User talk:Ched/Archive 36

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)

Short description
Hi Ched. Per the SD page, it states "The short description should be as brief as possible". I try to keep it to two or three words max, with all the extra info about directors and/or genre of the film superfluous in the application of this. Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 10:52, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I had done some research in the past, perhaps some things have changed, or perhaps I misunderstood. I'll check into it. — Ched (talk) 16:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the best way to look at short descriptions is to understand where they show up for our readers. Currently, they appear in three places:
 * When someone starts to search on mobile view, they get a list of title matches, with the short description on the line underneath each title.
 * When someone looks at an article on the Wikipedia App, they see the short description as a sub-title.
 * In the See also section of articles, editors can add an annotated link, which provides the usual link to another, related article along with its corresponding short description.
 * In each case, the short description's main purpose is to help the reader decide whether the article they are being offered is the one they want to visit. To do that, it needs to provide enough information to help the reader decide. For instance, if somebody was looking for a particular Spider-Man film, then a short description of "Film" wouldn't be at all helpful. Perhaps you might think "2002 film" would be better, but we already use the year as a title disambiguator, so the Wikipedia title might be Spider-Man (2002 film) and seeing "2002 Film" underneath wouldn't give any extra information. The best short description in that case would be "Film directed by Sam Raimi", IMHO. Why? because somebody might be unsure about the year, but know the director of the film they wanted to read about. Of course, "Film starring Tobey Maguire" might be just as useful for similar reasons.
 * Most of the time, there is no best answer, I can only say that having a short description provided locally is almost always better than letting the software show whatever's on Wikidata, principally because of the ease of vandalism there.
 * So, tl;dr: think about what the reader will see and if you've provided enough to help them, or if you've provided so much that it's irrelevant and/or too long to show up on a small screen. HTH --RexxS (talk) 18:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * So, tl;dr: think about what the reader will see and if you've provided enough to help them, or if you've provided so much that it's irrelevant and/or too long to show up on a small screen. HTH --RexxS (talk) 18:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I did a bit of looking around on that subject, and bullet point 3 of the "Content" section there says:


 * The short description should focus on distinguishing the subject from similar ones rather than precisely defining it. (emphasis mine)
 * Since bullet point 2 says a target of 40 characters, I thought perhaps a bit more than "film" or "1925 film" was preferred, but not a summary or description of the article either.


 * Looking further, I went to Wikidata, and the Help section says:


 * For a work of media/the arts: [year] [type of media] [creation method] by [contributor(s)], or [year] [genre/subgenre] [type of media] (Examples: novel by John Irving, :::2017 film by Jordan Peele or 2006 open world action role-playing video game). For films, see Wikidata:WikiProject Movies/Properties#Description
 * so I looked at:

d:WikiProject Movies/Properties (WikiProject Movies in the #Description section) and there the first example given is:
 * 1911 short film by David Wark Griffith (emphasis mine)
 * So I've been trying to pull from the text of the article if I modify what's already on Wikidata, and go with something close to the 40 characters. For example:


 * "1942 American drama film by Michael Curtiz"
 * I do agree that it should be kept simple, especially if it's often used on mobile devices. So from now on I will drop the nationality.


 * IMO, there will need to be further RfC discussions as we get further along in pulling the info in from wikidata or write our own short descriptions to our local articles. I've seen such a wide variety even in the same genre (movies, sports, people, etc.).  For the most part I don't change much if there's something there, but I do try to look at the 40 character length too.  In fact the bulk of my adding these is by importing them from Wikidata. (and I agree, there's plenty of vandalism to be on the lookout for).  If there have already been some discussions on what to include in there I'd like to find a link if either of you have one.  And with that I'll say thank you both  and ; I'll try to modify what I'm doing with Short Descriptions a bit, and include a bit less data if applicable. — Ched (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks Ched. I think the first phase of work is to import/add SD to articles that currently have no SD value. I agree that "1924 film" vs. "1924 American film" or "1924 drama film" might be something for further discussion.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 20:10, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * OK - and feel free to ping me if I don't notice/find the discussion. — Ched (talk) 03:11, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Giving thanks
Happy Thanksgiving! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:16, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Awwww - Thank you Gerda, that is very kind. I hope you enjoy the day, and the coming weekend as well. — Ched (talk) 18:01, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I enjoyed the day, with a concert conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:51, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Endorsements
I don't think anyone would take what you said as a comment about me, but just wanted to leave a note to say I appreciate the clarification regardless.

Also, based on your most recent comment, and on the standards we often apply to these kinds of lists, I look forward to adding you to the list of official serious business endorsements of my future run for office. :) &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 19:28, 23 October 2019 (UTC)


 * You can count on my vote . I may even have one of those black tie fund raising affairs for you.. :-) — Ched (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you
... for article improvement in October! - I have a peer review open, DYK? Clara Schumann, 60 years of recitals, and what a life! See my talk today for great music that we sang yesterday. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:59, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's a pretty lengthy article for only DYK. Looking to go for GA after that?  Lede looks good - I'll read through the rest of it in the next day or two.  (and TY for the note) — Ched (talk) 20:03, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You mean Clara Schumann? That is GA already, heading for FAC. Sorry about confusing you by using DYK as short for "did you know?" The lead is too short ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:22, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * OHHHH ... I thought it was for "WP:DYK article" that goes on front page. Will still have a look in a day or two. — Ched (talk) 20:29, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Today, I am proud of a great woman on the Main page, Márta Kurtág, finally! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:05, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Congratulations Gerda. — Ched (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you
... for encouraging people to be arbs, and otherconnections among us! --


 * A "Thank you" with a 'toxic' naked lady plant. Well - I'll say you're welcome, thank you for the thank you, appreciate the beauty of the naked ladies,  - and I'll not eat the daisies.  Hope you're well .  Thank you to a sweet woman.  :) — Ched (talk) 15:22, 30 September 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: 2019-51
 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)


 * Partial blocks - that could be interesting. I should start a pool on which admin will be the first hauled to ANI for abuse with this one. — Ched (talk) 03:18, 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)

Tech News: 2020-02
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  21:19, 6 January 2020 (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)

Wikipedia Books
Since you participated in the discussion on Wikipedia Books I herewith inform you that a decision has been taken.

See Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_176 Dirk Hünniger (talk) 20:33, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you . I appreciate the update.  Let me know if there's anything I can do for you. — Ched (talk) 01:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration case opened
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth/Evidence. Please add your evidence by January 14, 2020, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, CodeLyoko  talk  03:29, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

It’s that time of year!

 * Aww - thank you . I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season.  And I certainly hope you have an amazing Christmas, and a fantastic New Year. — Ched (talk) 02:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you ...
... for improving article quality in December! There's a peer review open for Clara Schumann and a FAC for Jauchzet, frohlocket!, DYK? We miss Brian who would have helped. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Cheers

 * Well I certainly do thank you . I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and great New Year as well. (or whatever your particular beliefs are).  I'll also thank YOU for your contribs ... way more than I've done over the years.  Have a great one, and thanks for stopping by - really appreciate it. :-) — Ched (talk) 20:44, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Greetings of the season


 Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.


 * Why thank you WSC, I do indeed appreciate that. I return your wonderful wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or the greeting of your particular choice during this holiday season.  I realize I haven't been the social butterfly that I used to be - but I do still appreciate all the hard work you put in here, Thank you.  Happy Holidays and best always, — Ched (talk) 03:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Be well at Christmas

 * Thank you ST - I hope you have a great holiday season as well. Best always. — Ched (talk) 13:10, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays text.png Hello Ched: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers,  D Big X ray ᗙ Happy Holidays!  15:46, 24 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message


 * Why thank you, that's a very beautiful card/post. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and Holiday Season as well.  I appreciate all your hard work to make our project also.  Cheers and best always, — Ched (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the appreciation — Ched . I hope the upcoming year is as beautiful as this card. cheers. -- D Big X ray ᗙ Happy Holidays!  10:21, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Joyous Season
 Happy Holidays text 2.png

I wish that you may have a very Happy Holiday! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay, Festivus or your hemisphere's Solstice, this is a special time of year for almost everyone! May the New Year provide you joy and fulfillment! Thanks for everything you do here. — Coffee //  have a ☕️ //  beans  // 10:01, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your fellow editors' talk pages.


 * I thank you Sir . I also wish for you the most stupendous Holiday Season (regardless of you chosen method of celebration).  May you have a fantastic Christmas, and a most wonderful New Year - it is so great to have you back among us. — Ched (talk) 10:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).

Future changes
 * There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use 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.  19:41, 20 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 . You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster.  Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
 * New requirements for user signatures : Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable.  Most editors will not be affected.
 * New discussion tool : The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions.   You can see the initial design on the project page.
 * Research on the use of talk pages : The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles.  We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

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

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Malcolmxl5
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg John • TheCoffee • Tim!
 * Pictogram voting rename.png →
 * Pictogram voting rename.png →

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Bbb23

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg TonyBallioni

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news
 * Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).

Arbitration
 * Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
 * The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Attention needed at Amaravati Page
Hi there, I need your attention at Amaravati page. The new user User talk:CiteLeadBoat has been reinstating content that I have removed without any discussion. Can you please look into this matter. Sharkslayer87 (talk) 08:55, 11 July 2020 (UTC)


 * In looking at this edit and this edit and it looks as though references are provided for several things. I'm not familiar enough with the topic to jump in to the editing end of it, so I'm afraid I can't be much help.  I do see that you're dealing with a situation where English is the users second language (which can be terribly frustrating).  I'll think on this a bit and see if I can construct a post to their talk that might help.  I'll get back to you tomorrow. — Ched (talk) 22:47, 11 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks Ched, I have started redoing the changes. Please check the changes and the edit summaries done by me. The article as it is at present suffers from a lot of factual inaccuracies which I am addressing. The article also references a lot of primary sources like this one. Can you please give your two cents if these can be used as sources?(They are plans released by the respective incumbent governments and they may not actually fructify but the article mentions them as gospel truths) Thanks Sharkslayer87 (talk) 04:28, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Red Phoenix
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Euryalus • SQL
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg GB fan
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news
 * There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
 * Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
 * Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
 * There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

Reply tool


The Reply tool  has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.


 * More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They  posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
 * Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
 * Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة.  ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

 * The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
 * Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily . Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected.  Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures.  If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)