User talk:Enwebb/Archive 4

Tech News: 2020-07
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem.

Problems
 * There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Poinsettia
The article Poinsettia you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Poinsettia for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Starsandwhales -- Starsandwhales (talk) 23:42, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020
Hello ,

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.
 * Source Guide Discussion

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.
 * Redirects


 * Discussions and Resources
 * There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
 * A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
 * A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
 * A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.
 * Refresher

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here 16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Murder of Tessa Majors for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Murder of Tessa Majors is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Murder of Tessa Majors until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Black Kite (talk) 00:11, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08
 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
 * Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Woolly Rhino
hi — Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgeparpas (talk • contribs) 16:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Greetings. Enwebb (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 22
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Horseshoe bat, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Superfamily ([//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py/Horseshoe_bat check to confirm] | [//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Horseshoe_bat?client=notify fix with Dab solver]).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 14:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09
 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 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).

Future changes
 * There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Horseshoe bat
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Horseshoe bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:41, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Need a story for the newsletter
ICYMI: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs Cheers --awkwafaba (📥) 02:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm not sure I'm following, what exactly is the controversy? Enwebb (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it's more of a lack of controversy. The palaontological community isn't really convinced of the quadrapedal, fully-aquatic version, but the public seems to accept it without much debate.  just an idea.  --awkwafaba (📥) 17:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 March newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:


 * Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
 * Royal standard of England (1406–1603).svg Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
 * 🇺🇸 Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
 * Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
 * Pirate Flag.svg CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
 * The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included 🇺🇸 L293D, 🇻🇪 Kingsif, 🇦🇶 Enwebb, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski and 🇳🇵 CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction
There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; 🇺🇸 L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, 🇺🇸 Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10
 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
 * Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug.

Changes later this week
 * If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for.
 * When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security.
 * On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to.
 * 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).

Future changes
 * The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback.
 * There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
 * Octicons-tools.svg  was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Horseshoe bat
The article Horseshoe bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Horseshoe bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Shohei Otomo's usage of Pilot/Namiki pens 'in an advertisement'
I'm beginning revisions to the Ballpoint pen artwork wikipedia page and among my first edits I added a link to the wiki page about Shohei Otomo which I happened to come across by accident. Heads up: I'll also be making edits to link Otomo's wiki to related pages.

And... sorry BUT: I happen to know that the 'Pilot advertisement' you noted in his article is mistaken or at least misleading; the 'ad' was nothing more than a promotional video produced by Otomo or a collaborator (perhaps to gain Pilot's interest?), but the way it is written in the wiki makes it seem as if Pilot commissioned the video and it was used for advertising purposes. The video in question shows Otomo cracking open a beer before drawing, something I highly doubt such a respected Japanese institution as Namiki pens would allow to be depicted, even in the 21st century. That beer also happens to be identifiably a Kirin brand beer, something for which I doubt Pilot/Namiki & Kirin would be in cooperation. On top of that, the video shows no identifying credit at all, nothing to identify the video as an 'ad' and I can't think of any company who doesn't include a logo in an ad. If I remember correctly, only some kind of narration by Otomo himself, unrelated to the pens, runs through the so-called 'ad'. On top of that, Otomo's artwork basically subverts classic Japanese imagery and the artist himself openly criticizes Japan's consumerist culture, a trait which I highly doubt such a corporation would align itself with.

Unless it can be clearly proven otherwise, any text referring to Otomo's video as a Pilot/Namiki-commissioned ad is misleading and must therefore be reworded for accuracy and clarity. This is no slight to Otomo or his artwork; surely worthy of a wiki page but anything less than the facts should be relegated to the artist's own websites or social media. Penwatchdog (talk) 08:35, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * If you think the source or wording I used was wrong then feel free to remove per WP:BRD. Enwebb (talk) 15:10, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new search word called . You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon.

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

Future changes
 * There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
 * The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12
 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 There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use  to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes
 * If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface.
 * You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  21:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Peer review for FL proposition of List of horseshoe bats

 * Hello Enwebb, thanks for creating the List of horseshoe bats. I think that list has a potential to be a FL but it needs some review. I have some questions but could be more to correct before proposint the list to be a FL. Is it possible to make a peer review with the help of Bats TF? I will write some of my questions here:
 * As I'm not a native speaker, I have some difficulty about the use of "in/on", especially for the islands. In the text, when I put the range for subspecies I used Csorba et al. as the reference, and there for all islands only "in" was used. I have corrected for some small islands by using "on" but for bigger islands "in" is used, e.g. for Borneo, it should be in or on?
 * In the opening it is said there are 106 species, but I counted 103 species. There are still many different classifications. I don't know which one is valid. Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 9 (2019) could be used as the reference for the species, but I don't have access. Is it possible to find somebody to help with it?
 * Formosan lesser horseshoe bat (R. monoceros) redirects to Little Japanese horseshoe bat (R. cornutus) but it should have its own article.
 * For synonyms, I have used again Csorba et al. But I have another question. When a taxon is considered a subspecies after its description as a species, we could consider it as a junior synonym or not?
 * Also I think we need more header text before proposal.
 * Thanks in advance for your help. --Mskyrider (talk) 07:11, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm not enwebb, but your question about in vs on for islands is intriguing. I'd say "on Corsica" but "in Sicily." I want to say "on Borneo." I am going to have to think about why. --valereee (talk) 19:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll be a WikiJaguar too, and say that 'in' is for political areas, and 'on' if for physical islands. One is 'in' (the country of} Australia, and 'on' {the island of) Australia.  So either really works.  English can take it however you want to do it. --awkwafaba (📥) 00:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , agreed with awkwafaba about the use of on and in.
 * As for your 2nd point, I don't have access to that work either. My typical less than legal approach to obtaining books doesn't happen to have this title--probably because it's pretty new. All my local libraries are closed right now, but you can try posting on the resource request page. Conversely, I saw adding a reference to Mammals of the World Vol. 9 on Bat, so maybe they can help you out
 * The bats task force has been mostly following mammaldiversity.org. They follow  this 2008 publication (which is in Chinese) in listing R. monoceros as a subspecies of R. cornutus.
 * If I understand your question correctly for point 4, yes, a taxon that has been demoted from species to a subspecies is almost certainly going to have its name considered as a junior synonym, as long as that is consistent with the Principle of Priority
 * I've never reviewed a Featured List or helped make one, but I can contribute more here if that would be helpful to you! Enwebb (talk) 16:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

map
Hey, Enwebb! Did you make the map? There'd been one there a few days ago, but it became outdated so I pulled it, it's good to have it again. Do you know how to do one of those sliding-scale thingies so you can see the development over time? --valereee (talk) 15:52, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, I made the map! I can commit to updating it every day after 2pm when the new numbers come out. Can you think of an example of an article that has what you're talking about with the sliding scale? I'm not sure I've seen that before. Enwebb (talk) 15:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hm...I feel like I've seen one on a wp page, but maybe it's been in some source. Things blur together in my memory. :D Let me see if I can find an example of what I mean. --valereee (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, like this idea, although obviously this is way more sophisticated than I'm talking about: https://vac-lshtm.shinyapps.io/ncov_tracker/ --valereee (talk) 16:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm not sure how to make that for Wikipedia, but I could make a GIF if that would be helpful. That's not too hard. Enwebb (talk) 01:59, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

condolences on the loss of your pet
 Wikipedians also recommend biscuits with tea.

--valereee (talk) has given you a cup of tea. Tea promotes WikiLove   and hopefully this has made your day ever so slightly better.

Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a tea, especially if it is someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy!

Spread the lovely, warm, refreshing goodness of tea by adding {{subst:wikitea}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Tech News: 2020-13
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
 * There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 March. It will be on all wikis from 26 March (calendar).

Future changes
 * There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes
 * The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed.
 * There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W14"/> 17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Tree of Life newsletter distribution
Hello! Just in case you did not see my note here, I'm hoping you can share the newsletter with the relevant WikiProjects as well. Much appreciated! --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 20:51, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , Done! Thanks for the reminder. Enwebb (talk) 20:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , Thanks! --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 20:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thank you :) Enwebb (talk) 13:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15
<section begin="technews-2020-W15"/> 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
 * There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. 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 7 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 April. It will be on all wikis from 9 April (calendar).

Future changes
 * MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user . This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W15"/> 19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16
<section begin="technews-2020-W16"/> 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 the  search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic.
 * You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery.
 * You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
 * When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty.
 * There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog.

Problems
 * There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).

Future changes
 * Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed.
 * The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
 * For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated  tag, as well as the use of the deprecated   parameter, will add tracking categories.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W16"/> 15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17
<section begin="technews-2020-W17"/> 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
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed.  is now  .   is now  .   is now  . This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them.

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

Future changes
 * Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011.
 * The font in the diffs will change.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (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-W17"/> 18:44, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:28, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter
The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:


 * Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
 * Royal standard of England (1406–1603).svg Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
 * 🇧🇼 The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
 * Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Blason Gondor.svg Hog Farm with 801, 🇻🇪 Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, 🇺🇸 Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and 🇲🇽 MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cinnamon red bat
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Cinnamon red bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19
<section begin="technews-2020-W19"/> 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 wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
 * Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.

Changes later this week
 * You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (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-W19"/> 16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

April 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20
<section begin="technews-2020-W20"/> 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
 * Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr.

Problems
 * Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
 * Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via  or  . You can use   or   to check one at a time instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W20"/> 20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cinnamon red bat
The article Cinnamon red bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Cinnamon red bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 16:41, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21
<section begin="technews-2020-W21"/> 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
 * If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis.

Problems
 * There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them.
 * Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.

Changes later this week
 * The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts.
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes
 * Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,   and  . They will have to remove  . You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects ,  ,  ,   and  . They can no longer use  . You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W21"/> 17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22
<section begin="technews-2020-W22"/> 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 visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (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-W22"/> 14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23
<section begin="technews-2020-W23"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos.

Problems
 * There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May.
 * The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (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-W23"/> 22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

May 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
Enwebb (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24
<section begin="technews-2020-W24"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting.
 * Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them.  is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work.   can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect   or.
 * There is a banner called . It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on   so that editors know to test and style for mobile too.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes
 * A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W24"/> 21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC) <!-- Message sent by User:Johan (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Johan_(WMF)/Tech_News_target_list_3&oldid=20156267 --

A question regarding categorization
Category:Bat virome was within Category:Bat diseases. you removed it from that category, and i added it back, without realizing that it already has been removed from it. i think you might have had a good reason for removing doing that. i likely won't be editing wikipedia anytime soon, i will try to focus on some other things for now. i had this urge to undo all of my edits. if you think there is anything wrong with anything that i did, you should undo it. 37.47.3.56 (talk) 21:50, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of "bat diseases" as "diseases that affect bats", just as I'd consider "Human diseases" to mean the same. Bat virome is much more comprehensive than that. The only viruses that actually are known to harm bats are the lyssaviruses, and bat virome details all sorts of viruses associated with bats that don't harm them. So therefore, I wouldn't consider "bat virome" as a subset of bat diseases, which the prior categorization system suggests. Enwebb (talk) 22:42, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25
<section begin="technews-2020-W25"/> 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 Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems
 * There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed.
 * Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help.
 * The selectors  and   will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts.    should be replaced by  .   should be replaced by.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W25"/> 21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
Hello ,

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference. In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
 * Your help can make a difference
 * Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
 * Discussions and Resources
 * A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
 * Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
 * A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
 * Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26
<section begin="technews-2020-W26"/> 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
 * There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors.  should be replaced with   to fix this.

Changes later this week
 * The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes
 * A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W26"/> 18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27
<section begin="technews-2020-W27"/> 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
 * Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now.
 * Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID  for the go button. This is   for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to   in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use  . You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W27"/> 16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote
Dear Enwebb,

Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.

xinbenlv Talk, Remember to "ping" me 05:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Dwarf dog-faced bat
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Dwarf dog-faced bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 20:41, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter
The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:


 * Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
 * 🇧🇼 The Rambling Man, with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
 * Royal standard of England (1406–1603).svg Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, 🇩🇰 MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Dwarf dog-faced bat
The article Dwarf dog-faced bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Dwarf dog-faced bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 20:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28
<section begin="technews-2020-W28"/> 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 Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 July. It will be on all wikis from 9 July (calendar).

Future changes
 * Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more.
 * The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
 * Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W28"/> 20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Bat virome you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 12:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome
The article Bat virome you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Bat virome for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 06:41, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29
<section begin="technews-2020-W29"/> 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
 * Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks.

Problems
 * Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week.

Changes later this week
 * Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background . Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using  on the source page.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W29"/> 16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Hammer-headed bat
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Hammer-headed bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome
The article Bat virome you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Bat virome for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 07:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Merlin Tuttle
Hello! Thank you for informing me of my violation of Wikipedia's COI policy as I was previously unaware when making edits to Merlin Tuttle. I have publicly disclosed on my talk page my COI with the subject and I would like to move forward with properly contributing to Merlin's page if that is a possibility. I am new to Wikipedia and am a bit overwhelmed by the rules and complexities so my apologies for my ignorance! Please let me know if you would be interested in reviewing Merlin's page or what the appropriate procedure is for contributing to his page. Thank you! Dmil3422 (talk) 22:43, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the clarification and glad to learn that you are a bat fan! About the photo, would it be possible to use it if I uploaded a signed consent form from Merlin and MTBC granting permission to use it?

Dmil3422 (talk) 13:47, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Hammer-headed bat
The article Hammer-headed bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Hammer-headed bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:02, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30
<section begin="technews-2020-W30"/> 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
 * A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems
 * There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution.
 * Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events.
 * Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator.

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

Future changes
 * There is a  link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W30"/> 19:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing WikiLoop DoubleCheck
Dear Wikipedians and contributors, the open source Wikipedia review tool, previously "WikiLoop Battlefield" has completed its name vote and is announcing its new name: WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Read the full story on the program page on Meta-wiki, learn about ways to support this tool, and find out what future developments are coming for this tool.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the vote!

xinbenlv Talk, Remember to "ping" me 18:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 26
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Great flying fox, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Fig.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31
<section begin="technews-2020-W31"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this.
 * The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck ' in your local or global preferences in section '. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
 * Octicons-tools.svg On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week.
 * Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed.
 * Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (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-W31"/> 13:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

June/July 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32
<section begin="technews-2020-W32"/> 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
 * All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period.
 * Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed.
 * There is a problem with the global preferences for the "" option. Developers are working on fixing it.
 * A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed.
 * Users'  and   pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the MonoBook skin, the  identifier is now  . This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses  to prevent large archives was changed.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (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-W32"/> 15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Mustelodon hoax warning
Hi, I'm one of the Catalan Wikipedia users who regularly write about mammals. Thanks for the heads-up on the Mustelodon hoax. It does look like this could be the longest-lived hoax we've ever had, at least on the English-language Wikipedia. Have a great day!--Leptictidium (mt) 06:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , and thank you for correcting my machine translation so that it was more understandable :) Enwebb (talk) 16:25, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33
<section begin="technews-2020-W33"/> 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
 * FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact.

Problems
 * The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 12. It will be on all wikis from August 13 (calendar).

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W33"/> 16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up
Hello! Thank you for simply pointing out WP:ENGVAR and not biting my head off. My impression about how this was being handled was incorrect. Cheers! Nightsmaiden (talk) 16:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , I imagine most people find learning easiest when they are not being belittled :) Happy to help, please drop me a line if you have questions while editing. Enwebb (talk) 20:05, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Recent changes
 * If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an  tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else.
 * The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 August. It will be on all wikis from 20 August (calendar).

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W34"/> 20:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Egyptian Rousette bat: A natural reservoir for MARV
On the Egyptian Rousette bat being a reservoir for Marbug, there is a CDC dispatch in regards to this. The discovery gives credence to specific populations of the Egyptian Rousette as being a natural reservoir for MARV. Here is a link to the dispatch: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2165_article

Join the RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck
Hi , you are receiving this message because you are an active user of WikiLoop DoubleCheck. We are currently holding a Request for Comments to define trust levels for users of this tool. If you can spare a few minutes, please consider leaving your feedback on the RfC page. Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. Your opinion matters greatly! María Cruz

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC) If you would like to modify your subscription to these messages you can do so here.

Tech News: 2020-35
<section begin="technews-2020-W35"/> 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 25 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 August. It will be on all wikis from 27 August (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-W35"/> 17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Great flying fox
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Great flying fox you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 15:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-36
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Problems
 * This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W36"/> 20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter
The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were


 * Free Hong Kong flag.svg Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
 * 🇮🇩HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

August 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 17:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37
<section begin="technews-2020-W37"/> 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
 * Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg All MediaWiki API modules will now use  instead of  . This was inconsistent before.

Future changes
 * The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
 * OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change.
 * The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a  class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can use   instead.   and   will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W37"/> 15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Mail
<b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  11:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Big Brown Bat picture
I had a quick question for you: IMHO, the image that is featured first on the big brown bat page doesn't do a super great job 'showing off' the species. What are your thoughts about using one of these (I especially like the last one)?--  Gen. Quon   (Talk)  00:48, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , yeah absolutely, the last one is great and I also like the second one. The article could stand to have more pictures in general, especially considering what a common and well-photographed species it is. When's our next GA collab? A big "pie in the sky" I've thought about is a WP:GT of Bats of the United States. So any US species would work if you have interest. Enwebb (talk) 01:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll go ahead and add those two in; feel free to adjust if you'd like. And another GA collaboration would be fun. I’m partial to goofy little insect-eaters like the eastern red or the hoary bat. While it’s not US-based, I also like the Northern ghost bat.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  01:58, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , eastern red would be good! It is mostly already in the structure used in other bat GAs like little brown bat, big brown bat, and tricolored bat:
 * Taxonomy
 * Description
 * Biology / Biology and ecology
 * Range and habitat
 * Conservation
 * Definitely would want more about the effect of wind turbines--I think that's a pretty serious source of mortality for these guys. Enwebb (talk) 02:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Good point. I've heard about that and cars being pretty lethal, too. I'll try to gather up some research!-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  02:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, I put out a call for eastern red bat pics on a bat-centered Facebook group. Some folks have responded. I can send you the link you'd like.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  15:53, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes definitely. I've tried doing stuff like this before on Facebook with the North American Society of Bat Research. People always express interest and then just...don't follow through and upload the pics. Maybe it would work out with more follow-up, though. Enwebb (talk) 16:00, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Cool, I sent the link via Wiki-Email. Let me know if it doesn't get to you.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  20:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Side question: While doing some preliminary work for the eastern red bat, I decided to really quickly make an article for Lasiurus frantzii. However, some sources, such as this show it as a subspecies, whereas others, like this contend it is its own species. Is there a good way to handle this?-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  18:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , yeah, that's a hard one. Lasiurus is tricky. I went ahead and followed the ASM mammal diversity database in recognizing three genera in Lasiurini (Lasiurus + Dasypterus and Aeorestes), so that could be precedent for following ASM again and recognizing L. frantzii as distinct. Whenever MSW4 eventually comes out we can clean up inconsistencies. I think it's justifiable either way. Enwebb (talk) 18:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Cool. For a start, do you think the article is OK as it is right now?-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  18:52, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a solidly decent stub. I added a couple of categories, did the stub sorting, and added needs-photo and needs-map parameters to the talk page template. Enwebb (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Another quick question: Is this a photo of Lasiurus frantzii? It's labelled Lasiurus borealis frantzii. Is this just an outdated synonym (a la L. b. teliotis)?-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  19:02, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38
<section begin="technews-2020-W38"/> 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 Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (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-W38"/> 16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39
<section begin="technews-2020-W39"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page.

Changes later this week
 * The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (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-W39"/> 21:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Recent changes Problems
 * Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete.
 * Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days.
 * Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 September. It will be on all wikis from 1 October (calendar).

Future changes
 * You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
 * The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
 * In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see  as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021.
 * You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
 * You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W40"/> 21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Great flying fox
The article Great flying fox you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Great flying fox for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 16:03, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41
<section begin="technews-2020-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
 * There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
 * You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page.

Problems
 * There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late.
 * Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
 * Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in  is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis.

Future changes
 * You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W41"/> 16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Problems
 * Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late.

Changes later this week
 * Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W42"/> 15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

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).

Future changes
 * You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the AbuseFilter extension, the  function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of   with   wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage.
 * Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID . This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either   or  . A list of affected scripts is at the top of T265373.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W43"/> 16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK
Seeing as United States Elections Project and Michael P. McDonald were created within the last seven days, any thoughts about proposing a DYK (esp with the election coming up). HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I think the election project page would need to be roughly doubled, but that sounds good. I just wanted to get something started, I'm sure there's more to be added. I'm having a hard time locating when the project was founded, though. Enwebb (talk) 20:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it was 2014 per this. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 20:58, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , now-defunct elections.gmu.edu website. that makes it sound like it was somewhere else before 2014, George Mason University, not that it was founded in 2014. Which makes sense because McDonald worked there. Wayback Machine might be able to help, but I gotta run for now. Enwebb (talk) 21:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour.
 * Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed.

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

Future changes
 * Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can.
 * There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits.
 * The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W44"/> 17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45
<section begin="technews-2020-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
 * You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the  parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g.  . Note that   is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
 * Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter).
 * The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information.

Future changes
 * A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of  when it is given a negative argument.
 * In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W45"/> 16:07, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter
The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is, the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by. In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were, , and. The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.


 * wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
 * win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
 * wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
 * wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
 * wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
 * wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
 * wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
 * wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
 * wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2021 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

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

Future changes
 * You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested.
 * From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W46"/> 15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Recent changes
 * Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.

Changes later this week
 * If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed.
 * 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).

Future changes
 * The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W47"/> 15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck
HI , I'm writing to let you know we have simplified the RfC on trust levels for the tool WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Please join and share your thoughts about this feature! We made this change after hearing users' comments on the first RfC being too complicated. I hope that you can participate this time around, giving your feedback on this new feature for WikiLoop DoubleCheck users. Thanks and see you around online, María Cruz MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2020 (UTC) If you would like to update your settings to change the wiki where you receive these messages, please do so here.

Tech News: 2020-48
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

Recent changes
 * Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page.

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W48"/> 17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49
<section begin="technews-2020-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.

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).

Future changes
 * The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database  will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W49"/> 17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50
<section begin="technews-2020-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
 * You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function.

Changes later this week
 * Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki.
 * 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).

Future changes
 * You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W50"/> 16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Horseshoe bat scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the Horseshoe bat article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 7, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Today's featured article/January 7, 2021, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  16:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you today for the article "about a family of bats that have been quite relevant in the news lately as the possible origin of SARS-CoV. They have a lot of diversity and some strange features, even for bats (pubic nipples!)"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:20, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter
Hello ,



It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to and  who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to, , and who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.
 * Year in review

has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.
 * Reviewer of the Year

As a special recognition and thank you has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.
 * NPP Technical Achievement Award

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here 18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are and. Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:10, 1 January 2021 (UTC)