USER TALK:STEFENTOWER ARCHIVE 21

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Tech News: 2017-13

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

Recent changes

When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [1]

Problems

Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [2] [3]

Changes this week

New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 ( calendar).

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

14:47, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Changes to the article on Hobart Freeman

You removed the source documents for three references I inserted into this article, and requested citation of third party sources.

However:

1) There are NO third party sources.
2) The points made in consequence to those references are important and valid.
3) I'm probably the only person who has retained these ephemera.

Consequently, they either need to be left in, or referenced someway as ephemera, in which case you'll need to direct me to the appropriate protocol. If there is no such protocol, then one should be created.

Jon
Jgk168421 ( talk) 12:59, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

@ Jgk168421: Thanks for writing me about this. Since you admit there are no third-party sources, I don't know how 1) anyone can verify the documents; 2) we can demonstrate the relevance/importance of the documents. We can't simply decide they are important on our own. I'm afraid they are going to have to be kept out of the article, because including them goes against WP:OR and WP:V. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 13:19, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Opioid use disorder

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Opioid use disorder. Legobot ( talk) 04:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Thank you for facilitating the successful move of Amul Thapar after my botched efforts :) Marquardtika ( talk) 17:19, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

The SPI you initiated

I have noticed that user as well. You might want to add to your report these two confirmed which would not be stale - User:MarketMartha and User:EdelweissofNE. Same incremental edits, same insistence on "upscale" and sole focus on New England Malls. Also, blocked one week before the creation of the reported account. Happy editing! Scr★pIron^IV 17:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and you also might want to add IP 67.246.36.38. Same user, same edits. Scr★pIron^IV 19:06, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@ ScrapIronIV: thank you for the tips, as I do think there is a relation. I have updated the case accordingly. I had already noted the similar edits coming from IP 67.246.36.38. Feel free to add any additional information to the case that you think may help. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 19:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

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

Recent changes

The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [4]
The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [5]
English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [6]

Problems

Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [7]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [8]

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

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Category closure

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_March_27#Category:People_associated_with_Muhammad_Ali, I noticed you have some plans for follow-up. Marcocapelle ( talk) 17:23, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Categorization

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Categorization. Legobot ( talk) 04:26, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Bobby Osborne

I've had a look at the revision in question and cant substantiate any Copyvio problems, as the template is only suggested for obvious cases of copyvio I've raised the issue at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2017 April 8 and removed the template per the templates instructions. Amortias ( T)( C) 12:55, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@ Amortias: OK, fair enough. I was going by the appearance and admission by the editor who added it that the material came straight from liner notes. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 12:59, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

A Quote for you

	science & values
	Reconciling of science with values make life exquisite.~ Mohammad Khatami ސ ޚ ލ ٰ ا ( talk) 16:01, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

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

Recent changes

Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [9]

Changes this week

Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [10]
New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [11]
The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [12]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April ( calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

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

18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Lithuania

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Lithuania. Legobot ( talk) 04:27, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Edits

My edits made to the subject Shaun King were correctly cited so there was no reason for any complaints to be made about me. Campbell301 ( talk • contribs) 03:09, 12 April 2016‎ (UTC)

@ Campbell301:, the consensus appears to not be in agreement with including the material. Besides, you were blocked because of edit-warring and nothing else. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 19:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

About becoming an administrator

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Thank you!

Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 03:21, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Come on....

SUrely this is not a good use of our time to be debating this. [13]. WP:ASOF dates always reflect the latest date at which the fact was true. It is true now, so we update the date. Please don't edit war over such a silly issue. — Amakuru ( talk) 08:09, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@ Amakuru: since I never "edit-warred" over this, I miss that point. Otherwise, presidential elections are obviously every 4 years, so the information cannot reasonably change until 2020. I appeal to common sense per WP:IAR on this one. I even got thanked for my revert. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 11:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Alright then, apologies for saying it was an edit war, obviously it wasn't. It still seems wrong to me - "as of" is usually used to mean "currently", but allowing for the fact that the information may change. If something says "as of <earlier year>" then usually it either needs removing, if the fact is no longer correct, or updating to the current year, if the fact is still correct. Keeping it at 2016 just makes it look out of date to me, and no doubt to other readers who may not be familiar with the four year election cycle. Anyway, no matter, I'd appreciate if you would change it back to 2017, but if you're certain you're correct in this matter then I'll defer to your better judgement! Thanks — Amakuru ( talk) 13:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. Legobot ( talk) 04:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

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

Recent changes

You can add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: /info/en/?search=Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [14]
You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [15]
The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [16]

Problems

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [17]
From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [18] [19]

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

19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

ACICS Accreditation

Please refer to an ongoing discussion on ACICS:

/info/en/?search=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Universities

"A few months ago, the U.S. Department of Education stripped recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), a national accreditor that focused on for-profit institutions in the U.S. The accreditor has sued the federal government to retain this recognition but as of right now the government's decision stands. The 245 institutions that were previously accredited by ACICS have all received approval from the Department of Education to continue receiving federal financial aid for up to 18 months while they seek a new accreditor. The question on the table: How do we describe the accreditation status of these institutions? One editor has begun changing the articles of the affected institutions to describe them as "unaccredited." I'm not sure that is entirely accurate as that is how we describe institutions that are not accredited at all, usually because they are diploma mills or scams that have never been accredited or in a few rare instances because they have ideological objections to the process of accreditation. Since in most cases "unaccredited" is shorthand for "scam" my primary worry is that simply saying "unaccredited" paints many of these institutions with a broad brush that is the wrong color. Should we say that these institutions were previously accredited by ACICS and are now seeking a new accreditor without actually saying that they're "unaccredited?" Are they "provisionally accredited" right now (personally, I lean away from this option because it sounds too technical and I think it's actually language used by some accreditors for institutions that are in the process of applying)? Are there other options or considerations? I haven't yet found any good language in other reliable sources but I imagine there is some out there for someone else who has some more time to look! There are 245 institutions that are affected by this so I really think we should figure out a consistent approach for all of the articles affected by this issue. Feel free to drop notices to this discussion in the appropriate places or expand to this to an RfC or something similar. ElKevbo (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

The term "provisionally accredited" is not too technical to me. It is accurate in describing the 18-month transition period and the steps they are undergoing to apply for a new accreditor. Although it may appear harsh to suggest that ACICS schools could be diploma mills, previous cases indicate that ACICS has been an unreliable accreditor for a long time. ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges are notable schools that collapsed under ACICS accreditation. Refer to Herguan University, which was accredited by ACICS even after its former president was jailed for one year due to student visa fraud. Northwestern Polytechnic University and Silicon Valley University have been reported by BuzzFeed to be operating "upmarket" visa mills and abusing tax laws to make more profit. Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mollyhensleyclancy/inside-the-school-that-abolished-the-f-and-raked-in-the-cash In California, ACICS schools are encouraged to apply for full approval to operate in the state by using the "application for non-accredited institutions". Does this suggest that they are currently unaccredited? Source: http://www.bppe.ca.gov/schools/acics_ltr.pdf Bcf1291 (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2017 (UTC) I think "provisionally accredited" fairly accurately describes that they are recognised by the Dept of Ed for a limited period but that it is uncertain whether they will remain accredited beyond that period, it's certainly preferable to either "unaccredited" or plain "accredited", both of which are potentially misleading. They are technically receiving funding under "provisional Program Participation Agreements" (according to the Inside Higher Ed article), so a more technically accurate, but much more long-winded, description (possibly suitable for the main body text, but not infoboxes) might be "Previously accredited by ACICS and approved to receive Department of Education funding under a provisional Program Participation Agreement for 18 months from December 12, 2016 while seeking a new accreditor, following the final decision on that date to terminate the Department of Education's recognition of ACICS as an accrediting agency." (with citation of Inside Higher Ed article). Robminchin (talk) 18:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bcf1291 ( talk • contribs)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Julian Lennon

Hi - We are trying to put a more recent picture up of Julian but it keeps getting removed.

The most recent one was taken from google images so should be free use. What can we do to get this sorted please. Thanks for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razor7373 ( talk • contribs) 15:13, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@ Razor7373: on the Commons image page, you will need to set the applicable license and show where the image came from (exactly, with a URL) so that others can verify the license. It shows that you used the Upload Wizard -- the wizard should have made it clear that a license must be chosen. Also, the license must be compatible for use on Wikipedia. I recommend that you read this page on Commons as it fully explains what is expected for uploaded images. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 15:49, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

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

Recent changes

New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [20]
When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [21]

Problems

Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [22]

Changes this week

The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [23]
Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [24]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April ( calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Pleasure Ridge

I'd be happy to discuss this section but please leave it out til we decide how to cover it. Deaths in HS football average ~2 a year in the US. In itself, the death is not all that significant outside this school. The only thing significant is the coach being charged with a crime, which he was acquitted of. There is no reason to add to this basically nobody guy's already likely substantial remorse by memorializing it in one of the 5 most read websites in the world. Adding his name does violate WP:BLPCRIME and using staff names is outside school article guidelines. You'd need a substantially good reason to keep content with names, and without names it's WP:NOTNEWS. Depending on the age of the school and how much other history there is, a single sentence in history without names may be appropriate. It's all in the history, so it being out does not impressed discussion. John from Idegon ( talk) 18:57, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@ John from Idegon: this should be on Talk:Pleasure Ridge Park High School, not here, as it's about the article, not my work in general. As you can see on the article's talk page, I am open to removing names, but I very much disagree this is a WP:NOTNEWS issue. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 19:00, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

posted there. John from Idegon ( talk) 23:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I saw. I'll get to it tomorrow. I'm mostly off for the rest of the day. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 00:38, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 27

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Please comment on Talk:Ben Shapiro

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Ben Shapiro. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-18

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

Recent changes

The content translation tool works again. It was turned off because of a database problem. [25]
Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to add mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ) block for your scripts also, or add mediawiki.util dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [26] [27]

Problems

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.

Changes this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [28]
The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. [29]

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

19:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject banner shell

Stevietheman, I saw your recent edit at Talk:Charlie Snyder (American football) to add the WikiProject United States banner. Is there a reason you added "1=" to the WikiProject banner shell at the top? It doesn't seem to have any function. Thanks, Jweiss11 ( talk) 23:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@ Jweiss11: I've been doing that for years based on how the banner shell originally worked. Even the documentation continues to say "The |1= is not optional and must be included at the end of the first line." Perhaps this is a matter to bring up at the template's talk page. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 10:11, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Stevietheman, thanks for the reply. I posed this question some time ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council, but never got a response. I'll try posting at template's talk page, as you suggest. Jweiss11 ( talk) 14:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Please, stop reverting my information about Czech newspaper. I will be glad. Here you have a kitty. :)

Cepice ( talk) 14:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

You cannot tell someone to stop doing something flat out. I reverted for bona fide reasons. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 14:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Lagardère Sports and Entertainment

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Lagardère Sports and Entertainment. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19

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

Problems

Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [30]
There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [31]

Changes this week

When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [32]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May ( calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [33] [34]
Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [35] [36]

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

02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

FYI

I reported your IP buddy to AN3. What's a FWOMPT? Just curious. John from Idegon ( talk) 04:10, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks - I was thinking of doing it myself. FWOMPT = fucking waste of my precious time. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 04:12, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

On days when I'm thinking I'm hard to get along with, guys like this come along. I don't think I ever told you thanks for the last time we butted heads. It worked out well. So......thanks! John from Idegon ( talk) 04:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@ John from Idegon: you might want to see what this IP user is posting on their page now. They are so out of bounds they are in the next county, and still haven't been blocked. /smh I have added to the complaint. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 06:32, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Six-Day War

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Six-Day War. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

On your last comment

I didn't want to pursue the discussion at the IP's page the other day, but I would just like to say: don't let such get to you. We can probably be confident that the user's own troubles are heavier on their own life... This seemed to be the first incident (that I know, maybe not), involving this person, but if the same address stirs the same attitude in the future, WP:NOTHERE will be shortly obvious... Keep up the good work, — Paleo Neonate — 08:45, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20

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

Recent changes

You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [37]
The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. [38]

Problems

The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [39]

Changes this week

The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [40]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [41] [42]
Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [43] [44]

Older unreported changes

Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [45] [46]

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

21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:American Revolutionary War

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:American Revolutionary War. Legobot ( talk) 04:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

1RR

Hey there, I see you just self-reverted your second revert on Murder of Seth Rich. Please be careful about the 1RR restriction. If you have any questions about it, let me know. Many thanks, Lord Roem ~ ( talk) 18:09, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review - Newsletter No.4

Hello StefenTower,

Since rolling out the right in November, just 6 months ago, we now have 812 reviewers, but the backlog is still mysteriously growing fast. If every reviewer did just 55 reviews, the 22,000 backlog would be gone, in a flash, schwoop, just like that!

But do remember: Rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling and the use of correct CSD criteria are essential to good reviewing. Do not over-tag. Make use of the message feature to let the creator know about your maintenance tags. See the tutorial again HERE. Get help HERE.

Stay up to date with recent new page developments and have your say, read THIS PAGE.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 15:42, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-21

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

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May ( calendar).
There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [47]

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

22:16, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System. Legobot ( talk) 04:26, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Assistance with proposed move

I've proposed moving Medical cannabis in the United States to Medical marijuana in the United States. My position is that there is no such thing as "Medical cannabis" in the US. Frankly, it's not much of a thing elsewhere. The only reason for the current title is that at some point, for what are no doubt reasonable motives, all pages on WP use cannabis per MOS:CONSISTENCY. To me, arguing for the move is MOS:JARGON, WP:TITLEVAR, WP:COMMONNAME, MOS:COMMONALITY, MOS:STRONGNAT, & WP:IGNORE. It may not be in your wheelhouse, but if you could point me toward any useful essays, policies or discussions, or if you'd like to comment or vote, it would be much appreciated.

I do not assume your support. Agree or disagree, your involvement would be most appreciated. Thanks Informata ob Iniquitatum ( talk) 02:44, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to test the Echo notification blacklist

Hello Stevietheman, The Echo notifications blacklist feature is ready for testing and we'd like your help 1) to test that the feature works as expected & 2) to verify that our documentation is accurate before we invite the larger Wikimedia community to test and provide feedback. Instructions about the feature are found on the meta page. It's available for testing on beta Wikipedia, which requires a separate account from production. It should be easy to test by using a sock or by buddying up. If you find any bugs, either write on the Phab ticket T150419 or email me directly. Feel free to edit the meta page as you see fit. Thank you, and happy testing!

Links-

Special preferences for echo

For Anti-harassment tool team- SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative ( talk) 20:52, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Money.Net

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Money.Net. Legobot ( talk) 04:26, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-22

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

Problems

Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [48]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will be able to control who can notify you on the Wikimedia wikis. You will have a user blacklist. When you add a user to the blacklist you will not get a notification when they mention you. You can test this on Beta Wikipedia. You can read more and give feedback on Meta. [49]

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

12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-23

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

Recent changes

You can see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [50]
When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [51]
You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [52]
New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [53]

Problems

The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [54]

Changes this week

Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [55]
You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [56]
When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [57]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June ( calendar).
String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [58]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [59] [60]
Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [61]
The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.

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

19:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Sean Combs

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Sean Combs. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Battle of Ia Drang

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Battle of Ia Drang. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-24

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

Recent changes

Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [62]
When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [63]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June ( calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [64]
Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [65]
Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding &fuzzy=1 to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [66] [67]

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

15:30, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:List of pharmacies

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:List of pharmacies. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-25

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

Problems

ORES had some problems on 13 June between 16:00 and 19:40 UTC. It has now been fixed. [68]

Changes this week

irc.wikimedia.org has to be rebooted. This will probably happen on 21 June. It may be postponed. Some tools use this to get the recent changes feed. They will not work when it is down. [69]
Special:PageData will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [70]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 June. It will be on all wikis from 22 June ( calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. You can now see how the TemplateStyles extension works on Beta Labs.

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

15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:2017 Portland train attack

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:2017 Portland train attack. Legobot ( talk) 04:25, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-26

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

Recent changes

The < inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [71]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June ( calendar).
Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [72]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [73]

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

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Bob Stoops

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Bob Stoops. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27

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

Recent changes

There was a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used < mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [74]

Changes this week

Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [75]

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

15:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:2017

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:2017. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28

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

There are sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [76]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [77]
We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.

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

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Movement Strategy reminder

Hi. You contributed in a previous part of the discussion, so this is just a reminder to you (and any interested talkpagewatchers), that it's the second week of our Movement Strategy Cycle 3 discussion. There's a new topic each week in July, and this week's is: How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways? You can see more details, and suggest solutions or respond to other people's thoughts (from this week and last week) at Wikipedia:Wikimedia Strategy 2017. You can also read a summary of discussions that took place in the past week. Cheers. Quiddity (WMF) ( talk) 03:16, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Western Kentucky Botanical Garden

Hello Stevietheman. I'm investigating a mystery. All the content we included on our organization's wiki, Western Kentucky Botanical Garden, has been deleted. Your information was listed as the "editor." Did you do this? Can I ask why if so? The information you left is out of and date and very incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:AE85:FD00:FDA1:CEDE:99D1:C19F ( talk) 19:59, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I can address that to some point in Stevie's absence. If you look at his edit summary from his last edit back in March 26 it was "I'm sorry, but you cannot use the Wikipedia to write a brochure for your organization. We only write encyclopedia articles here". I think that speaks for itself. Wikipedia has specific policies about that can be read here: What Wikipedia is not § Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. -- rogerd ( talk) 22:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

What Rogerd said. It's also important to note that that this wiki article does not belong to your organization, including a right to edit it to look exactly the way you seem to prefer, as a marketing brochure formatted against our standards. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk •
Work} 17:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello StefenTower, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

The new page backlog is currently at 18,511 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
Some editors are committing to work specifically on patrolling new pages on 15 July. If you have not reviewed new pages in a while, this might be a good time to be involved. Please remember that quality of patrolling is more important than quantity, that the speedy deletion criteria should be followed strictly, and that ovetagging for minor issues should be avoided.

Technology update:

Several requests have been put into Phabractor to increase usability of the New Pages Feed and the Page Curation toolbar. For more details or to suggest improvements go to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements
The tutorial has been updated to include links to the following useful userscripts. If you were not aware of them, they could be useful in your efforts reviewing new pages:
- User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js adds a link to the new pages feed and page curation toolbar to your top toolbar on Wikipedia
- User:The Earwig/copyvios.js adds a link in your side toolbox that will run the current page through

General project update:

Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers, Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Noticeboard has been marked as historical. Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers is currently the most active central discussion forum for the New Page Patrol project. To keep up to date on the most recent discussions you can add it to your watchlist or visit it periodically.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni ( talk) 03:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Mary Jane Girls

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Mary Jane Girls. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-29

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

Recent changes

"Wikimedia Labs" is now called "Cloud VPS". "Wikimedia Tool Labs" is now called "Wikimedia Toolforge". This is to help clarify the purpose of these services. [78]

Problems

On some pages, the Table of Contents is not being shown. It will normally appear if you edit the page again. Investigation is currently ongoing. [79]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is: Migrate to HTML5 section ids. [80] The meeting will be on 19 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Page Previews, currently a Beta Feature, will be enabled for logged-out users for all remaining Wikipedias (with the exception of English and German) the week of 24 July. An A/B test will be run on English Wikipedia to collect data before approaching the community for further discussion. [81]

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

22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:George Duke discography

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:George Duke discography. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 21 July 2017 (UTC)