User talk:Darren-M/Archives/2020/September

Editing news 2020 #4
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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)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 17
 News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (July and August 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 17th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
 * Cscr-featured.svg Yet another Articles for creation helper script ("AFCH"), a gadget used by Articles for creation reviewers, is this month's featured script


 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Opencooper's collapseBots declutters talk pages by collapsing comments made by bots
 * SD0001's GAR-helper is a script to easily create a GAR nomination and carry out the necessary related steps
 * SD0001's shortdescs-in-category can be used to view short descriptions of pages in a category
 * WikiMacaroons's Talk to Wiki allows for voice-activated functionality and navigation of Wikipedia
 * WikiMacaroons's AutoShortDesc simplifies the addition of short descriptions to pages
 * IagoQnsi's ipareader adds a button next to IPA pronunciations to have them read out by a text-to-speech program
 * Awesome Aasim's xfdvote makes it easier to participate in XFD discussions
 * BrandonXLF's CitationStyleMarker adds "CS1" or "CS2" beside citations to show their style with an optional toggle
 * GeneralNotability's spihelper a script to help CheckUsers, SPI clerks, and patrolling admins with sockpuppet investigation case pages
 * Evad37's TimestampDiffs adds a link at the end of every comment to the diff in which it was added


 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Twinkle has a number of improvements including additional redirect category templates
 * Updates to Enterprisey's reply-link include compatibility fixes with Mdaniels5757's markAdmins script and Kephir's unclutter script
 * Evad37's rater is now at version 2.6.0, which updates including OOUI tweaks and the inclusion of banners for inactive projects

Miscellaneous
 * If anyone would like to help contribute to this newsletter, please leave a note at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++

Pending requests
 * A script to simplify addition of "connected contributor" templates to talk pages
 * A script to simplify removal of the "persondata" template on mlwiki
 * ...and many more, all available at User scripts/Requests



Stay safe --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

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