User talk:Alsee/Archive 12

Please comment on Talk:Electric smoking system
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Electric smoking system. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The discussion section was not closed. When a RfC is closed the discussion section is usually closed along with the RfC. QuackGuru ( talk ) 14:40, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * QuackGuru the discussion section is usually boxed because a closure is typically intended to resolve an issue and end the discussion. Nothing was really being resolved, other than that the RFC-statement was ineffective for new arrivals and that it should no longer be treated as live !voting area actively summoning uninvolved editors. My intent was not to interfere more than necessary. I figured I'd leave you and the others maximum freedom on how to proceed. You could continue discussion towards a resolution, discuss drafting a new proposal, abandon the topic, or anything else.
 * If you feel the closure-box needs to be expanded then I'm certainly willing to consider an explanation why that would be beneficial. I'm not hostile to the idea, although I do wonder what the purpose would be. Alsee (talk) 15:35, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think The closure box should close the entire discussion. This did not seem like a split discussion. I asked repeatedly what content they want split. I never got a clear answer. That is grounds for a topic ban. There is content in the e-cig article and the article Vaporizer (inhalation device) is not about heat-not-burn-products. If a new RfC is started an editor should make it clear such as they do not want to split the content. They want to delete it. QuackGuru ( talk ) 16:06, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * QuackGuru - "That is grounds for a topic ban." Might I suggest that opening a poorly-drafted RFC and complaining to the closer is not an effective approach to that. I only have a superficial knowledge of the situation and you may well have good reason to be frustrated, but it's not something I can solve as closer of this RFC. At this time the best I can do is close this RFC as unsuccessful-at-anything, clearing the table for anyone to take a next step. If someone warrants a topic ban then perhaps you should present the case at ANI. If you want to proceed with an RFC as a solution you'll need to lay out a more clear RFC-statement. Alsee (talk) 16:35, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Can you close the entire discussion? If a new RfC opens again about this I will request a close if it is unclear. QuackGuru ( talk ) 17:58, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * QuackGuru my goal is to be accepting of reasonable-criticism or productive-improvements to my closes, the problem here is that I don't understand the purpose or benefit of the change that you are requesting. Either you didn't provide a reason, or I'm having trouble catching that reason from your comments.
 * Regarding a followup RFC, anyone may open one. And of course any RFC may get closed early if there are sufficiently severe problems with it. Although I see no reason to raise concerns about a potential followup RFC in advance of seeing it. Alsee (talk) 19:29, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * When a RfC is closed the discussion is usually not left open. Either it should be fully closed or fully reopened. I don't see a benefit to half-closing it. There won't be more discussion towards a resolution on the article talk page after over a year. There is a history of problems with RfCs in this topic area. See Talk:Electric_smoking_system/Archive_7. QuackGuru ( talk ) 20:09, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * QuackGuru, I agree that discussions are usually not left open. However I recall a significant number of RFCs where a closer deliberately left one or more sections open, although I don't have any links handy. It feels like you're hoping that I can somehow solve issues that I can't address. If there's a conduct problem then you need an Admin/ANI. If you want a consensus then you need to draft a more productive RFC. All I can do here is take down an unproductive RFC-tag and box it so no one thinks they should add a !vote. Basically all I did was convert a tagged-voting-RFC into an untagged-nonvoting-ordinary-talk-thread. For practical purposes the RFC never happened, and you're still exactly where you were when it started.
 * I can't topic-ban anyone, and regardless of whether I box the discussion section I can't prevent further discussion of the subject. Given that all I did was euthanize an unproductive RFC-tag, I feel it mandatory that the close explicitly invite further discussion or a new RFC. I can't give the impression that my close resolved or prohibits anything. Alsee (talk) 21:47, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * A new RfC is underway. QuackGuru ( talk ) 15:35, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

QuackGuru I'm not sure whether you're annoyed at me, but for what it's worth I want to try to be helpful. Your goal here is (or should be) to get a solid and enforceable consensus. The better the RFC and the stronger the result, the easier it is to shut down anyone who violates that result.

The new RFC is somewhat better than the last one, and it might be successful at what you're trying to do. However it's still a very poor quality RFC and it still may fail. Imagine someone gets BOT-invited to your new RFC. They arrive knowing exactly zero about the situation. They see the RFC question Should we delete any of the brands such as Electric smoking system#glo products from the Electric smoking system#Products section? They have no idea what brands are on the page, they have no idea what the dispute is, they have no idea whether any of them do need to be removed for some reason. And they are not going to spend an hour digging through the talk page trying to figure out what's going on and form a well-informed opinion. They are unlikely to respond to the RFC with the answer you want, which is "no". They will probably either leave without responding (which will leave you with little-or-no mandate for consensus at the end of the month), or they may leave a comment complaining that they can't effectively respond to the RFC. That does not help you.

Here is how I would suggest handling this. Temporarily take down the RFC. Instead use this: &lt;nowiki> &lt;/nowiki> This Draft RFC will go live in 7 days: (Insert current month and day +7 here.) Should we remove any of the brands or products from the Electric smoking system section? Pinging discussion participants to nominate products for removal. (Insert user pings here.) Any rationale or discussion for removal should given in the RFC response area. ~ * insert products for removal here ===Responses===

On the start date you remove the nowikis, and for proper RFC-bot behavior you should also replace the signature&timestamp with a new signature&timestamp.

At this point there are two options. If the pinged-editor(s) list what products they want to remove, then people arriving at the RFC will happily pass judgement and respond to the RFC. If the pinged-editors don't list products to remove and/or don't provide any rationale for removal, then it is clear to the people arriving at the RFC what is happening here. It is clear that you are the reasonable collaborative editor. It is clear that you have given the pinged-editors every reasonable opportunity to present a case, and they failed to do so. People arriving at the RFC will happily pass judgement on the pinged-editor's failure to present a case. They will probably respond to the RFC with a flat "No", or some form of "No, not unless a reason is given". Either way you will get a solid and easily enforceable result. Alsee (talk) 18:33, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I added a list of the brands to the discussion section. It is up to others to present their case rather than make vague arguments about splitting or deleting content. How many years do you think things like this has been happening? Just on this article for well over a year. The key RfC was getting my draft to replace the article. That was successful. Only one editor opposed the draft. That same editor is not happy with the article and now wants to delete some of the brands. QuackGuru ( talk ) 18:52, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * QuackGuru - I agree it is up to others to present their case. I'm trying to help you work through the social-system and RFC-system more effectively. I'm trying to help you present a more solid RFC and reach a more solid result.
 * How many years do you think things like this has been happening? - Here is the important point, people showing up at the RFC don't know that . They don't want to know. They don't want years of history. They want a nicely packaged RFC that gives them just enough information to confidently pass judgement on something. You need their support, and the current RFC probably won't do a very good job of convincing them to give you their support. You have to assume they are competent, but ignorant and impatient. Right now, someone showing up at the RFC is likely to think "I don't know enough to respond". There is a strong chance that they will either leave without responding, or complain that they can't easily respond. Neither of those options helps you.
 * If you take my advice above then you will almost certainly get solid RFC-result. Either the pinged-editors present their case and people showing up at the RFC will happily pass judgement on the presented-case, or they will fail to present a case and people showing up at the RFC will see that you gave them a week to present a case for the RFC, and that they failed to do so. RFC-respondents will then pass judgement on the clear failure to present a case.
 * Right now you're hoping that RFC-respondents will vote for you based on all the stuff that happened before the RFC. That's not going to happen . People aren't going to spend hours reading and evaluating everything that happened in the past. They want spend just a few minutes reading and passing judgement on a nice small RFC-package. You either need an RFC-package that presents their case, or an RFC-package that shows a failure to present a case. You need that evidence inside the RFC, not evidence scattered across long rambling talk page arguments. Alsee (talk) 19:46, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't have to have an opposing argument. It is possible there will be an opposing argument made within a few days. I presented a strong case for keeping the brands. I don't think anyone after over a month will come up with any new reason for deleting them. QuackGuru ( talk ) 20:19, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
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Tech News: 2019-33
 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
 * Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
 * Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.

Changes later this week
 * Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers
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Tech News: 2019-34
<section begin="technews-2019-W34"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
 * Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.

Changes later this week
 * Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
 * will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W34"/> 15:20, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Satoshi Nakamoto
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (broadcasting)
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Please comment on Talk:Abortion
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Please comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019
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Tech News: 2019-36
<section begin="technews-2019-W36"/> 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 use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
 * The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues.
 * The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute.
 * The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC).
 * You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis.
 * You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis.
 * You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W36"/> 09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Campus sexual assault
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Campus sexual assault. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019
Hello ,

Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
 * Backlog

A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.
 * Coordinator

Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for  making  the occasional  mistake while  others can learn from  their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.
 * This month's refresher course

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.
 * Deletion tags

Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
 * Paid editing


 * Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
 * Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
 * Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.

Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent  enhancements to  the New Pages Feed and  features in the Curation  tool, and there are still more to  come. Due to the wealth  of information  now displayed by  ORES, reviewers are strongly  encouraged to  use the system now rather than Twinkle; it  will  also  correctly  populate the logs.
 * Not English
 * A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
 * Tools

Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.

Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.

is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion
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Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
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Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
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Notice
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Topic Ban Request: TakuyaMurata. Hasteur (talk) 23:54, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Veridia
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Tech News: 2019-40
<section begin="technews-2019-W40"/> 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 Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
 * Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other  pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W40"/> 16:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #10
Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

 * Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
 * We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage.  In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
 * You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!

Growth at Wikimania

 * Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
 * Here are the most important links:
 * Notes and learnings from Wikimania
 * Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
 * Slides from Growth team presentation
 * These are some of our topline notes:
 * Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
 * Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
 * Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!

 * The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
 * We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
 * These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
 * Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
 * How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests.  We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
 * How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit.  We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
 * We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
 * You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page.  Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers?  What are we missing?

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia as a press source
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions
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Tech News: 2019-41
<section begin="technews-2019-W41"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit.

Problems Changes later this week Meetings
 * There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
 * The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example  would be   instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
 * There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W41"/> 15:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
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Tech News: 2019-42
<section begin="technews-2019-W42"/> 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 more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else.
 * In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W42"/> 23:33, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Page mover
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Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk Pages
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards



 * On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
 * There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
 * Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar



 * In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
 * One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
 * New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
 * Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
 * Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania
The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

 * Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes.  The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
 * Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
 * Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November.  This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations.  The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-43
<section begin="technews-2019-W43"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg' prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.]] The API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as . API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives.

Problems
 * There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed.
 * The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
 * Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W43"/> 14:27, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
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Tech News: 2019-44
<section begin="technews-2019-W44"/> 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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
 * Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist.
 * You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
 * Octicons-tools.svg OOUI now allows using  (pixels) instead of   (em) for some specific cases.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named  to  . The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W44"/> 16:11, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

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New Page Review newsletter November 2019
Hello ,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon. There are now holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action. Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays. Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox. Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards. Admin has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers. Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources. Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13. The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights. There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion. To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Getting the queue to 0
 * Coordinator
 * This month's refresher course
 * Tools
 * It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
 * It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
 * Reviewer Feedback
 * Second set of eyes
 * Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
 * Do be sure to have our talk page  on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
 * Arbitration Committee
 * Community Wish list

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion
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Tech News: 2019-45
<section begin="technews-2019-W45"/> 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
 * At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites.

Changes later this week
 * can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use  to set a different default block length for IP editors.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W45"/> 16:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2019-46
<section begin="technews-2019-W46"/> 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
 * MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W46"/> 22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Rules for Fools
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Growth team updates #11
Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

 * Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias.  If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
 * Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
 * The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!

Help panel results
The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
 * In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
 * This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
 * We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
 * We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.

Newcomer tasks deployment



 * The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates.  In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits.  We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
 * We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
 * These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
 * V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team.  The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article.  We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
 * V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
 * The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47
<section begin="technews-2019-W47"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the  database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames.

Changes later this week
 * You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (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. <section end="technews-2019-W47"/> 20:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

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Please comment on Talk:Bitcoin Cash
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Tech News: 2019-48
<section begin="technews-2019-W48"/> 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 mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script.
 * Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W48"/> 16:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (British TV series)
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Tech News: 2019-49
<section begin="technews-2019-W49"/> 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
 * Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The  magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns   (empty string). When you read a page it returns   (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W49"/> 16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Redirect autopatrol
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Tech News: 2019-50
<section begin="technews-2019-W50"/> 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 projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W50"/> 16:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Nice comment
Very nicely put. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Partial blocks
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Tech News: 2019-51
<section begin="technews-2019-W51"/> 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 Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again.
 * Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem.

Changes later this week
 * You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W51"/> 00:15, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter December 2019


This year's Reviewer of the Year is. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
 * Reviewer of the Year

Special commendation again goes to who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to and  who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by.
 * Redirect autopatrol

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
 * Source Guide Discussion

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag. Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * This month's refresher course

Tech News: 2019-52
<section begin="technews-2019-W52"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.

Recent changes
 * All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes
 * You can use  in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2019-W52"/> 20:04, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-02
<section begin="technews-2020-W02"/> 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
 * When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W02"/> 21:19, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-03
<section begin="technews-2020-W03"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations.
 * Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "" section.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are and . If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).

Future changes
 * Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead.
 * You can use  to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad was shown outside the  tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W04"/> 19:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05
<section begin="technews-2020-W05"/> 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 mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it.
 * Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes
 * There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at T232688.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W05"/> 18:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06
<section begin="technews-2020-W06"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W06"/> 20:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)