User talk:GermanJoe/Archive 8

Hilfe, Bitte
Help, please, with Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 15:21, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Ping: . Assuming the question is about the article's title (just saw the talkpage edit), I am not really sure. If the German title is recognizable for English speakers and commonly used in English literature and articles, it would be acceptable. If an English translation is more common in English to identify the organization, main title and redirect should probably be switched. GermanJoe (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-43
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can use  when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation.
 * When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There is a Structured Commons community focus group for Commons and Wikidata contributors who want to give input on structured data on Wikimedia Commons. You can sign up to join it.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

People Counter
Thanks for your message. Is the main issue here with the citation? If I can point to an independent source, the content of my edit is then acceptable?

I should say straight away that I'm writing on behalf of a vested interest, a people counter manufacturer, and we're just trying to make sure that this article is actually a fair reflection of the current state of the technology, as from our point of view there seems to be a systematic bias within this page. Different technologies are being arbitrarily categorized into different generations, and implying that some technologies (eg. thermal and infrared beam) are no longer used when in reality they are.

We have tried to make fairly worded edits that are objectively verifiable but many are simply deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.12.16.222 (talk)


 * Hello, first of all thank you for being so straightforward about your connection to a manufacturer. Please make sure to read WP:COI and disclose this connection when editing. 2 quick general tips: 1) You should register an individual account if you plan on regular editing. Aside from improved communication and additional technical features, you can also better disclose a possible COI on a static userpage clearly connected with yourself as individual editor. 2) For editors with a possible conflict of interest, it is generally discouraged to edit such articles yourself. But you can always suggest added sourced content at the article's talkpage, using Template:edit request in your message. Such suggestions from involved topic experts are welcome, but may need a bit of time to get implemented.


 * Regarding your initial question: the content would certainly be OK in my opinion, if you can provide a truely independent reliable source for it (and obviously assuming that it is technically accurate). But as mentioned above, it would be better to phrase such a suggestion as an edit request on the article's talkpage instead of adding it yourself. Hope that information is helpful, but please feel free to ask if you have any further questions. GermanJoe (talk) 11:38, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice, just wanted to make you aware that this is the account we will be using. Irisys (talk) 12:58, 26 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the notice, . Just to be safe: please make sure that only you use this individual account. Sharing accounts among several individuals is generally prohibited (see WP:NOSHARING). I'll post some basic links to information on your new userpage. GermanJoe (talk) 13:18, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Crowdfunding link issue
I'm well aware of the nofollow policy, Joe. It wasn't my intention in any way to post a spam link. But that doesn't change the fact that the dynamics of the initial 48 hours are critical for a campaign. The content on the link explains why, how, and what, using practice rather than a theory or the assumption. But anyway, thank You for pointing that out. Gonna be more careful in the future with the sources. Take care! --Igor Katusic (talk) 06:34, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-44
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * You can now block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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Tech News: 2017-45
 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 will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it.

Changes later this week
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 6 November. You can post proposals from 19:00 UTC and until November 19.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this:  instead of  . This will soon be fixed. Old links will still work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXXXIX, November 2017
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) 13:29, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion
This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The discussion is about the topic User talk:VickAmaze. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! — TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 18:14, 10 November 2017 (UTC) (DRN volunteer) (Not watching this page)

Tech News: 2017-46
 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
 * The diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator.
 * A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November.
 * Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Fátima Shrine and Fátima city external links
Dear GermanJoe: the official websites "fatima.pt" and "peregrinosdefatima.pt" are directly related with Fátima (city) and the Sanctuary and the Marian apparitions, and considered by several Wikipedia members and several articles as official sources about this well-known subject. For that reason, they should be maintained (are not spam links) as it happens with the other worldwide famous Marian shrines and articles. Please, take this as a contribution and not as a vandalism. My purpose is offer a good articles to our community, not an advertising service to the shrine or other institutions. Thank you. Anjo-sozinho (talk) 14:41, 13 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, "official links" are links directly about the article topic, not about some vaguely "related" side aspect. Also, such official sites are usually maintained by the topic itself or by an officially acknowledged representative (for towns and villages usually some kind of government or other official site). I will double-check and remove all spam links again. If you re-add them without further discussion, the spam domains will get blacklisted. If you'd like to start a centralized discussion, I suggest a thread at WP:EL/N as best forum for multiple articles at once. Also, please feel free to name some of the "several Wikipedia members", who support the addition of promotional links to Wikipedia. GermanJoe (talk) 01:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
 * On second glance, I have kept a few official links though that seem to meet Wikipedia's criteria, where they are directly about the article's topic itself. However, these links should not be added indiscriminately to vaguely "related" topics. Wikipedia is no link directory. I hope, that keeping some of them in directly relevant main articles will be an acceptable compromise for you, in keeping with Wikipedia's guideline about external links. GermanJoe (talk) 01:16, 15 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, you did not really want to understand what I wrote and what I explained, and it always gets easier to eliminate than to try to complete and develop. In all Wikipedia articles on public places and worldwide known phenomena there are associated official links (institutions, etc.). Eliminating the Sanctuary of Fatima and the official service dedicated to the pilgrims seems to me an exaggeration, but I have already seen that you don't want to understand or collaborate with my editings. Can you help me at least to open a centralized discussion about this subject? Thank you. Anjo-sozinho (talk) 01:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I already provided a link to the noticeboard above (WP:EL/N) - the link includes additional information on top of the page (and please read WP:EL, if you haven't done so already). To summarize Wikipedia's external links guidelines again, although the details are more complex: 1 official link for the "Santuário de Fátimais" is probably appropiate for articles covering its shrines and chapels (and I will keep the link in these articles). Additional links are not appropriate in articles about spiritual concepts, religious titles or historical events, which have little or nothing to do with the site's content. GermanJoe (talk) 01:34, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Nice to meet you GermanJoe
Hello, I received your message. Thank you for getting in touch. I am new to editing Wikipedia. I thought it would be fun but a lot of my articles keep getting reverted. I think the content I have been adding is good and from reliable sources. I could use some help. Not sure what I am missing here. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.230.203.148 (talk) 01:18, 17 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, thank you for the notice. Assuming this is about the recent AIIM-related edits, I'll briefly mention the three most important points (imo):


 * 1) This is completely optional but if you'd like to edit Wikipedia more regularly, I'd strongly recommend to register an individual account for yourself. You don't have to disclose personal information (aside from COI connections, see point 2), any anonymous or pseudonymous registration will do. Registered accounts have several additional technical abilities (user notifications, and several editing rights among others) - it's generally a lot more convenient for editing and communicating.
 * 2) If you have a professional connection with AIIM, you need to disclose this professional connection (see WP:COI, especially WP:DISCLOSE). My apologies for harping on this point, but it is an important one to consider. Wikipedia is no platform to popularize organizations or their views, but to present neutral and uninvolved information based on independent reliable sources. Self-published information is generally considered less reliable and is only usable in some uncontroversial cases (see WP:SPS), when no better sources are available.
 * 3) Lastly, AIIM seems to be 1 NGO among several others and has no final official authority to define terms or standards (atleast according to the organisations Wiki description). As such, adding the organisation's views without independent 3rd-party sources (coverage in independent news or expert publications like books and journals) is undue weight (see WP:WEIGHT).
 * Hope, this clarifies some aspects, but feel free to ask if you have other questions. I'd be glad to help. Another useful forum for all Wikipedia-related advice is at WP:Teahouse for new editors. GermanJoe (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

EthosCE
Hi GermanJoe, sorry about overwriting your changes on the EthosCE page, that was an accident. I've made a few more edits after your restore and removed some overly detailed and inaccurate information. I want to note that I am a conflicted editor -- can you review the page to insure that nothing I changed has unduly influenced by my connection? Ezrawolfe (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2017 (UTC)ezrawolfe


 * Hello, no worries - mistakes can always happen :). Thank you for being open about a possible conflict of interest. Please make sure to read WP:COI and WP:PAID, and disclose this connection as described in these linked guidelines. On first glance: external links are generally prohibited in the article's main text (unless they are in a citation to reference a specific piece of information). Usually only 1 link to the topic's "official" website is allowed - as an encyclopedia Wikipedia isn't intended to provide a comprehensive link directory. Anyway, I will briefly go through the changes and fix some Wikipedia-internal content issues. Please see my edit summaries for each change, but of course feel free to ask me if you have any additional questions. Best regards. GermanJoe (talk) 20:12, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-47
 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
 * If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The abuse filter now has a function called . You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.

Problems
 * Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Language converter syntax will no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like  must be replaced. You will have to write   instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. This will happen next week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-48
 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
 * You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later.
 * You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB.
 * You can now use the Timeless skin on all wikis. You can choose skins in Special:Preferences#Appearance.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-49
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * It is now possible to upload MP3 files to Commons. Only users with MP3 file upload rights can upload MP3 files.
 * You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it.
 * There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
 * Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You can vote for wishes on the survey page until 10 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2016 results page.
 * The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:51, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Undoing of revision 813424459: Issue of copyrighted contents
Mr. Raghuram Murmu is a public figure and any public information about him can be found freely on internet. Two parallel wikipedia pages existed but with bare minimum information. I accept that I referred some freely available resources on internet for adding information to his wiki page titled "Pandit Raghuram Murmu". But how can any information about a public figure available in public domain, be a subject of copyright? Before editing the wiki page, I read all the available resources that I could access, and then made my contributions only after proofing and re-editing every content that I was adding. Took me two days for the whole exercise. And now all that hardwork is gone for some reason that I don't understand. May be the only thing I shouldn't have done was adding the web links in the reference section. But for that you could have removed those links alone and asked me for a clarification on copyrights, instead of blatantly wiping off everything that I added.

Now, please tell me how should one write something on wikipedia about a public figure without referring resources available on internet. It is not possible for everyone to know a public figure personally to be able to right something about him. Wikipedia is the world's most trusted source of information and that's why I took the initiative of writing something about Pandit Raghuram Murmu on wikipedia so that more people can know about him.

I have not given up yet, so please tell me how to update his page without violating the alleged copyrights? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sameerhansda (talk • contribs) 06:06, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, "Publicly available" is not the same as "not copyrighted" or "public domain", this is a common misconception unfortunately. You can not copypaste such texts unless their author explicitly grants a free license for their work. Modern creative works, including texts, are copyrighted by default unless explicitly stated otherwise. For the other points, please see my message above in your previous post. GermanJoe (talk) 06:24, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Just a suggestion, but it might be better to continue these discussions at the article's talkpage Talk:Raghunath Murmu, if further clarification is needed. I noticed that a few other editors improved the article in the meantime - they may be able to offer additional input or possibly other reliable sources to develop the article. GermanJoe (talk) 07:08, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, yes the article was improved- two external links of youtube videos were added(are youtube videos considered reliable source of information??). I will make sure that further(if any) additions/contributions are done on the page titled Raghuram Murmu. SameerHansda (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:32, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * YouTube videos are problematic to use, but can be added in rare cases. They are not outright prohibited as external links (see WP:Youtube) or even as primary sources (for example for statements of opinion from acknowledged topic experts). Written secondary reliable sources are almost always preferrable though. GermanJoe (talk) 18:22, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

(Undid revision 813424971 by Sameerhansda (talk) do not create alternative parallel article versions
This has reference to the redirect issue on the following wiki page " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raghunath_Murmu&oldid=prev&diff=813426224 "

For your kind information the two pages titled "Pandit Raghuram Murmu" and "Raghuram Murmu" respectively, existed long before I knew. They represent the same public figure. "Pandit", is an honorary title prefixed to Raghuram Murmu's name. Please note that before my edit, "Pandit Raghuram Murmu" page was blank(with no content) and there was a redirect in place from that, to the page titled "Raghuram Murmu"(this page just has one line about the public figure we are talking about). And If that earlier redirect(or alternative parallel article versions) was not inappropriate, then how was my edited redirect inappropriate. All that I tried to do was present more information about Mr. Raghuram Murmu, the public figure. I had to choose to add information onto either of the two parallel pages that already existed and that's exactly what I did.

Please show me a way around this issue — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sameerhansda (talk • contribs) 05:38, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, Raghunath Murmu is an active, albeit short, article while Pandit Raghunath Murmu is "only" a navigational redirect to allow more convenient searching - strictly speaking the Pandit page is not an article itself (note that page names for active Wikipedia articles usually do not include titles and other honorifics for persons). So if you'd like to improve the topic, you should edit the page Raghunath Murmu directly. However, as I already mentioned on your user talkpage, the tripod website is not a reliable source and cannot be used for verification of content - you should search for sources like books or academic journals before you add further content. And you must phrase such content in your own words instead of copypasting text from any reference. I hope I could clarify these points a bit more - these Wiki-internal aspects can be confusing at times. Best regards. GermanJoe (talk) 06:24, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, academic journals for verification, honorifics in page names, tripod website an unreliable source - accepted(it was my ignorance). But, the comment about copy pasting is not. Because my article was not a ditto copy paste. I don't except you to read my article in entirity, but perhaps if you had then you would have known that incidents from his life were completely rephrased, unnecessary details were edited, grammar was corrected, information from separate sources was merged, in fact I presented an extremely condensed summary apt for wikipedia users. Please understand that we are not talking about fiction or work of art, but historical facts here, where the scopes of rephrasing are minimal, because the fact cannot be tempered with. There indeed were copy pasted paragraphs without my edits, and for that let me support my case through an example-how do you rephrase, "The honorary title of GURU GOMKEY was conferred upon him in the Baripada Adibasi Mahasabha of 1978", or "He authored the books xyz"??? If it is possible then please help me retrieve that article that has been deleted, so that I can run reasonable edits on it and add it to the active page. Best regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sameerhansda (talk • contribs)


 * , content that has been deleted due to copyright concerns is usually not restored in my experience. But of course you could always try to ask the deleting administrator for a restored version in your userspace or for additional advice - such decisions are entirely up to an administrator, not to a regular user like me. But as mentioned, they may likely reject such requests for copyright-related problems. GermanJoe (talk) 18:41, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * If you don't mind a suggestion for further edits: it would probably be better to start from scratch in my opinion. Try finding additional sources and add content in smaller chunks - one fact at a time in your own words, neutrally phrased and accompanied by a clear source. Using smaller edits, you are less likely to loose all you contributions in one huge revert, and partial problems are usually easier to spot and fix - huge edits in one single step are just a lot more difficult to work with. Also, as already recommended before, if you believe content may be controversial or unclear, or if other editors disagree with your changes, you should use the article's talkpage to discuss with other editors about such article-related questions. I hope these points are helpful - I certainly don't want to discourage you from contributing to this article. I completely agree with you, that it is too short and would benefit from additional sourced information. GermanJoe (talk) 18:41, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

2017 Military Historian of the Year and Newcomer of the Year nominations and voting
As we approach the end of the year, the Military History project is looking to recognise editors who have made a real difference. Each year we do this by bestowing two awards: the Military Historian of the Year and the Military History Newcomer of the Year. The co-ordinators invite all project members to get involved by nominating any editor they feel merits recognition for their contributions to the project. Nominations for both awards are open between 00:01 on 2 December 2017 and 23:59 on 15 December 2017. After this, a 14-day voting period will follow commencing at 00:01 on 16 December 2017. Nominations and voting will take place on the main project talkpage: here and here. Thank you for your time. For the co-ordinators, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:36, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks
Don't forget to format your clock to daylight savings time. --RAN (talk) 02:45, 10 December 2017 (UTC)


 * You're welcome, although that's probably not what is meant in this context ;) (Google only shows some obscure programming terminology for "format clock"). GermanJoe (talk) 02:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXL, December 2017
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) 11:16, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-50
 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
 * URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this:  instead of  . This has now been fixed on all wikis. Old links will still work.
 * A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist.
 * If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article.
 * Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "" link is now more prominent.
 * Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can discuss new or improved blocking tools with the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team. They will work on building better blocking tools. Leave comments on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Help with article?
Hi,

I noticed you sometimes help with business-related articles and I wanted to see if you might review a request for an edit for Adam Pritzker at Talk: Adam Pritzker. I am an experienced Wikipedia editor but consult for Pritzker, so someone independent needs to review the request.

Thanks.

BC1278 (talk) 18:42, 13 December 2017 (UTC)BC1278


 * Hello, I noticed that has already reviewed your request. I agree with these comments, especially about the "mission" details: this part needs rephrasing. "Vision" or "mission" declarations (or similar public PR statements) are largely irrelevant for an encyclopedic article and should be completely omitted in favor of an uninvolved description in your own words, based on independent reliable sources. "Vision" and "mission" statements describe how a person, company or organization sees itself or how it would like to be seen in public - neither of these viewpoints is suitable for a factual and totally unbiased description. On a sidenote, I have also added a standard COI-message on top of the article's talkpage, clicking on "request corrections on or suggest content" you can create new edit requests which are automatically tagged and queued for review (although there is usually a bit of backlog). Hope that helps, but please feel free to ask if you have any further questions. GermanJoe (talk) 09:03, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-51
<section begin="technews-2017-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.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.

Problems
 * When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited.
 * Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
 * The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has now ended. You can see the results. They decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W51"/> 15:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

User group for Military Historians
Greetings,

"Military history" is one of the most important subjects when speak of sum of all human knowledge. To support contributors interested in the area over various language Wikipedias, we intend to form a user group. It also provides a platform to share the best practices between military historians, and various military related projects on Wikipedias. An initial discussion was has been done between the coordinators and members of WikiProject Military History on English Wikipedia. Now this discussion has been taken to Meta-Wiki. Contributors intrested in the area of military history are requested to share their feedback and give suggestions at Talk:Discussion to incubate a user group for Wikipedia Military Historians.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:30, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Recent COI edits
Hi GermanJoe. You may remember that I have a disclosed COI/affiliation with McKinsey and Bain. I wanted to drop in and make sure you knew none of the recent COI edits were from me or anyone from either firm in any official capacity, to the best of my knowledge. Sometimes it only takes one employee out of thousands to make it look like the company is being nefarious. Thanks for keeping a close eye on them.

Regarding the discussion on the McKinsey page between you and the IP, I think being "prestigious" is legitimately a substantial part of what the firm is known and a heavy emphasis of the total body of literature. It probably just needs a sentence instead of a paragraph in the Lead. Some other areas that could use a second pair of eyes (if you're interested) is the "2017 South African corruption scandal" section on the McKinsey page and the "List of current and former Bain & Company consultants" on the Bain page (see here). CorporateM (Talk) 21:39, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, no worries. I certainly wasn't implying that you were directly connected with these edits. You have clearly disclosed your COI, and I appreciate - and AGF - your transparency in that regard. Other content-related questions are better discussed on the articles' talkpages though. GermanJoe (talk) 23:04, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLI, January 2018
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) 13:15, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-02
<section begin="technews-2018-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
 * On Wikidata, the "" button when you edit is now called "". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "" to "". This is to help new editors understand what it does.
 * Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways.
 * Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki.
 * Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated.

Problems
 * Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem.
 * With the new filters in the recent changes, "" in "" did not work for "" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again.
 * The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see  instead of   even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis.
 * The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: . All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W02"/> 16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3
<section begin="technews-2018-W03"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development.

Problems
 * Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W03"/> 18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-04
<section begin="technews-2018-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.

Recent changes
 * Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features.

Problems
 * With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W04"/> 23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-05
<section begin="technews-2018-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.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W05"/> 17:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06
<section begin="technews-2018-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
 * Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to.
 * The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language.
 * Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded.

Problems
 * Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this.

Changes later this week
 * When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users.
 * When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like . You could use   or   instead of   but it would make no difference. You can now only use   or nothing . If you write something else, instead of treating it like , it will not work.
 * The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of  or   it will say   and  . It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public.
 * Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W06"/> 20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLII, February 2018
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) 07:16, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07
<section begin="technews-2018-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.

Recent changes
 * TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator.
 * Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week
 * You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages.
 * The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates.
 * The abuse filter extension has a new feature  that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W07"/> 21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08
<section begin="technews-2018-W08"/> 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 explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed.
 * You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table.

Problems
 * Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed.
 * Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like   are not visible in the references list whilst editing.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible.
 * Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W08"/> 22:55, 19 February 2018 (UTC)