deleted? -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 09:26, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Tamzin: I am not and I have no recollection of creating it. Feel free to do what you like. Rcsprinter123 (reason) 11:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks. I've tagged as G7. It probably seems trivial, but it helps sort out the main thing I'm looking for, which is misplaced drafts and test pages. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 12:10, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

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

Problems

• There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [240]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [241][242][243]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [244]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [245][246]

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

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Happy First Edit Day, Rcsprinter123, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! 🐶EpicPupper (he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs) 03:47, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24

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

Recent changes

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [247]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [248]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [249]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [250][251]

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

20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-25

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

Recent changes

• The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [252]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [253]

Changes later this week

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

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

15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [254]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [255]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [256][257]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [258][259]

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

16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

GAN Backlog Drive - July 2021

Good article nominations | July 2021 Backlog Drive
July 2021 Backlog Drive: This Thursday, July 1, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number, length, and age, of articles reviewed. Interested in taking part? You can sign up here.
Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talkpage
You're receiving this message because you have conducted 10+ good article reviews or participated in the March backlog drive. Click here to opt out of any future messages. --Usernameunique

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

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

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

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

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

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

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

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [260]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [261]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [262][263]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [264]

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

17:32, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [265][266]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [267]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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

15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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

21:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [268][269]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [270]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

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

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

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, Lee Vilenski, BennyOnTheLoose, Amakuru and Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Talk page archives for User talk:Sprinting faster

Hi! As you saw, I recently changed the archiving settings for User talk:Sprinting faster, which you reverted. I understand that you would like to have that talk page archived to your own talk page archives, but the bot doesn't work that way. From what I can see, there are three options here: allow for split archives, the way I set it up a few days ago; manually archive that talk page to your own archives (possibly with the help of OneClickArchiver and {{Archive basics}}); or just not archive that talk page at all (The talk page is currently at 13kB since 2011, so archiving doesn't seem necessary). Any of the three options is fine, and if you want, I could implement the first or the third for you, just let me know. Thanks! --rchard2scout (talk) 09:02, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I was basically happy for it not to be archived. Rcsprinter123 (interface) 11:13, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Alright, I've removed the archiving config. Thanks for your quick response! --rchard2scout (talk) 12:59, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Dodgy map

Hallo, the map you added here has got a hole in it. I don't know whether you made it yourself or got it elsewhere - could you do whatever's needed to fix it /request that it be fixed, please? Thanks. PamD 07:29, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this seems to happen occasionally, with the ones which bound the sea/bodies of water. I don't have the abilities to satisfactorily edit the GeoJSON code (it is downloaded from the government website) so for now it is taken away. Rcsprinter123 (relate) 18:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Belated thank you

I wanted to express my deep appreciation for your trust and support in my July RfA. I have found the initial time intimidating. I'm naturally very cautious but my new wielding the tools deflated a bit my desire to do pagespace. It's building back but I did want to stop by to encourage you to contact me if you see me lose track or if you need help. Thanks again for trusting me. Hold me to it. BusterD (talk) 17:39, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Files for discussion

See Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2021 September 19#Paris logo. --Stefan2 (talk) 06:57, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

File:City of Paris logo.svg listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:City of Paris logo.svg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you.

This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 10:01, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Map deletion

I got the IP vandal range blocked Special:Contributions/2A00:23C5:E680:9001:0:0:0:0/64 Carry on doing what you do :) 10mmsocket (talk) 07:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your interventions, 10mmsocket. Rcsprinter123 (pitch) 11:42, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

No worries. You may have seen that the other IP used by this editor has been blocked too. Using WP:BE I removed their posts from the article talk pages. 100% justifiable IMHO although they may be back in the future to make the same point. 10mmsocket (talk) 11:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

TransPennine Express Route Map

Hi Rcsprinter123,

The fun and games regarding the removal of the route map on TransPennine Express actually made me realise - would be it worthwhile updating the map to reflect the new and current route naming scheme used by TPE (as used on their geographical route map)? Unfortunately I'm not as well versed in photo or diagram editing, so would not be confident doing this myself.

Danners430 (talk) 11:58, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Danners430. I have updated the route names on the file as per your suggestion - North, South and Scottish Routes. They seem to have been official for a while now so no harm in making the update. Rcsprinter123 (natter) 15:41, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Delaware County, PA.

Hello there.

I admire the work you have done on making municipality maps for several American counties.

However, I would like to tip you off to one very slight error that you made on your municipality map of Delaware County, PA. On said map, you incorrectly labeled Colwyn borough, PA, as if it were a township instead of a borough.

By that I mean, you incorrectly left Colwyn borough unshaded giving it the same white color as all of the townships, when you were supposed to shade Colwyn borough in gray, so that it would be gray like all of the boroughs.

Here is what I mean. When you are looking at the page for any *other* municipality in Delaware County, PA, *besides* Colwyn, Colwyn shows up in white (the color of townships) when it *should* show up in gray (the color of boroughs).

Link here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Delaware_County_Pennsylvania_incorporated_and_unincorporated_areas_Darby_Township_highlighted.svg#mw-jump-to-license

And here is where Colwyn borough is located, if that helps.

Thank you for all that you do. I hope this message finds you well. Mcleanm302 (talk) 21:24, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Mcleanm302 - I love people who can spot these kinds of small details. I am updating all the files now with Colwyn in gray. Rcsprinter123 (note) 22:06, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Southeastern map

Any chance you can whip up a duplicate of File:Southeastern network.svg with "SE Trains" instead of Southeastern? The new company goes live tomorrow and even though the name might not be settled it'd be nice (but not essential) to have this on there. Thanks in advance. 10mmsocket (talk) 13:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry 10mmsocket, but since the new operator will be keeping the trading brand name (at least for now) of Southeastern, I don't see the point of creating another version to reflect a change of legal name. If this situation alters in the future I will be happy to take another look. Rcsprinter123 (visit) 22:08, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree 10mmsocket (talk) 07:27, 18 October 2021 (UTC)