User talk:Bobherry/Archives/2020/January

Tech News: 2019-46
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  20:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-48
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  16:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2019
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:23, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Beeblebrox
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Deskana

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Evad37

Guideline and policy news
 * An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
 * Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news
 * Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration
 * Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous
 * The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-49
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-50
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * 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.  16:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-51
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  00:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-52
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 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.  20:04, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 December 2019
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:37, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Deor • Spartaz • Xeno
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
 * A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
 * Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration
 * The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
 * Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee:, , , , , , , , , ,.

Miscellaneous
 * This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2020 (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)

The Signpost: 27 January 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:09, 27 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)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Dennis Brown
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth



CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news
 * Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Partial blocks.
 * The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news
 * Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating.  There is currently one template: uw-pblock.
 * 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.

Arbitration
 * Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous
 * Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
 * The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 1 February 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)

Draft:Aio Kubair
You can't close a discussion to which you've nominated as "no consensus." The only way you could've closed it is as "speedy keep" to withdraw your nomination. Ultimately, you could've moved the page outside of MfD, yes. But, ultimately, it was not a no consensus close.

Since you don't have page mover permissions either, you left a trailing redirect, which had to be speedily deleted.

In short, it's a mess.

I suspect no one would mind if you withdrew the nomination as "speedy keep" and this does seem to be the easiest way to clean things up. You can then re-add the CSD tag to the trailing redirect, but put in your explanation why you re-added it.

Cheers,

--Doug Mehus T · C  01:16, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry my bad I only have 4 hours of sleep last night. Allow me to do it. It won't happen again. <mark style="background:Silver"> Bobherry   Talk   Edits  01:22, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , Okay, no worries. I re-closed it as "speedy keep," and will deliver a trout incoming, per the result. Doug Mehus T · C  01:31, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

TROUTing following Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Aio Kubair nomination (and outcome)
Although you -ed yourself, per both your original nomination and subsequent WP:BADNAC close of and at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Aio Kubair, I'm obliged to deliver the following to you...

Cheers,

Doug Mehus T · C  01:33, 4 February 2020 (UTC)