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Help with an edit filter

Hello! Can you help me set up an edit filter that activates when a user (IP or not autoconfirmed) has only changed numbers on a page and hasn't provided an edit summary? Is that thing feasible? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:32, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi can you provide a couple of diffs of this occurring recently? — xaosflux Talk 14:31, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Examples:
  1. Link
  2. Link
  3. Link
These are all old diffs because I got them from the pending changes list to gather them quickly but we continuously have
changes like these which lately we've started just plainly rolling back because it is very hard for us to verify them. For example, one user may come and say that X person is not born on 25 tetor (October) 1986 but 7 tetor 1986 and say nothing more than that. It doesn't put a source for its information (in most of the cases there is no source to begin with) and doesn't even put a rationale on the summary so at that moment is almost indistinguishable from vandalisms to us. And we do have a lot of vandalisms of that kind, especially from that vandal you helped me block. Some vandalisms can be distinguished using logic, for example, if someone says that a famous person was born last year when everyone knows that person is not 1 year old because he works as a politician or if someone says that it died last year when everyone else saw it on TV yesterday. But on other cases, that is very hard to prove or disprove. At least, for us. And that's not the only case. People may change budgets, income ciphers, casualties in wars, scientific constants and more. So we want an edit filter that fires up if "not-so-trustful users" add, remove or change ONLY numbers (so no citation provided because obviously that would have to inevitably make use of at least some words) without also providing any kind of summary. We will either set to warn or block such edits depending on its practical use when tested out. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi the reason I was asking for 'recent' edits is so that they can be further explored with w:sq:Speciale:AbuseFilter/examine. We have a few filters here that look for edits to birthdays, and other sorts of similar dates - but they are all only in conjunction with that being template data that has more structure. — xaosflux Talk 17:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I was trying to find some recent edits I had rolled back because of this phenomenon now but I failed on that. :/ So there is no hope for me in my wish for a filter like what I described? :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi not necessarily, just wanted to get a better look at the exact variables. In words this is what you are looking for right:
action is an edit
edit summary is null
look if the changed text was quite small (since we are looking only for a single number being changed)
look if the changed characters were only numbers
In one of your examples above the vandal changed text to a number (... --> xxx) so if that is comment, it is another twist. — xaosflux Talk 10:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I was wondering about that detail as well. That's way more rare so if it does take a lot to be implemented, we can ignore that case. But we are not looking only for a single number being changed. There are times where almost every digit in a history article may be changed (all dates, war casualties, births and deaths, etc.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:52, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi so here is an example maybe? (w:sq:Speciale:AbuseFilter/examine/6011957). It isn't impossible, but would be too costly to do this I think. In theory you could take the "removed_lines", do a string search for only numbers and concatenate them, do the same for the "added lines", then compare the concatenated lines. It would be very prone to false positives so disallow wouldn't be approriate - and you already have pending changes on for all new users at sqwiki requiring review of all edits anyway don't you? — xaosflux Talk 13:48, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
The example looks good. I noticed that you have changed only number per line while in practice there may be more than 1 per line but I strongly believe the line concept wouldn't really matter in this aspect, am I right?
We do have pending changes enabled for all edits and that's why we rely on edit filters so much. We want to be able to weed out what we can automatically. Maybe, if disallowing would be too strong, just warning them could make some users either stop their vandalism or, most importantly, provide sources for their change if it is not a vandalism. This would be beneficial even on the aspect of teaching users to provide sources, something we are working on on different ways. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
As we speak, it just so happened that an edit that the filter would catch was made: link. Klein Muçi (talk) 15:07, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi ok thanks, see w:sq:Speciale:AbuseFilter/examine/6012063. Looking in to a bit. — xaosflux Talk 15:14, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi I'm following up with others at Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested#Number_vandalism — xaosflux Talk 15:27, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi it would still likely be very prone to false positives, for example for anything being updated in real/near time , like casualty counts, scores, etc. (e.g. w:sq:Special:Diff/2441646) (not to mention that potential filter I mentioned above would be overly "expensive") unless there are some better unique additional variables to filter on first. See if you can find some actual recent examples and let me know? — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, I subscribed to that discussion. As for the "exact" situations you mention (near real time updates) I can say that:
  1. Those cases are, maybe unfortunately, very rare for us.
  2. In those rare occasions in which they do occur, catching them with this filter wouldn't really be a false positive. It would be inside the filter's scope. Changing casualty numbers without providing a source would leave the burden of proof to us, a project that has changes pending review for more than 3 years now. Being realistic, time has proven we are unable to provide that kind of service so... - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:28, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Hello, Xaos! If I'm not wrong, it is now possible to easily catch vandalism cases like what we've been discussing here. Does EnWiki have an edit filter set up yet making use of the newly set up regex function in regard to number vandalism? Can you show it to me? Maybe you can help me set one up for SqWiki even without EnWiki having one? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:17, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi are you referring to str_replace_regexp()? If so we don't have any of that in use on enwiki or over at metawiki yet. — xaosflux Talk 12:53, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes. I'd be interested if you can let me know when you do create a filter which I can copy and modify accordingly. I believe what we're looking for at SqWiki would be a way to stop IP and new users from only number changes on a page without supplying any summaries. This would narrow it down enough to not let false positives be a problem (and we can always change it to include more user groups if so needed). - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:07, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader: any thoughts on this? — xaosflux Talk 13:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
I remember @Suffusion of Yellow and @Certes being interested in this topic as well. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:19, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
str_replace_regexp() has now been implemented: phab:T285468. I find quite a few "wrong number" edits. Recent examples: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. Certes (talk) 13:29, 7 June 2022 (UTC)


Deleting user page

Hello! I have a simple question: If I delete my userpage in here wanting to have the Meta version show up, will my name become red in discussions and around? - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:59, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi nope, see test2wiki:User:Xaosflux/Sandbox as an example. — xaosflux Talk 10:06, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:08, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Can you accept this edit request?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:California#Semi-protected_edit_request_on_9_May_2022

Thanks, --2601:205:C002:D1E0:D11:AA22:BE7:46C1 (talk) 05:58, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Someone will get to it soon, there is currently a backlog there (c.f. User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable). I mostly do "technical" ER's, not "content" ones. — xaosflux Talk 09:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-19

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [9]
  • Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [10]

Changes later this week

Future meetings

  • The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.

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15:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

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

Guideline and policy news

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Arbitration

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Tech News: 2022-20

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

Changes later this week

  • Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [12]
  • The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).

Future changes

  • You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [13]

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18:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Please Help Me!

Dear Xaosflux , I've come to ask for your help on your member talks, I have a wiki named [14] I'm a bureaucrat and administrator on this wiki, on my wiki I can't set Pending Change Protection I see, I want to set up pending change protection on your wiki as it is on Wikipedia, can you help me with this? You are an administrator, bureaucrat tax authority on wikipedia, and you are also a more experienced member, I am ready to give you bureaucrat, administrator tax authority on my wiki, please help me, this is my humble request to you. 😃Regards! Aviram7 (talk) 06:53, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

For help with that extension, I suggest you follow up at mw:Extension talk:FlaggedRevs. That extension is not very well supported, very clunky, complex and not recommended for production use unless you have some mediawiki developers ready to help your project. — xaosflux Talk 10:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
When I protect at the level of Extended Conformed Protection and Template editor Protection on your wiki, only viewing the source only shows the protection banner of semi-protect, but Extended Conformed Protection and Template editor ProtectionProtection banner doesn't show, and protection banner shows the same level of protection as articles on Wikipedia, but not on my wiki Looks like can you tell me what is the main reason for not showing it? Can you help me with this?.😔 --Regards Aviram7 (talk) 17:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
See the contents of our MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext, and recursively the contents of all pages transcluded, which will eventually include complex calls such as in Module:Protection_banner. For general help with other mediawiki questions please follow up at mw:Project:Support desk. — xaosflux Talk 22:05, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-21

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

  • Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [15]
  • The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [16]

Problems

  • The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [17]
  • Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [18]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [19]

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00:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 May 2022

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Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident with which you may be involved. The discussion is about the topic Ruderboot10 (Translation). Thank you. —Ruderboot10 (talk) 07:59, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-22

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

Recent changes

  • Advanced item In the AbuseFilter extension, an ip_in_ranges() function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple ip_in_range() expressions joined by | into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [20]
  • The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [21][22]
  • Advanced item The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the uciprange parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [23]
  • A new parser function will be introduced: {{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [24]

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20:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Problem with Quarry?

Hello, Xaosflux,

You wrote me a very helpful Quarry query to find orphaned talk pages which I "forked" (see here) which I altered slightly to include more namespaces and a higher number of results. I use it several times a day, quite successfully. Well, today I got this cryptic message when I tried to run it:

View 'enwiki_p.page' references invalid table(s) or column(s) or function(s) or definer/invoker of view lack rights to use them

Is there some change at Quarry that would make running these queries restricted to certain classes of users? I have run this query (or forks of it) dozens and dozens of times with no problems until today. Thanks, in advance, for any help you can provide. Liz Read! Talk! 23:17, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I just tried running someone else's query and got the same message so apparently, it isn't a problem with the code in the query you wrote. Liz Read! Talk! 23:19, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
I opened phab:T309570 on this. — xaosflux Talk 00:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Xaosflux. There are several technical glitches today, I'm not sure what is going on with the databases. Liz Read! Talk! 00:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
Well, that was fast, I just tried again and it worked fine! Now if we can just get the bots back on track. Thank you for your help! Liz Read! Talk! 02:30, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
I think most of them have the same source problem, give them up to a day to recover, then you can ping their operators if they require restarting manually. — xaosflux Talk 09:27, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

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COIN question

Hi, I saw Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Ruderboot10 (Translation) and wondered how useful it was to refer the editor to COIN? The result was that they submitted the translations through AfC without using page importation. They have disclosed their COI and WP:COIEDIT says they should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly. The articles look harmless, if not of huge value to en Wikipedia. They may have selectively quoted from reviews, but presumably AfC will check that. TSventon (talk) 08:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@TSventon most COI requests we get at WP:RFPI are rather suspect, often getting denied - thought this could be a way to help this editor move forward by making sure those with expertise in COI were able to ensure they followed the best practices is all. — xaosflux Talk 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
  • The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

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Tech News: 2022-23

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 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
  • A new str_replace_regexp() function can be used in abuse filters to replace parts of text using a regular expression. [25]

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02:45, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-24

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [28]
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [29]
  • The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [30][31]

Future meetings

  • The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.

Future changes

  • By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.

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16:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Draft:SMS Rover

Hello, Xaosflux,

I do a lot of work with expiring drafts and I like to post notifications on the page creator's talk page that the draft has been deleted and that they can recover it if they go to WP:REFUND. So, when I deleted this draft, I got an error message that Twinkle couldn't post a notification on the creator's talk page. When I went back to look at the edit history of the page, I saw that almost all of the editors were actually on the German Wikipedia and that you had "imported" the page. I hadn't seen that before. Is that a complicated procedure? It's great that the editors' names and home wiki are all given attribution even when they don't have accounts on the English Wikipedia. I wonder why I've been here years and not run into this before. I've seen pages translated but never a page, a draft, just brought over to a different language Wikipedia, all intact, so I thought I'd ask you about this. Thanks for any information you can provide! Liz Read! Talk! 19:04, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Liz in most cases translated pages just note the other project's article, generally on the talk page using {{translated}} or sometimes just as an edit summary. We do process history imports on request, mostly at WP:RFPI. The most common of these are dewiki-->enwiki, primarily because the dewiki community heavily uses this type of process so their editors are used to it. We won't transwiki directly to article space, so we either make the requester translate first, or bring it in to Draft or a user sandbox for them to work on in parts - that way it will still go through new page patrol when they move it to mainspace. Hope that clears it up? — xaosflux Talk 22:50, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-25

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 Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [32]
  • Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for site_stats at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more.
  • A new user_global_editcount variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [33]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
  • Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [34]

Future changes

  • The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
  • Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different typeof attribute values, and instead use mw:File for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects: mw:Image, mw:Audio, or mw:Video. [35]

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20:17, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Little coding help

Hello Xaosflux,

I'm hoping you can figure out something, regarding template coding. I use {{Status}} in my userspace here; User:FlightTime/Online status which is set on this page; User:FlightTime/Status I would like to add another image; . The definition as to what this will mean will be variable as are the others. I just cannot figure out how to insert it so it acts as the others do. Any help would be greatly appreicated, thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 16:55, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@FlightTime Template:Status doesn't support new images (it actually doesn't use "images" at all - it just uses a colored background). Perhaps you should move to Template:User status - which supports images already? — xaosflux Talk 17:21, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
OMG, see you do know all :P thank you for pointing me to the road I should have been on the whole time. Cheers, - FlightTime (open channel) 17:35, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
@FlightTime I get around a lot is all - best wishes. — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Well, OK. Thank you very much for all you do for us, the editors and for this great project. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:44, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi.

Dropped here to say hi. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.225.243.179 (talk) 21:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi. — xaosflux Talk 21:58, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 June 2022

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Clayola Brown

This article was created by me. However, I do not get the credit for this work. I would appreciate it if you could take a few moments to look into this matter. Regards. Dr.Pinsky (talk) 19:09, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@Dr.Pinsky I have performed a very manual history repair on that page. Please note, this was not required for attribution purposes, all contributors to a page are considered co-authors of the eventual work. Here is how to avoid this problem in the future: Don't start new article drafts in User:Dr.Pinsky/Sandbox, just create a distinct sandbox for each one you want to work on (for example create User:Dr.Pinsky/Sandbox/Clayola Brown) - that way when you or someone else moves the page only the edits that were relevant to that subject will be moved with it. While working on this it appears another one of your drafts were co-mingled in the history as well, I moved those revisions to User:Dr.Pinsky/Sandbox/Arrayed Tales. If you want to abandon that one you can tag it with {{speedy}} and we will delete it. Hope this resolved your concerns. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 21:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Much obliged. Dr.Pinsky (talk) 07:48, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Hi Xaosflux. It appears, xtools doesn't recognize my contribution. Would you mind having a look? Dr.Pinsky (talk) 14:04, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
@Dr.Pinsky hi there. First I'd say "don't worry about it" - what xtools thinks about a page isn't really that important. If you do want to worry about it please note that xtools works off a cache, so it may be behind. Xtools is also not part of the English Wikipedia, so if you want follow up about it you can ask at mw:Talk:XTools. The "Page creator" attribute that is on the English Wikipedia is viewable on the article information page, at this link. Hope that helps. — xaosflux Talk 14:11, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know. Best regards. Dr.Pinsky (talk) 14:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Hi Xaosflux. As you recommended, I tried to reach out mw:Talk:XTools, but regrettably, I couldn't log in. I am very aware that you made every effort to resolve the issue, but it seems that Xtools still doesn't get it. Thanks. Dr.Pinsky (talk) 15:03, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
@Dr.Pinsky if you can log in to phab, you can try to make a report here. Make sure you have cookies and javascript enabled to log on cross project. — xaosflux Talk 15:31, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Would you mind having a look [36]? Thanks. Dr.Pinsky (talk) 06:06, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Dr.Pinsky sounds like the xTools people don't have a fix for that - but xtools is just some tool, it isn't really authoritative; I suggest you move on from worrying about it. — xaosflux Talk 08:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-26

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [37]
  • Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [38]
  • Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [39]

Future meetings

  • The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.

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

20:01, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

NPP

Hi. For years I have always had the greatest respect for your work and objectivity on Wikipedia but I have the distinct impression that something has changed - maybe it's because I got desysoped, maybe it's because you crossed the great divide; I don't know, but I really do not want to lock horns with you over the desperately needed solutions for NPP. I would much prefer it if you were on our side. Despite health and other RL issues, I've come back out of retirement to help get NPP back on the rails, and not only do we volunteers not get paid for what we do, we get no thanks either. It 's all very discouraging, not only for me personally, but for the rest of the small but dedicated NPP crew. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:57, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung to be clear, I'm not opposed to increasing the autoindex value - just want to make sure that the community at large understands what is going on. — xaosflux Talk 10:10, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Purging and CSD

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T311744

I use the Admin Dashboard for both AIV and CSD patrolling. Whenever I go there, the first thing I do is purge the page. For a good while now, the numbers in the CSD table have not been updating properly even after the purge, particularly the G11 and G2 categories. Even if I go directly to the category and purge yet again, the numbers and what shows up as the pages don't match. A few moments ago, it said there were 11 pages in G11, but there were only 2. I remember this has happened before, sometimes with many categories and sometimes just with G11. It usually resolved itself, although I don't know how or why, within a few days, but has not this time. Will it do any good to report this, or is there an existing Phab on it? I'm hoping you know the answer, but, if not, I suppose I can go to the technical Pump page.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:48, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@Bbb23 In theory, purge is supposed to work since phab:T85696, now that being said it may require first purging the category, then purging any other templates that are transcluding the PAGESINCAT derived value. Also, purge triggers a recount, but it is not instantaneous. I still run in to this from time to time on pages like User:AnomieBOT/PERTable as well. The CSD cat counts can queue can suffer from a cause to the same problem - sometimes things get stuck pending other sorts of cleanups when the way a page comes out of a category is via deletion. So, if you have purged the category itself, and purged the template (or just run PAGESINCAT yourself to check) - and it has been a reasonable time (maybe an hour, certainly not days for something like this that doesn't have thousands of members) - then its probably a good idea to open a phab and reference that parent ticket. — xaosflux Talk 14:03, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Whoa, I wish you wouldn't talk up to me. :-) I think I should take a course in wiki tech as a second language. I don't think it's a good idea for me to open a phab. I mean you wouldn't want to see me blocked for incompetence, would you? Perhaps you could actually duplicate the problem yourself so that you could report it and it would be first-hand? If you don't have the time, I understand.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:49, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
@Bbb23 sorry - maybe this helps:
  • The system keeps a count of pages in a category, but it isn't updated in real-time
  • "purge" (if done on the category page) should ask the system to recount the pages in a category, this can take a reasonable time to complete
  • Templates or pages that use the PAGESINCAT function may also need to be purged (or just edited) if they have an old value (after the step above is done)
  • If these things have happened, some time has passed, and it is still wrong - something may be broken.
In general, even with the last batch of improvements getting an accurate real-time count of the number of pages in a category may lag.
Don't be scared about opening phab tasks, a good initial report is just in plain speak: "I did X, I expect Y, but I see Z". There is a form that can guide that. Many times a phab ticket might get closed as "Duplicate of N" - and merged, but that is fine (happens to me all the time!) — xaosflux Talk 15:09, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
No reason for you to be sorry. My comments were self-deprecating attempts at humor, not critical comments directed at you. No matter how simply you explain certain Wikipedia things, I will not understand them without a lot more schooling. For example, no idea what PAGESINCAT is. Nor am I "scared" to open a Phab - more like doing something you don't enjoy because you're not good at it.. Anyway, I appreciate the advice, and maybe I'll even take it.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:16, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Bbb23, nuance can get lost in writing sometimes. I didn't mean to imply you were actually fearful, was trying to say that opening a useful bug report can be a casual process, and that even duplicates are normally welcome.
Regarding PAGESINCAT: There is special built in function called PAGESINCAT that provides the number of pages in a category. For example:
If a page (like a template) includes this wikitext: {{PAGESINCAT:Apples}} it will produce this output when viewed: 42 - as there should be 42 pages in Category:Apples. This is what can be slow to update sometimes. Template:Admin dashboard contains other templates, and they eventually use that function to count the pages.
On a tangent, I find patrolling speedy deletions a bit easier by using this page: CAT:CSD, if you haven't used that one take a peek you may like it. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 15:35, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
You're remarkably patient. CAT:CSD is indeed more complete than the table, but can't you duplicate the problem there? After purging, it still shows 11 as the number of G11 pages tagged for deletion; yet, there are only 2 at the moment.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:49, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
The templates themselves seem OK, the category counter is indeed wrong: {{PAGESINCAT:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam}} says "12" right now and it should say "3". I opened phab:T311744 on this instance of the problem. — xaosflux Talk 16:03, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Cool. You have a typo, though: It produces in accurate page count for that category: (Currently: 12). Should say "It produces an inaccurate ..." or, if you don't care about the article, "It produces inaccurate ...".--Bbb23 (talk) 18:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 Fixed — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Bitcoin Second Life Era

The Entire Wiki 0f BTC is wrong BTC had a relationship with Second Life The Wiki is missing information 0n BTC and the virtual Communities surrounding multiple currencies. https://news.bitcoin.com/a-look-at-how-second-lifes-linden-dollars-helped-kickstart-bitcoins-value/#:~:text=Bitcoin%20had%20a%20fascinating%20relationship,which%20virtual%20asset%20was%20better. https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/01/10/270541/second-life-closes-banks/ 2601:204:D300:8380:708B:FCB9:57C9:5183 (talk) 12:55, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi 2601*, to propose changes to our article on Bitcoin, please post at Talk:Bitcoin. — xaosflux Talk 13:04, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-27

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
  • This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage. [40]

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

19:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Article wizard and other ways to create articles

Hello Xaosflux! :)

Recently I'm thinking of updating the article wizard we have at our homewiki which has been outdated and not used for a couple of years now. I'm thinking of creating it heavy reliant on the EnWiki version. Can you maybe point out to me what are all the pages that are involved in that wizard and what are some other ways to create new articles here and their limitations/advantages? For example, what we've been using for years to start new articles is to just search for the title-to-be in the search box and go ahead with the creation there. But as funny as it may sound, I've rarely been involved with article creation myself so I don't know if that method works for every kind of user or not. Also many users intuitively ask for a button on the main page that actually allows you to create a new article. We've been thinking that can also be a good idea and maybe make such a button link to the said wizard? I don't know if such a thing exists here on EnWiki and if it can be considered an overall good idea. As always I do value a lot your advices so any kind of information you can provide on the subject will be appreciated. Or maybe you can redirect me to somewhere else where I can get informed thoroughly about this. We basically want to update the whole article creation process from scratch and given that that basically is the most important part of a wiki project, we want to be able to adopt the current best practices for it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:06, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi I suppose a good place to start is in thinking of your overall workflow. How are most of your new articles sourced (original content, or translations from other projects)? Do you have an active group of people doing "new article patrol"? Do you want to encourage people using such tools to directly publish articles to your mainspace, or do you then to develop them in sandboxes first? — xaosflux Talk 17:26, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
The last question is something that actually plagues me. Most of our current new articles come from translations and the majority of those are from EnWiki. It's been some years now that we've asked for Content Translation Tool to be out of beta features and activated as a tool for everyone. There is only a very small number of active editors that write good articles by scratch and actually go the traditional way to gather references and sources. There is also a bigger group that actually writes articles by scratch but these articles usually get deleted eventually for promotional reasons and are usually written by WP:SPA accounts. Nonetheless we'd still want to have a functional article wizard even if only to regain a lost feature. We've had one ever since SqWiki was started and it was closely modeled to the that time EnWiki version I believe. During the years, some of its subpages got deleted and the overall wizard basically got corrupted. Also the main problem was that users understood through trial and error that the end results of the wizard, the drafts, started getting stalled for years and years without any changes or any kind of response because the system that was once useful had eventually been abandoned and that it was better for them if they just started writing articles directly "through the search box". This brings us to the thing I worry the most: Do we have an active group of people doing new article patrol? Absolutely not. We barely have reviewers for edits or active admins to patrol new pages (those places currently have a backlog that goes as far as 2 years back with changes and pages waiting for review). I envy the draft review process you have here but unfortunately we can't think for such a system right now. So... Maybe we want to encourage people to publish directly on the mainspace and/or translate them from other languages? Maybe even working them on sandboxes could be encouraged before they tried the real deal, mostly as a halting measure, but they would have to be teachers of themselves because it would be impossible for us to afford the review process.
Other than that, I don't really know. It's been literal years that we haven't used such a wizard so most details would be best solved through usage experiences I believe. Maybe it proves to be successful and we end up redirecting literally all traffic through it. Maybe... - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:52, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Our draft process is stressed too, currently has thousands in it and a backlog of almost 3 months. We worked for years with people just creating articles - but our popularity made that become a problem - because we were popular we started getting flooded with attack articles and promotional articles. — xaosflux Talk 22:01, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Eh but still, 3 months are better than 7 years. :P
...So to make matters more concrete, is there a category that lists all the subpages used by the article wizard here? Does it always end up in creating a draft? Can anyone create new articles from the search box? And does EnWiki have a mainpage button that leads up to the article wizard? - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:45, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm supposing I can find all there is for the AW here, no? Well, apart from the accompanying guidelines. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:50, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, some of those are a bit old - and some are old redirects. Our AW only makes drafts - it is mostly just a fancy preload for a draft page (starting from here: Wikipedia:Article_wizard/CreateDraft). — xaosflux Talk 23:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
See it really isn't that fancy, everything else is mostly a dead end to a policy page of why you shouldn't make an article about something. — xaosflux Talk 23:30, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
I see. So, last question: Who can create articles? Can new users create them? IPs? - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:32, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
On enwiki, only autoconfirmed users may create a new article. On sqwiki, any editor may. We also have a new page triage extension that requires articles to be manually patrolled before they are indexed by search engines, but that is not normal on other projects. — xaosflux Talk 23:38, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
I see. Well, thank you! Pretty informative as ever. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:40, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
I managed to create a modest new article wizard without much problems. The community was rather pleased with it. We were talking about making it possible so it uses some general topic-specific preloads. Now I know that Wikipedia's articles are literally of all kinds but is there somewhere some basic kinds of article templates specific to topics I can look for inspiration? For example, a template that would be the basis of a soccer player biography article, its sections and templates. Or a preload that contains what would be the basis of a typical mammal article.
These of course shouldn't be thought as constricting measures but they would rather serve as a bare skeleton to guide newcomers in the article creation process.
I also have a rather technical question: Your Article Wizard makes use of the {{If IP}} template. I imported it ad verbatim to SqWiki but for me it says that I'm watching it as an IP/unlogged user even though I'm logged. It always serves me the content an IP user would get to see. I tried cleaning out my common.CSS page. I also tried updating the sitewide common.CSS and updating it to your exact standards here. It still shows the same thing. A user tried to help me in templates's talk page but we didn't manage to solve the problem. I was wondering if you could have any better ideas of what's going on or at least tell me if you do get the same behavior as me or not with that template at our wiki. - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi it depends on: (a) the template producing a class; (b) a section in Mediawiki:Common.css that hides that class from everyone; and (c) a section in MediaWiki:Group-user.css that unhides that class from users. — xaosflux Talk 00:18, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Snap, that was fast. Solved it. We were missing C. I'll go leave a notice at the talk page. Thank you very much! Now if only you had article bare-bone-structures saved somewhere... But I don't expect life to give me a red-carpet-treatment anyway. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:23, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Back with 1 more question:
Are there more pages similar to Mediawiki:group-user.css that would affect templates such as {{if preview}}, {{if administrator}}, {{if mobile}}, {{noscript}}, etc.? I've imported those templates as well but I'm not sure if I'm lacking something like I was for {{if IP}}.
Also, since we're at it, I'm assuming all these templates, in their default state, work for both PC and mobile, no? (Well, obviously apart from the {{if mobile}}.)
And, just so that I don't disturb you again in the future, can you explain to me how did you find the CSS dependencies for {{if IP}} above so I can work out things on my own? - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
So, if IP doesn't "do" anything about hiding or unhiding, it just puts a class identifier around some content (anonymous-show). There are only a couple of ways to make that apply to other people - common.css; templatestyles; a default gadget; or some extension. I'm familiar with our common.css and knew it was in there, where we left a note about the other css's (Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Group-*.css). — xaosflux Talk 08:08, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
if preview is different, uses some mediawiki tests. — xaosflux Talk 08:09, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Regarding a wizzard for different types of articles, we don't really have that. You could make one with preloads, like "This is about a person" and maybe you give them a page of wikitext with hints of things to put about a person, a default person category, etc. — xaosflux Talk 08:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the group of the css pages! Yes, that is what I will do. But I was hoping to find it somewhat in a ready state somewhere. Anyway, thank you! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:10, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi keep in mind these can be finicky, and you really shouldn't use them for "article content" at all. Also, never use it for anything sensitive or secret - anyone can see the underlying text if they look. — xaosflux Talk 13:33, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of what you mean. I intended to use them mostly for general warnings towards specific user groups. Thank you for the advice! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:45, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
If a template has an associated styles.css subpage, is there any way to use the said template while not activating/hiding the styles.css subpage's code for that particular use? - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Not directly, you could make one template with paramaters that calls other templates with styles maybe. — xaosflux Talk 23:01, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
I see. Oh well, it was just a minor detail related to the AW that can be ignored anyway. I asked mostly out of curiosity. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:28, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

What template would I use to make the 2 last lines sit at the bottom of the page aligned with the red and white image in this page? It's been 4 days straight I fail to do that no matter what I try. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:39, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi like this: w:sq:Wikipedia:Ndihmësi_i_Artikujve/sandbox ? — xaosflux Talk 22:55, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Sort of. I've tried that method but it also moves the image. I want the image to stick to the bottom left corner where it is.
PS: I had to write this message on source mode because the reply tool somehow insists that "your comment doesn't exist" so I can't reply to it. Weird... - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:01, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi try w:sq:Wikipedia:Ndihmësi_i_Artikujve/sandbox now? — xaosflux Talk 23:06, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Finally! Yes, that's what I wanted. What does the last div class do? - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:12, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi the "clear:both" one? it makes sure the image doesn't flow down over the boarder line of the other element. — xaosflux Talk 23:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
I see. Thank you for your continuous help! I literally spent 4 days on that. I know almost nothing in CSS. - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:48, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T312878
Is there any way to reverse the box/button order here? I believe you'll understand quickly what I mean when you see the page. It's about the column on the right, I want them to have the reverse order so that buttons are always adjacent to each-other between columns. The doc says The “Submit” button can be moved to the right by using the line break parameter to eliminate the line break between the box and the button. but never mentions the possibility of moving it to the left. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:34, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi not easily. I don't recommend that from a UI perspective, forms and buttons are best if kept consistent on a page. CSS could be used to try to target each of the buttons (but only the ones in the right column) and move the left margin to like -200px to move it to the left - but it's not going to be easily maintained. I could possibly see this being useful in rtl langauge projects, which you could then take advantage of if it was enhanced. You can submit a software enhancement request for that extension, asking to have a new parameter like "buttonlocation" added that would support "left", "right", "top", "bottom" etc. — xaosflux Talk 13:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! Just did: T312878 Klein Muçi (talk) 16:44, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Do you have any idea where can we localize the tooltip that we get when we hover over the textbox or press the Submit button without inputting any text in it? It currently reads Please fill out this field. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T312884
Think it is broken. I opened phab:T312884 on that. — xaosflux Talk 17:57, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, I tried searching for system messages for it but couldn't find any. Maybe it's hardcoded. Thank you for the ticket, I subscribed.
Most likely last question: So far I've never been able to utilize the tags properly even though I've tried quite some times in the past. Is it possible to automatically tag the articles created through this AW I created somehow?
I'm talking about Wikipedia:Tags. It would help us if we could see which new articles are actually coming through this process, what percentage they take and if the process is being utilized properly or has room for improvements. - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:33, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi so no, and maybe-ish. No, because your process is just a preload for the webui, which doesn't expose somewhere for your editors to specify change tags (phab:T109032). If there is something consistent about the edits (like say you have them use a distinct edit summary or some sort of special wikitext like a category or template, you could use another system to track these (assuming that the editor doesn't remove the identifier before publishing). If you have some sort of distinct text, you could set up an abuse filter (further narrowed by only tagging new pages that are in ns:0) and the abusefilter could apply a change tag for you. — xaosflux Talk 18:43, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Well, that's certainly helpful. If I go the edit filter way and after the tag is set the template is removed from the article in another edit, will it also remove the tag or is it set forever? - Klein Muçi (talk) 20:32, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi it won't change it. Keep in mind tags aren't authoritative, editors can pick which ones to use or add/remove them later - it is just not exposed to the interface - tags shouldn't replace your existing new-article-patrol workflow. — xaosflux Talk 21:26, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
No, I understand that. This is just to have a way to get at least some data about how the AW is going. They don't have to be perfect. If I create the said template, can you help me set up the edit filter for it and the tag? - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:38, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
I created w:sq:Template:NIA, basically a void template for this purpose. All preloads have it as part of their content. How do I create an edit filter that searches for {{NIA}} and applies a tag? - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:51, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi Make a test page with it (don't delete the page yet) and let me know when the page is up; also what do you want the tag to be? Also see if you can delete "TestTag1" in w:sq:Special:Tags — xaosflux Talk 22:02, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
(Re)Created this.
I want the tag to be: Ndihmësi i Artikujve
I can't delete that as it doesn't exist for me. I can't find it in that special page. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:17, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi OK, it must have cleared already. I created the filter. Here is what the output looks like: newpages link. That filter is disabled, to activate it go to w:sq:Special:AbuseFilter/19, click for 'Enable this filter', then click save.
It will flag:
  • If a page is new
  • If the page is in mainspace
  • If the page contains that string
It will generate an abuselog hit, and tag the edit. — xaosflux Talk 23:31, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much! Much appreciated. Do you want me to delete your sandbox 2-7 pages you created while testing?
Also, a bit tangential to the subject but I was surprised to see that void-like templates are actually pretty visible on VE. When you think about it there's nothing to be surprised about but nonetheless I was somehow expecting for VE to detect that they are actually "empty" and show them in a smaller font or something similar. VE is mostly targeted at new users and they can be confused by cases like these. What do you think on this? - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:13, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Sure, delete 2-7; I try to avoid VE for the most part :D — xaosflux Talk 00:42, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Done. Understandable, I find myself doing the same most of the time. :P Thank you again for the help in setting up our article wizard. This concludes it. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:25, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Back way faster than I would like.
MediaWiki:Newarticletext serves to put up a message every time a new page is being created, no matter what namespace. Is there a message that only deals with creations (not all kinds of edits) in a specific namespace, let's say the main one? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:04, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi no, it prob should be called "Newpagetext" but that's not going to fix your question. What we did was make that page have conditional output based on the namespace. The {{#switch: {{NAMESPACE}} logic that is in ours. You could adapt that. — xaosflux Talk 17:13, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Just did that, thank you! Would it make sense if some kind of discussion was made somewhere to change the name of that message so it alleviates confusion? Has something like this been done before? - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:50, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Originally mediawiki was built around projects that would have "articles" so many things in mainspace were called "*article*", and once that was built they just used it for all pages. A search though system messages comes up with tons of "article" phases that are really "pages". If you put in a ticket, it will probably never get worked on - unless you do the work, including tracking down all dependencies. — xaosflux Talk 01:44, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. I would actually be curious to know more about these old days. I have read quiet a lot about the overall history of Wikimedia, including the UseModWiki days but I'm not really sure what are you referencing with that description. As for the practical side, let's say I am up for the work, what would be a typical workflow to be expected? I mean, I can't just, for example, go and change the message name from Newarticletext to Newpagetext and call it a day, no? That would bring chaos to all wikis that used MediaWiki:Newarticletext. I can, I believe, leave it as a redirect (if that even works for system messages, so far I've only worked with special pages' names) but then, what change would I have really made when +50% of the wikis would still be using the old form? Bots are friends and we can start a global changing campaign but this would probably be stopped in grounds of cosmetic changes. So... Is it doomed from the start or am I being overly defeatist? - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:02, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

No, this would be submitting patches for mediawiki and any extensions that are dependent on the messages - changing the software to use a newly named message instead of the old one and then running a rename job on all the messages during the same change. Mediawiki was (and still is) very intertwined with Wikipedia (which has "articles") but it is a generic software now, even in WMF - for example Wiktionary doesn't contain "articles" in its mainspace, it has Definitions; Wikibooks doesn't have "articles" it has books - but alas the "mainspace"=="articles" "pages"=="articles" conventions persist. — xaosflux Talk 02:27, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
I see. Well, I'm not as courageous as to start solving traditional decade old problems especially when I have yet to work with system messages on mediawiki. Thank you for the explanations! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:43, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
Some days have gone by and we are loving the new article wizard you helped us set up. Some of our members even posted about in in our social channels. Yesterday I noticed a small problem: When you view the page from a mobile the 3 buttons you should see in the main page appear merged together. I tried doing this to fix that but apparently the nested use of If-detection templates was too complex for them. What can I do so that they appear correctly for mobile users while not affecting the way they're currently rendered for desktop users? I feel like it might be a very small change but I'm failing to find it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:13, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
PS: More than "mobile users" in general I mean "small screen mobile users" (usual smartphone sizes) where buttons appear merged in a vertical row with no space whatsoever between them. The fix would be to just to add a <br> tag between them but that would ruin it for the desktop users. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:16, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi making sure I'm following you - is the problem you are trying to fix that when this page (w:sq:Wikipedia:Ndihmësi_i_Artikujve) is viewed on small widths, the vertical borders of the buttons are colliding in to each other? — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes sir! - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:22, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi It looks like you have styling on .mw-ui-button setting margin:0; setting that to 1px seemed to fix it. I haven't had time to hunt down exactly where that is being set right now, or there is a better way to target that -- but telling those boxes to have no margin around them seems to be the root of the issue. — xaosflux Talk 15:32, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Hmm... The button is coming from a template that's just a wrapper for invoking Module:Clickable button 2. Both the module and the template are exactly the same as here so I'm assuming no changes should be done to them because if margins were needed, some users would have eventually brought them here with all the use cases EnWiki has to offer. To put it shortly, I believe there should be a reason why margin:0 is the default case. Is there a way to style those buttons directly there on the page? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:42, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi see if w:sq:Wikipedia:Ndihmësi_i_Artikujve/sandbox does what you want it to do? — xaosflux Talk 15:50, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes it does. (I'd only wish for the margin to be just a bit bigger.) So that's what I'll need to do? Create a specific .CSS styling page just for this case? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi there are lots of ways to go about dealing with this, I just slammed a templatestyles on the page and put the css for the entire button in there. You could probably fix this other ways, but I think that css margin value one way or another is the best way to tackle this (as opposed to for example shoving other space breaking elements in between those buttons). If you really only care about this one page and its content is going to be fairly static the templatestyles hack to the button is probably the easiest. — xaosflux Talk 15:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Well, okay then. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:05, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Question

Can you reset your password while logged out without any email address provided? If your account has no email address and then an anonymous tries to reset your password, he will be asked for an email address. He provided his own email. He can reset your password or not? —Princess Faye (my talk) 10:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

@Princess Faye if your account doesn't have an email address, you can not do a password reset on it. The only way to change it is to log on with your password, then change it online. To prevent people from being able to use the Special:PasswordReset form to figure out other people's email addresses the form will let you put anything in it, but it will only actually do anything if the account has an email, and if you put the right username and email combination in there. — xaosflux Talk 13:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
When you use the form it says If the information submitted is valid, a password reset email will be sent. If it is not valid nothing happens. — xaosflux Talk 13:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: So, if an anonymous user tries to log in to an account by resetting its password, an email is needed for password reset, and because the account he is attempting to reset does not have an email, he puts his own email on it. Then Wikipedia said they gave him a temporary password, but they actually did nothing. Is this correct? —Princess Faye (my talk) 14:19, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Almost, in that case Wikipedia does not create a temp password, and it does not say it did it; it says IF the information valid, then it will do it. If it gave an error I could use to the form over and over again to try to guess your actual email address, maybe its princessfay at aol dot com; maybe its pfay at applemail dot com, who knows - but mediawiki won't tell you if you are right or not so as to keep that secret. — xaosflux Talk 16:47, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Is there any other disadvantage about not providing an email address to an account except for not being able to reset your password? —Princess Faye (my talk) 01:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
You also can't get wikimail and can't set up mail notifications. — xaosflux Talk 02:57, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: So it's not a problem if an account doesn't have an email address as long as the user can't forget its password. —Princess Faye (my talk) 03:26, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
Correct, it is not necessary to have an email - but it is highly advisable for password recovery. — xaosflux Talk 04:35, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. —Princess Faye (my talk) 05:25, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Last, could you please delete all subpages of mine and kindly delete my talk archive page too, if possible? —Princess Faye (my talk) 06:23, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

 Done - notes left on your talk. — xaosflux Talk 11:01, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

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

Technical news

  • user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-28

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

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

19:23, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Notice of EFH Request

I have previously made a request for EFM which you participated in, per WP:EFH I am notifying you that I have made a request for EFH. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 03:42, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Comparing categories in different projects

Is there a smart way to allow me to quickly compare what entries are different between this category and this category? They should have the same entries. - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:55, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi the folks that maintain Wikipedia talk:PetScan may be able to help on that for a way to do it repeatedly. From a programming note, keep in mind they very much do not have the same entries, they just happen to have the same page titles. For this specific request, I did an api query of each of those, dumped the results and ran a local string operation, the unique entries between those two appear to be:
— xaosflux Talk 11:26, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, yes, thank you for the advice. You're right on that. And thank you for the links! That saved me a lot of work! If the process is not too time consuming can you rerun it one more time and guarantee that there are no differences in titles anymore? If it is time consuming, don't do it as 99.9% they should be, given that I only changed 3 links. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi sqwiki is missing w:sq:Vetitë CS1: Burime në interlingue (ie)‎. — xaosflux Talk 17:05, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Now they have the same titles, no? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:16, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm not running that export and compare again. — xaosflux Talk 19:08, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Eh, they must be. The number of subcategories are equal now at least. They should have been since the first time but your procedure didn't catch w:sq:Vetitë CS1: Burime në interlingue (ie) somehow. - Klein Muçi (talk) 20:46, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Category population can lag sometimes, especially on very large or completely empty categories. — xaosflux Talk 21:07, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikiquote feedback

Could you give feedback here? – Ilovemydoodle (talk) 18:45, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux Talk 21:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-29

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

Problems

  • The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [43]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).

Future changes

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

22:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

notification trigger

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T100974

Hi. I hope you are doing well. If we block a user, only a block, and do not leave any message on their talkpage, will the action of blocking them trigger a notification? Changes in user rights trigger a notification, so I am guessing block would also trigger it. TPS are also welcome to comment. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:11, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran I'm pretty sure it shouldn't. I blocked you on test2wiki:Main Page for 1 day as an example. — xaosflux Talk 16:16, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
And nope, see phab:T100974 where someone wants this added, but others think it is a bad idea. — xaosflux Talk 16:17, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
Of course, if they try to edit they will get a giant blocked banner. — xaosflux Talk 16:18, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
lol that was cruel :-D
I could have blocked one of my socks to see that
And yes, you are correct, didn't get any notification on enwiki, nor on test2. Thanks for the response, and phab :-) —usernamekiran (talk) 16:34, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

another query: I would like to start learning more about edit filters. Where/how should I start? Also pinging Primefac as an experienced editor in that field. Do you guys think I should request for edit filter helper flag? —usernamekiran (talk) 23:27, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran most edit filters are public. You can start by reading the public filters and the documentation. Then a good place to start trying to help with things is WP:EF/FP and WP:EF/R. — xaosflux Talk 01:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
thanks. the help is very much appreciated. See you around. —usernamekiran (talk) 17:46, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Request for help

Hi Xaosflus: I'm wondering if you might have a chance to add our task force to the "hot articles" bot. I put a protected edit request on the bot's talk page yesterday, but had to go back in to fix the syntax, which may have screwed up its automatic notifications to you admins... Thanks! MeegsC (talk) 09:15, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@MeegsC it is in the to-do-queue (c.f. User:AnomieBOT/PERTable); if someone else doesn't beat me to it I'll probably get it done today. — xaosflux Talk 09:20, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Excellent! Thanks Xaosflux. MeegsC (talk) 09:21, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
You're a star! Thanks Xaosflux. MeegsC (talk) 14:20, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Hi Xaosflux. I'm not seeing our taskforce in the listing at User:HotArticlesBot/Config.json and we're still not getting any report. Did we set something up wrong? MeegsC (talk) 11:41, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
If you are referring to the requests at User_talk:HotArticlesBot/Config.json, no one processed them because they are not flagged as edit requests. Put this text at the top of each section:
{{edit fully-protected|User:HotArticlesBot/Config.json|answered=no}}
That will get the attention of patrolling admins. — xaosflux Talk 13:35, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Translate

You'll have to excuse my laziness, but thought would be quicker to ask someone who might know instead of wading through tons of discussion. Is there a tool to change the citation template headings from one language to another? Or does it need to be done manually (i really hope not). For example: <ref name=":0">{{|Cita web|url=https://expansion.mx/nacional/2016/05/03/tomas-zeron-una-trayectoria-sembrada-de-dudas|título=Tomás Zerón de Lucio: una trayectoria 'sembrada' de dudas|fechaacceso=2021-07-21|fecha=2016-05-04|sitioweb=Expansión|idioma=es}}</ref> Acousmana 12:29, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not aware of one. — xaosflux Talk 17:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Acousmana 15:58, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-30

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

Problems

  • Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [45]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
  • The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [46]
  • Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [47]

Future meetings

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

19:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

MfD nomination of MediaWiki:User:Main Page/NewMainPage.css/sandbox.css

MediaWiki:User:Main Page/NewMainPage.css/sandbox.css, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Old/sandbox MediaWiki CSS pages and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of MediaWiki:User:Main Page/NewMainPage.css/sandbox.css during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Izno (talk) 17:07, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

I need your help

Hi. I keep intermittently being logged out or receiving a big yellow banner saying hat I can't edit because my IP has been blocked. On 2020-05-10 16:40 I was made 'IP block exempt'. My IPs are dynamic, they belong to the ToT, the Thai government owned national telephone corporation. This one involves redacted . Anything you can do about this for me would be much appreciated. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:20, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung I renewed your IPBE for another year, let me know if you still have issues. — xaosflux Talk 22:44, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you enormously. I suppose it's highly possible that some trolls in Thailand might be abusing the th.Wiki. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:56, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung there is a global block on meta for an address range that includes the IP you mentioned, it is marked anon-only so it isn't supposed to affect logged in users - but sometimes glitches happen. — xaosflux Talk 23:05, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:09, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 August 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Request for peek at previous versions of Alpha Kappa Sigma

I'm considering trying to pull together an article about Alpha Kappa Sigma National Legal Fraternity, a historically Jewish Fraternity founded at the University of Maryland law school that merged with Nu Beta Epsilon in 1940. I'd like to find out before I do so whether the (five!) deleted versions of the article Alpha Kappa Sigma are about that group, about the local fraternity at Northeastern University, the local sorority at College of St. Benedict or somewhere else. If the article is about the Legal Fraternity (which I think is unlikely), I'd like a copy of the most coherent version retrieved. If it is for one of the locals, I'd just like to know which. Thank You.Naraht (talk) 14:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

@Naraht: Hello!

As you noted, Alpha Kappa Sigma has been deleted five times for advertising or failing Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#A7. In looking at the prior versions, there doesn't seem to be anything that you should reuse as they are all short, appears to be original reseach, and lack reliable sources. Some of the prior article texts include:

  • "A local social fraternity at Northeastern University."
  • "Alpha Kappa Sigma is a service sorority at the College of Saint Benedict"
  • "It is the second oldest Fraternity at Northeastern University"
  • "fraternity was founded at Northeastern University"

If you really want to go down this path, first please review Wikipedia:Credible claim of significance, and perhaps some of the other articles in Category:Professional_legal_fraternities_and_sororities_in_the_United_States. Then, despite you being an established editor and autopatrolled, launch it at Draft:Alpha Kappa Sigma, drop {{subst:AfC submission/draftnew}} on it, and let another reviewer accept it and move it to the article. I think that is the best way to overcome the bad history of this subject. Feel free to ignore this and just launch the page, but you may expect some resistance from others.

Does that help? If you really want a specific old revision let me know which of those quotes above is from the one you want and I'll dig it out for you. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 14:30, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

This *completely* answered my question. All of the previous versions are to the groups at either Northeastern (though old enough it is *possible* to have an article) or College of St. Benedict.
As for this article, I'm going to take sort of a halfway path, create it in a sandbox and have another member of the Wikiproject (WP:FRAT) look at it.Naraht (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
Sounds good, best wishes on your new article. — xaosflux Talk 15:29, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanx. And as a note, there are eight pages in Category:Professional_legal_fraternities_and_sororities_in_the_United_States, I'm the original creator for four of the eight. (Gamma Eta Gamma, Kappa Beta Pi, Nu Beta Epsilon, and Phi Delta Delta). :) Naraht (talk) 15:46, 1 August 2022 (UTC)


About TFA

I thought it was protected? [48] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia I only "move protected" it because it was a link from the main page. If you think it needs edit protection, fee free to list at WP:RFPP. SPP may be appropriate, aligned with other links off the MP such as Wikipedia:About and Wikipedia:Community portal. — xaosflux Talk 18:51, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
OK .. I'll just keep an eye on it then ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:26, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-31

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

Changes later this week

Future changes

Future meetings

  • This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.

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

21:20, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

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

Administrator changes

readded Valereee
removed Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
  • An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

  • The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
  • Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
  • Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
  • Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Creating template:TemplateData

Hey Xaos, since you deleted/moved the last incarnation, I wanted to check with you before I moved on this. I have built a very primitive, but functioning template akin to {{documentation}} for creating and building TemplateData at a standardized subpage (/TemplateData) and transcluding onto /doc pages, and I'd like to house the template at {{TemplateData}}. But I definitely wanted to check with you beforehand that this is okay, since we have a previous deletion we are dealing with. Thanks, VanIsaac, MPLL contWpWS 04:11, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Expand for current TemplateData functioning


Yubimoji table

Yubimoji
A I U E O
-
K
S
T
N
H
M
Y
R
W

@Vanisaac:, thanks for the note. My prior deletion was solely related to some technical housekeeping, other editors worked on bringing over a template from the German Wikipedia, which is now at Template:Format TemplateData / Module:Format TemplateData, you may want to check in with those efforts first - but there is no issue if you'd like to use that page title now. — xaosflux Talk 09:10, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, I took the plunge. I have had to stop by at MediaWiki to see how I can program in so that the Manage TemplateData widget/button recognizes a subpage besides /doc for holding TemplateData, that I'll need to get worked out before going full bore on implementing this. But much thanks for your help. VanIsaac, MPLL contWpWS 06:12, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-32

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future meetings

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

19:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:Information.svg

A tag has been placed on File:Information.svg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a missing or corrupt image or an empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:00, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Ummm what! Replying on your talk to ensure you get this. — xaosflux Talk 17:23, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-33

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

Recent changes

  • The Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

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

21:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Test edits of user talk pages

I would like to point out that User talk:Example is a fully-protected page. Your test edits there would probably be more appropriate at User talk:Sandbox. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:45, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@Andrybak the protection reason there is really just to help prevent AFC reviewers from making errors, but for some tests there is a bit of another difference, in that Special:CentralAuth/Sandbox doesn't exist on enwiki, while User:Example does. — xaosflux Talk 12:33, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
If whatever was breaking that AFC workflow is better, we should be able to reduce that page again. — xaosflux Talk 12:37, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
Just a note, I force merged User:Sandbox to our user table, so now it can also be used as if it was a user in tests. — xaosflux Talk 13:26, 19 August 2022 (UTC)


Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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RfA count

Regarding this edit to User:Amalthea/RfX/RfA count: won't the slowdown discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 197 § Loading Watchlist very slow still be an issue? isaacl (talk) 01:54, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl it could be. I've been keeping an eye on it, and haven't seen the issue reoccur yet, have you? I opened Wikipedia:Bot_requests#RFA_Count_Updater to see about a replacement bot. — xaosflux Talk 09:50, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
@Isaacl a new bot is already going! — xaosflux Talk 14:00, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
I haven't checked, but I think the RfAs since then haven't had as many participants as the one that was open at the time of the slowdown (given that one set a new record for participation, and I think there might have been another RfA open at the same time)? The Lua module in question could be modified to count the RfAs without parsing the text of each to count the votes, which would speed up its processing time. That being said, since the value is being transcluded into watchlist messages, it's probably better for it to be taken from a bot-updated page, particularly since it doesn't change that quickly, and strict accuracy isn't that critical. isaacl (talk) 15:20, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Edit filter log

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T315884

Hello, Xaosflux, I hope you are well. I am contacting you today because I would like to let you know something about the edit filter log. I contacted you because I don’t know who else I should and I noticed you are a bureaucrat which I believe is admins who can do more technical stuff etc. Basically, it seems that when a user is renamed, all their previous filter trips disappear. This has happened because since using this username, I’ve only tripped the filter three times, although it seems that when I was using a previous username, I triggered an edit filter back then too, but it isn’t displaying on my filter log. I don’t know if this is an issue which admins are aware of although I really think that when users are renamed, the filter triggers should go with them, even if it was on a previous account. I was previously known as 'Blackazz', 'Blackazz968', and ‘BethandKirk65'. here is a page where I triggered a filter before I was known as Blanchey. Have a great day, Blanchey (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

  • @Blanchey: thank you for the report! This isn't something especially related to us bureaucrats, but I happen to have technical experience in this area. If you come across other possible bugs related to the the Edit Filter specifically, reporting them at WP:EFN is the best place, if you come across misc technical issues in general, WP:VPT is another good venue. Back to your specific issue though: Good news: the logs are not lost, they are just very hard to find. For example, here is a log hit under your prior username, Special:AbuseLog/29691555. There are some bugs in the abuselog related to user renames, however I think a patch for this could be built. I've opened a bug report at phab:T315884 that you can use to follow progress related to the search. xaosflux Talk 14:02, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, Xaosflux Blanchey (talk) 14:04, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

How did I end up here?

NGL...my ADHD AF mind brought me here for some reason. Why? No clue, but have a great day, I guess! :P

- Emma Starr 2601:980:8280:B380:556B:13A5:B1CD:BF6B (talk) 20:12, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-34

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

  • Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [53][54]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [55]

Future changes

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00:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Issues

First, can you fix this for me? Second, I am new at IRC, and was recently advised to request a cloak, despite already having one: \S/...but seriously, my IP is already cloaked (I think) and approved on WP because of my unique situation. I was able to login to IRC but without a password or formal registration (which I don't know how to do beyond what I've already done). m( Help! Atsme 💬 📧 11:45, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme Hi there, I'm not sure what it is you need help with? Your first link is just a link to my usertalk on metawiki. An "IRC Cloak" replaces your dns/ip with text, while on IRC - it is only used on IRC and is different from things that you may use on-wiki. You can read more about those here: meta:IRC/Cloaks. A few notes on cloaks: (a) you have to authenticate to nickserv on IRC for the cloak to activate, so you should do that before joining channels. (b) If you had an old cloak from when IRC was on freenode, you will need to request a new one. (c) The process to request a cloak is free, and is mostly done by a bot on IRC, using the directions on that page I linked to. — xaosflux Talk 12:46, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
I thought IP exempt applied to meta as well because I had no issues previously as evidenced here. I can edit fine on Commons, so it appears to be Meta only. Also, since I am IP exempt (VPN), do I even need a cloak on IRC? Atsme 💬 📧 12:59, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
  • @Atsme:, two things:
    1. IPBE is per-project, and is only needed on projects where your IP is blocked on that specific project. You have GIPBE on meta-wiki, however that only works against "global blocks". Are you currently blocked form edits, on meta-wiki, by a local block - and are asking for local IPBE there?
    2. IRC has nothing to do with account settings on wiki projects. They may or may not allow you to join the server and/or channels based upon your presented IP. If you don't care how you are presented on IRC, you may not need a cloak. Some channels may require a cloak for channel flags, you would have to ask them about that
  • — xaosflux Talk 13:14, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I presume so - the message begins: You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason: Your account or IP address has been blocked. XXX.XXX.XX.X/XX, you have been blocked by ‪Hasley‬ until 21:14, 16 March 2025, because: Open proxy/Webhost: See the help page if you are affected. What can I do now? You can email ‪Hasley‬ or another administrator (list) to contest the block. Atsme 💬 📧 13:30, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Figure skating at the Olympics

Hello! Is it possible for you to create articles about Figure skating at the Olympics. If you can create articles about events at the Olympics from 1964 until 1998 I mean the events with missing articles. If you can create a article for the Men's singles at the 1968 Winter Olympics then it should be named Figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics – Men's singles and the same follows for Pair skating and Women's singles. And also for Pair skating and also for Ice dancing at the 1976 Winter Olympics then it should be Figure skating at the 1976 Winter Olympics – Ice dancing. The sport and year should be in front of the event. It is articles created for the events in the Olympics from 1924 until 1960. Yours sincerely, Sondre 88.88.4.178 (talk) 20:21, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi 88, see Help:Your first article, it will teach you about how to write an article. — xaosflux Talk 21:22, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
I can't read articles because my username is blocked. It is much easier when that is opened. Thanks anyways.
Yours sincerely, Sondre 88.88.4.178 (talk) 21:42, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
No sort of on-wiki block should prevent you from reading any article. Also, your IP address is not blocked and you can create an draft by using the Article Wizard button on that page. If you can't please let me know exactly what error you are getting. — xaosflux Talk 21:45, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-35

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [57]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
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  • The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

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23:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:02, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

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

Guideline and policy news

  • A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
  • An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
  • The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
  • Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Time in WikiLove

Hello!

I'm trying to make it so our WikiLove sections come with a timestamp in SqWiki.

Apparently this edit doesn't work. This was the end result with that: Check at the bottom of the page

If I don't include the nowiki tags, the actual date gets substituted, as it happened here.

Any idea how can I achieve the end result I'm looking for? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:03, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi so you want it to look sort of like this: w:sq:Përdoruesi diskutim:Xaosflux ep? — xaosflux Talk 17:08, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
In which case, I suggest you give up on forcing the formatting, and just use the same trick used in the "text" section. text: '{{Medalje autorësie}}–~~' + '~~' - just add a third +'~' as 5 ~'s make a timestamp. — xaosflux Talk 17:11, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Exactly like that. — Klein Muçi (talk) 17:13, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Unfortunately that wouldn't fix the problem I'm trying to solve.
Scenario: A user receives 3 barnstars in its talkpage. The said user will have a talkpage with 3 sections which share the same title. This creates problems with wikilinks. — Klein Muçi (talk) 17:18, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: why wouldn't it fix it? It should make a section like this:

Test section 17:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

That should be unique. — xaosflux Talk 17:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Oh! You meant adding that to the header! I thought you were suggesting to add that to the signature. That looks like a pretty good suggestion. I'll try it. — Klein Muçi (talk) 18:12, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi yup, suggestion was to add that 5x~ hack in to the header, it should invoke the signature routine and put the timedate stamp (in the projects standard format). — xaosflux Talk 18:29, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes. It does exactly what I wanted it to do. Thank you! :)) — Klein Muçi (talk) 18:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Welcome! — xaosflux Talk 18:38, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Can you maybe try and give me a barnstar in SqWiki so I can try it out? It doesn't matter which one. — Klein Muçi (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Actually, just got given one by another person but it's not working as intended. :/ This is the current code for our extension: w:sq:MediaWiki:WikiLove.js
And this is the results I get: w:sq:Përdoruesi diskutim:Klein Muçi#Medalje (2 shtator 2022 23:02 (CEST))
I should be getting this instead: Medalje dhënë më ~~~~~
I keep getting the old version MediaWiki:WikiLove.js (Diff 2471802) with the date and the brackets. Something is preventing the new one for getting used, if that makes sense. — Klein Muçi (talk) 21:15, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Ring-a-ding, baby! ;-)

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 22:57, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
@Oshwah: back at you. — xaosflux Talk 01:01, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux - Just read your response. Thanks, and have a great rest of your day! :-) Best - ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 01:04, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-36

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [58][59]

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23:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Inclusion confusion

Hello Xaos!
I'm having a pretty hard time making something work according to my will.
We have this page which transcludes this page as its intro. I want the intro to not have section edit links but the page itself to have. Anyway I can make that possible with "noinclude", "includeonly" tags and the needed magicword? — Klein Muçi (talk) 12:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

  • @Klein Muçi: like how these are? w:sq:Përdoruesi:Xaosflux/sandbox3 (which uses this other page as its header: w:sq:Përdoruesi:Xaosflux/sandbox3/intro). — xaosflux Talk 13:35, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    No. There should be no edit links in this section. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Klein Muçi On a finalized page you can not make section edit links appear on some sections, but not other section automatically. You can try hacking around it by making manual section edit links, see w:sq:Përdoruesi:Xaosflux/sandbox3 now for an example. It's not great and makes the TOC a bit funny. — xaosflux Talk 15:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    And is VERY manual, so this would not work if the page is ever going to create new sections. — xaosflux Talk 15:18, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, I was just going to say that. (I didn't know that was an option so I learned something new anyway.) That's our Questions and Answers page (think of teahouse) so the page continuously has new sections generated automatically be new users. How about removing the sections on the header by using html headers? They don't have edit links, no? I got reminded of this by your method. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:21, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    I think the best approach would be to not use sections in the intro - unless it is important that these are in the table of contents (is it?) — xaosflux Talk 15:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Hah! The html way actually worked!
    w:sq:Ndihmë:Pyetje e Përgjigje
    ...unless it is important that these are in the table of contents (is it?)
    Sort of. Those are the FAQ. The page is designed with the idea that people come and look at the FAQ in the form of the "list of questions" in the TOC and click that "link from the list" to read its answer. That's how it looks in the eyes of juniors editors anyway. If they don't find the answer they're looking for, they click the blue button to make a new question. Anything happens without having to scroll the page, in the intro.
    Anyway it worked with the html headings so I'm glad with that result. I wonder if it should be like this though. :/ Shouldn't there be an easy ways to achieve the same result with -include- tags? Talking about "hybrid pages" where you want some sections to have edit links and some not. Or maybe a template to put around the heading and remove the edit link of it - when there is no page transclusion involved. Apparently there is a template to add individual manual edit links so a template to remove them individually should also exist? — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    No, because "magic words" are expected to have page-wide affect. Keep in mind, most of the design of all of this is about how to format primary content pages. — xaosflux Talk 15:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Fair enough. And what about templates which you can wrap around normal headings to remove the edit links on them? — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    That concept doesn't exist, largely because a section gets built from the wikitext. You could submit a phab feature request to build something to "suppress a specified edit section link" — xaosflux Talk 15:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Think we've done a few HTML hack arounds for project pages too. — xaosflux Talk 15:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    I would but I guess I'd be faced with "you can use the HTML way, what do you exactly want?" and I wouldn't know how to continue from there. Maybe I'll pass this time. But thank you anyway for your help! — Klein Muçi (talk) 16:38, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2022-37

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Recent changes

  • The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [60]

Changes later this week

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01:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

CSS help

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317944
Image we'd like to include

Can you help me with a looking-simple request in CSS SqWiki? Try to view a random old version of an article there. You'll notice some text below the title notifying you that that is an old version you're viewing. Is there a simple way to include the image of the clock beside that body of text, aligned with it? What would I need to change in our Common.css page to do that? (If you scroll down to its bottom you'll notice that we have already changed some details concerning that.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:54, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi when you view an old version (example of a random old version here) a div wraps that with the following classes: mw-message-box-warning mw-message-box mw-revision. Unlike many other parts of the interface there is not a wrapper message for this where you just insert text/media. I do not suggest hacking an image in via hardcoding an image path in to your global.css file for something like this which will almost never be displayed (less than a fraction of a percent of your page views would ever use that). If you insist on doing this, you would likely need to force it in via the css background-image parameter. For what it is worth, sqwiki has a similar output for viewing old version as other large wikis already (enwiki, dewiki, eswiki, ptwiki, commonswiki) - none of which have tried such a hack. — xaosflux Talk 13:29, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but the mentioned wikis have the red background in that part which we have removed. There is currently this edit notice in SqWiki about editing old revisions which incorporates the said image and this would be an extension of that. We're just exchanging the red background for the image. Or not. We were trying to see how it goes. We may resort to ditch the image altogether and just increase a bit the font size of that text. As you say, this is mostly relevant to admins which perform maintenance duties on pages, so in other words, me and 1-2 other users currently.
How would I be able to utilize background-image to incorporate that image there? — Klein Muçi (talk) 14:40, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi the primary difference is that MediaWiki:Editingold is a message, you can do lots with it; there is no corresponding message for the viewing old banner. I'm not even sure if the classes are purely unique, you'd have to try to target maybe divs with the "mw-revision" on them and try around with lots of image sizes and parameters to background-image. You can experiment by putting it in your own User:User/commons.css. You can read about that CSS property here, I'm not going to spend design time on it though. (phab:T232415 suggests that mw-revision may be unique here).
I think a better solution would be a feature request to make MediaWiki:Viewingold message similar to MediaWiki:Editingold, as that would allow easier customization of the messages. — xaosflux Talk 14:50, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah, now I understood what a background image really is. It's literally its name. That looks like a very crude hack. I was expecting something like "set this image beside this class of text" not "set this image on the background and hack it so it appears beside the text". :P
How would a message such as MediaWiki:Viewingold actually work in practice? I haven't happened to see a lot of messages that fire up while not being in editing mode. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:24, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi it's a hack because CSS is supposed to be about styling things, not about inserting "content" (such as media). For example, css should be used to change the borders of an image container from square to round, but the image really belongs in HTML.
You likely see messages all time and just don't realize it! For example, look at the box at the bottom of our Special:Contributions/Klein_Muçi, that is from MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer; look at the top of our Special:NewPagesFeed, that box is from Mediawiki:pagetriage-welcome. — xaosflux Talk 15:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
I understand now. Hmm, well, I'm gonna try the Phab way then. Thank you! — Klein Muçi (talk) 08:39, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

center template

if you don't like the center template you can change <center> to <div style="text-align:center;"> bc <center> is listed as an obsolete tag per WP:HTML5#center. Sheep (talk) 14:03, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll prob get around to that one day. — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2022-38

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

Recent changes

  • Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [62][63]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
  • In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [64][65]

Future changes

  • In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

ScottishFinnishRadish bureaucrat chat

Hi Xaosflux, I have started a bureaucrat discussion for ScottishFinnishRadish's RfA. It can be found at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/ScottishFinnishRadish/Bureaucrat chat. Thanks in advance. Acalamari 01:44, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Edit filter oddity

Hello, Xaosflux! I recently saw an edit in SqWiki from an anonymous user that shouldn't have been possible to make with our current edit filters. I tested it out myself logged out and yes, the filter works fine and it stops me from saving the edit. Any idea how could such an edit have been saved? — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:25, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi the edit filter is not absolute, if it times out at all it will allow an edit. This can happen if the condition limit is hit (see the top of Special:AbuseFilter for one stat on that) or for other timing reasons. If it is a one-off, it is likely not worth investigating. — xaosflux Talk 10:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
see the top of Special:AbuseFilter for one stat on that
What exactly I should be seeing in that page? I'm a bit confused... — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:57, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi hmmm, appears that sqwiki is broken for this. I opened phab:T318162. — xaosflux Talk 13:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Again confused. Are you sure about that? We do have the message Mediawiki:Abusefilter-status appearing in the header of Special:AbuseFilter in SqWiki and SqQuote. Just checked... — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:54, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
What I meant when I asked What exactly I should be seeing in that page? is that I don't understand what those stats exactly mean, be those in EnWiki, SqWiki or SqQuote. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
If the "condition limit" is hit, then the filter knows it missed things (and the default is BYPASS). The filter can also time out and not know it timed out. When an edit is made, waiting for a result from the abusefilter is not guaranteed, if a result is not received quick enough for any reason, the edit goes through. And that banner is showing again now, not sure where it was earlier. — xaosflux Talk 16:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
So... If the first percentage in that header is somehow high I should be worried that edits are somehow bypassing the filters, right? Put in easier terms.
And that's weird. I haven't done any changes to the said projects in the meantime. :/ — Klein Muçi (talk) 16:15, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
If the first number gets high, it may mean you have too many, or too many complicated, filters. The process is explicitly build to fail-safe (allow edit) because if for any reason the abusefilter extension lags etc the every edit on the entire project would otherwise be stopped. Unless there is a pattern of a specific type of edit being skipped all the time, it's really not worth trying to figure out why one single edit didn't trip. — xaosflux Talk 16:57, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
I see. Well, thank you for the information then. :) — Klein Muçi (talk) 17:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Moved from

Please stop using shortcuts in {{moved from}}. It's unhelpful. Nardog (talk) 21:36, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Nardog I'll try to take care, but I can't see linking to be "unhelpful", especially when it is a very popular venue, especially one related to the moved venue, and especially with the default introduction of preview popups being on. — xaosflux Talk 21:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
When the whole point of a template is to inform something to the reader, using it in a way that requires such assumptions seems defeating the purpose to me. The reader shouldn't be expected to know, say, what VPP means and that it differs from VP(P)R. Nardog (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

SFR

I think you pressed the wrong button just now regarding userrights. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:42, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Chris troutman thanks you caught me in the middle of everything, was trying to make sure the candidate got the congratulations note :) — xaosflux Talk 21:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Shuffling candidates

Regarding these edits: I was thinking that someone could implement a Javascript script that would execute with a custom link that could be labelled something like "See candidates in your own personalized shuffled order". It would require an extra click but would implement the 2020 proposal in an opt-in manner (I appreciate the effect would probably be too limited to achieve the benefits that were being hypothesized by the proposal supporters). I'm lukewarm on making it easier for anyone to purge the page. I think the page is going to get a lot of random shuffles that way. On the other hand, most people probably aren't returning to the page that often, so it likely won't bother a lot of people. isaacl (talk) 15:27, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl a click-to-load js would still have the page random, and that could maybe use a client side (device specific as well) local storage object to hold something to reorder it, on that device - but you'd have to click the button everytime you came to the page since pagescripts aren't a thing - and that would be quite an abuse of common.js otherwise. The purge button I added (which if you think is a really bad idea we can scrap) is no different then just hitting purge on the page controls eleswhere. Feel free to start mocking up a sandbox page with on-click js for review though. It looks like this years RFC is about to void that prior request though (mostly for the technical issues of noone built it). I'm not sure click-to-load is a good fix though, the user workflow would be: (a) Go to the page, seeing the candidates in random order; (b) Click on the "use a different, but consistent for me, random order" button (c) have the page reordered. This order would also not match the ballot order. — xaosflux Talk 15:57, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I know it would require an extra click every time, which I tried to capture in the wording of the label for the hypothetical link. Not matching the ballot order is going to be a problem in any case. If I recall correctly, the ballot order is random, and even if it isn't, it's not synched with the random order that's produced now by purging. Because the overall benefits aren't there if the randomization only happens for a tiny fraction of the readers, I don't think it's worth doing a click-for-personalized-shuffled order. (Sorry, I should have clarified that in the original post.) Editors who are only trying to combat their own biases can just choose to purge the page. I'm guessing that most editors don't know how to manually trigger a purge (I don't know of any default page controls with a purge action that are linked from the page, for instance; I just add "?action=purge" to the URL), so having a link is handy. isaacl (talk) 16:18, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Restore/undelete

IIRC, you know way more about these things than I do. I noticed recently when restoring deleted articles that the button changed from "Restore" to "Undelete", but the admin instructions above the button still say click on Restore. Apparently, whoever changed the button missed that part. What's the best way to report this? And if you say through Phabricator, then someone other than me should do it. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Bbb23 that message seems to be enwiki local customized, I updated it just now in Special:Diff/1111791922; let me know if you see anything wrong. — xaosflux Talk 23:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I had no idea. There was one other instance of it in the message, so I changed that one, too, a moment ago. Please double-check me.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:32, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

delete article

Hello, I nominated an article Sanaa Al-Haib for deletion because it does not achieve noticeability, you can check all sources are links that have nothing to do with the article or are social networking sites. I put a delete template for the article but the article creator is constantly removing it. فاطمة الزهراء (talk) 19:30, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

@فاطمة الزهراء: (talk page watcher) You are trying to speedy delete for a reason that is obviously not valid. You are trying to delete because it has nothing that shows it is notable when clearly there is. If you think it should be deleted try WP:AFD instead. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
^---- yes, just use WP:AFD — xaosflux Talk 22:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-39

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  • Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

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  • Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [66]
  • Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [67] [68]
  • In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [69]

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 02:29, 28 September 2022 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 02:29, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf thank you, that has been handled now. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 09:35, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Yep no problem! I actually had the tab to send you an email open a few minutes before I actually sent it since I wanted to see if you or someone else would catch it first. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:10, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Right to autopatrol

Dear Xaosflux, I have been contrinuting to Wikipedia for more than 2 years now. And I have got quiet a lot experience since. My recently created articles are all now getting reviewed by experienced reviewers and I think I am on the right path. As most of my created pages are getting confirmed I think now I can create articles with autopatrol in order to reduce the workload.

Thank you for consideration Lostinniagarafalls (talk) 01:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Lostinniagarafalls as another admin just declined that at WP:PERM/AP I'm not going to override that. What now? Well first, lack of autopatroll will not stop you from authoring or editing articles. Second, review Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline and Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Entertainers before attempting to create new articles on those subjects. Third, when you feel prepared - create a new article again. If you find that your new articles are regularly getting reviewed positively (and not being nominated for deletion), feel free to apply at PERM again (though I'd also wait at least 6 months). Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 01:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Okey I will adhere your instructions. Thank you so much for your consideration Lostinniagarafalls (talk) 04:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

help

Greetings @Xaosflux

I have seen you are an importer.

May you please help my wiki with importing templates? I am an admin there and I need your help.Templates needed are only 5, infobox person, infobox president, infobox country , infobox king/queen/monarchy, and infobox artist.Your quick help will be highly appreciated.

Thank you Tumbuka Arch (talk) 14:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Tumbuka Arch hello, I think enwiki is already in tumwiki's transwiki configuration, to check go to: w:tum:Special:Import and look under the source wiki drop-down box. "Importing" our Template:Infobox person template is not a simple matter, (Go to this view and scroll down, you will see it is dependent on a huge number of other templates. We have a lot of odd edge-cases on enwwiki that you may not need. But if you want to try to duplicate our set up, you will need to bring in and localize most of those templates and modules. A draft set of instructions for copying these is available at mw:Manual:Importing Wikipedia infoboxes tutorial.
If en is not available on your import list, let me know and I can help you get a request for that going. — xaosflux Talk 16:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Typo?

Hi Xaosflux! I was wondering if your comment here was missing the word "not" ("making a judgement") and thought you might like to know just in case it was a typo. DanCherek (talk) 12:31, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@DanCherek eek, thank you! I inserted a correction! — xaosflux Talk 14:05, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Regarding adminship elections

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T301180

Hi Xaosflux. I was just revisiting some perennial proposals in my mind, and mentioned to @Barkeep49 that adminship elections from last year was blocked by the lack of any way to hold the elections. He mentioned that you may have figured out how to hold it locally and it occurred to me that I had forgotten you were looking into it. Did you have any luck? How blocked are local elections from a technical standpoint, in your opinion? WormTT(talk) 13:45, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@Worm That Turned they are still blocked. While the stewards are still exempted due to necessity, the primary blocking issue seems to be all about how securepoll manages private data and makes it available to scrutineers. (When administering an election, IP and useragent collections for all voters is gathered, and when the election admin views the list they are given all of that data at once. That this happens doesn't seem to be whats bothering legal, but that a "log entry" that you got it isn't generated is) A possible workaround for our use case could be a feature change to prohibit access to the secret data on securepoll, but still let it be used. I don't think that would be showstopper for us. Yes, it makes it harder to easily find socks that voted - but you would still have a list of 'voters', and we have that in today's RFA's already. A challenge related to changes is that there is limited volunteer and basically no staffers that are spending much time working on feature requests for securepoll. — xaosflux Talk 14:01, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
See also phab:T301180. — xaosflux Talk 14:02, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
See also phab:T290808. — xaosflux Talk 14:06, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the update :) I'll have a read through. WormTT(talk) 14:15, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
phab:T152972 is about the logging issue, I believe. T290808, if I understand correctly, is about how SecurePoll data could be accessed by someone in the right user group, even if they aren't configured as an election admin. Do you think that knowing English Wikipedia is considering having admin elections would help with prioritizing the issues? isaacl (talk) 23:26, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Isaacl having more communities say they want this could help convince developers to work on it, but they are mostly volunteers too. — xaosflux Talk 00:22, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-40

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

  • Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [70] [71]
  • The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
  • Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [72] [73]
  • The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
  • The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:22, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

admin elections

Following up on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals § Closed: 8B Admin elections: I was wondering if you had learned anything through your inquiries to the WMF or through other sources regarding the feasibility of using SecurePoll for admin elections? isaacl (talk) 00:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl see User_talk:Xaosflux#Regarding_adminship_elections above; lots of feet dragging. We had some samples working on testwiki, but then they ripped it all out and it still hasn't comeback :( — xaosflux Talk 09:53, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply—clearly I hadn't looked for relevant sections on your talk page. isaacl (talk) 23:27, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Exploring a coordinates RfC

Hi Xaosflux! I was very much persuaded by your comments at T281974 about how coordinates are data, not metadata. I conclude from it that we should not be displaying coordinates at the top right as that space is designated for metadata, leaving them instead for infoboxes or somewhere else on the page. The transition to Vector 2022 seems like a rare opportunity to make that sort of change. However, I don't anticipate that a straight "should we remove them" RfC would currently pass. Do you have any thoughts about how we might be able to move the discussion on this forward? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb I do think that coordinates are useful, and putting them somewhere consistent on articles about places on Earth would be a good thing. I certainly still support the notion that this information is about 'the subject", not about "the page" (meaning it is not meta-data). What I think is missing in phab:F35348774 is definition within the "content" area. Who ever mocked that up seems to support "infobox" type layouts - but those are also arbitrary. When looking at a page such as this one, I'm pretty much fine with the coordinates being at the top of the "content" area there (the top of mw-body-content perhaps) - if there was a good way to target that spot. — xaosflux Talk 00:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


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