User talk:GermanJoe/Archive 18

Tech News: 2020-43
 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.  16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44
 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.  17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

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

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg John M Wolfson
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

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

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Yunshui

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Anarchyte
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Yunshui

Guideline and policy news
 * Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news
 * Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
 * Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
 * Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration
 * The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
 * The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous
 * A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45
 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.  16:07, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXV, November 2020
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 15:51, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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.  17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

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

Guideline and policy news
 * There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news
 * Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration
 * Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * 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.  16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Nominations for the 2020 Military history WikiProject Newcomer and Historian of the Year awards now open
G'day all, the nominations for the 2020 Military history WikiProject newcomer and Historian of the Year are open, all editors are encouraged to nominate candidates for the awards before until 23:59 (GMT) on 15 December 2020, after which voting will occur for 14 days. There is not much time left to nominate worthy recipients, so get to it! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXVI, December 2020
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 22:49, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51
<section begin="technews-2020-W51"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too.

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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W51"/> 21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52
<section begin="technews-2020-W52"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes
 * The  template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added.

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

Future changes
 * You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
 * Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a  tag that can convert a piece of text on a page.
 * Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early 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-W52"/> 20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Voting for "Military Historian of the Year" and "Military history newcomer of the year" closing
G'day all, voting for the WikiProject Military history "Military Historian of the Year" and "Military history newcomer of the year" is about to close, so if you haven't already, click on the links and have your say before 23:59 (GMT) on 30 December! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:34, 28 December 2020 (UTC) for the coord team

Dear German Joe Sir, this is regarding the domain name khojinindia.com, it's blacklisted for a long time I apologize on behalf of my employes, they are not aware of Wikipedia terms and policy, it is my humble request to you, please whitelisting the domain name khojinindia.com, with honor respect same mistake never ever happen again. domain detail log entry: \bkhojinindia\.com\b --Hello2ddn (talk) 17:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color: Blue; background-color:white; font color:gray; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

Pratyush.shrivastava (talk) — is wishing you a Happy New Year! It's the last day of 2024 and tomorrow will be . Hope the coming year brings pleasures for you. Have a prosperous, enjoyable and a productive . This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year! -- Pratyush.shrivastava (talk) 18:14, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:New Year 2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Hammersoft
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news
 * Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news
 * You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration
 * By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
 * Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee:, , , , , ,.

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ArchiveSent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02
<section begin="technews-2021-W02"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed.
 * You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry.
 * Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
 * The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later.
 * Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works.
 * When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the  to   will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Scribunto's file metadata now includes length.
 * Octicons-tools.svg CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js.
 * Octicons-sync.svg There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W02"/> 15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXVII, January 2021
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03
<section begin="technews-2021-W03"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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 Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
 * You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on at 07:00 (UTC).
 * MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W03"/> 16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

Reply tool
The Reply tool  is available at most other Wikipedias.


 * The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
 * It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:


 * As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
 * There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.
 * The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month. Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
 * Венов_дијаграм.svg A large A/B test will start soon. This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone.  During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool
The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself. You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications
During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04
<section begin="technews-2021-W04"/> 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 Wikimedia Commons for a short time on at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on at 09:00 (UTC).

Changes later this week
 * Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January.
 * 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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W04"/> 18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Hog Farm
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Someguy1221 • Xeno

Arbitration
 * The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous
 * Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
 * Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

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ArchiveSent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05
<section begin="technews-2021-W05"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource.
 * Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like  as well as the   syntax for IP ranges.
 * 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
 * Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be . This will happen on February 8. 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-2021-W05"/> 22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-06
<section begin="technews-2021-W06"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app.

Changes later this week
 * You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis.
 * 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
 * When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones.
 * Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W06"/> 17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07
<section begin="technews-2021-W07"/> 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 were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned.
 * Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance.

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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W07"/> 17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXVIII, February 2021
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 14:58, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXVIII, February 2021
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 15:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08
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
 * The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU.

Problems
 * Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly.

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
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
 * A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems
 * There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits.
 * Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari.

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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg TJMSmith
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

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

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
 * A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
 * A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Page mover/delete-redirect.
 * A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
 * There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news
 * When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
 * When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
 * There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (T275322).

Arbitration
 * By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
 * The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous
 * Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10
<section begin="technews-2021-W10"/> 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
 * Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
 * Flagged revisions now give admins the review right.
 * When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article.

Problems
 * Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing.

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).
 * The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions.

Future changes
 * There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
 * Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown.
 * New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. 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-2021-W10"/> 17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11
<section begin="technews-2021-W11"/> 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
 * Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more.

Problems
 * Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

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 can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems.
 * You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database  will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W11"/> 23:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXXIX, March 2021
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:56, 22 March 2021 (UTC)