User talk:Itcouldbepossible/Archive 2022/September

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend



Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news
 * A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
 * An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news
 * The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
 * The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration
 * An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
 * The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous
 * The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
 * Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-36
 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).
 * Octicons-sync.svg Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on  at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
 * Octicons-tools.svg On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of  should be updated to use the  function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting , the new id for this row. Examples are available.

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

23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail
Not sure if you noticed. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  10:55, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl Thanks for notifying me about the email and for your concern regarding the matter. I have replied to your email. Regards, Itcouldbepossible Talk 16:37, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I've replied. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  17:33, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl I will be trying what you said. Just something more, do you have email notifications enabled? Or if I email you, I need to leave a talk page message? Itcouldbepossible Talk 08:07, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl I have replied to you. Would you please check it once? Itcouldbepossible Talk 14:54, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl I have sent you some images. Please check it once. Itcouldbepossible Talk 04:03, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I might have done  instead of  ; I'll reply properly later. &#8213;  Qwerfjkl  talk  06:14, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @QwerfjklOk, thanks no problem. At least the problem got identified. <b style="background:#bf4949;border:2px solid #000;padding:2px;color:#fffb8c;">Itcouldbepossible</b> Talk 08:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl Sorry for bothering you again, but the thing doesn't work still. I replied to your email. <b style="background:#bf4949;border:2px solid #000;padding:2px;color:#fffb8c;">Itcouldbepossible</b> Talk 15:29, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
 * &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1655640415701:User_talkFTTCLNItcouldbepossible" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl talk  12:06, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for this email. I thought you had forgotten about the matter. I didn't remind you again because I didn't want to bother you again. So I left the matter. Thanks for providing me a new solution. I am surely going to test it out in your sandbox. It feels great that you still remember about the strange request of mine. Thanks a lot for being so helpful. Regards, <b style="background:#bf4949;border:2px solid #000;padding:2px;color:#fffb8c;">Itcouldbepossible</b> Talk 12:13, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay, I've been preoccupied with a few other things (like making over 1000 redirects per an AWBREQ). &#8213; <span id="Qwerfjkl:1655641425333:User_talkFTTCLNItcouldbepossible" class="FTTCmt"> Qwerfjkl talk  12:23, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * No problem sir. I know you are bust with many things. Thanks for your help. <b style="background:#bf4949;border:2px solid #000;padding:2px;color:#fffb8c;">Itcouldbepossible</b> Talk 12:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Inappropriate warnings
Your uw-username warnings to and  were most likely incorrect. Don't throw warnings around, based on some expansive interpretation of policy. <span id="Hemantha:1656329644680:User_talkFTTCLNItcouldbepossible" class="FTTCmt">Hemantha (talk) 11:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-37
<section begin="technews-2022-W37"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator.

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).
 * Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2022-W37"/>

01:47, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-38
<section begin="technews-2022-W38"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Two database fields in the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> table are now being dropped: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables.

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).
 * In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts.

Future changes
 * In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2022-W38"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #22


Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
 * About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
 * Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.

If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.

Ongoing projects and explorations


We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.

Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).

Experiments analysis
Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:
 * Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
 * They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
 * The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).

Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.
 * Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
 * Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.

News for mentors
A new system for the mentors list

The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.

The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. 

Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.

Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.

A tip for mentors

Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.

And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges:,.

Other improvements

Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:


 * While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved.
 * Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits.
 * Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved.

Recent changes and fixed bugs

 * We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis.
 * Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are, , , ,.
 * Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed.
 * In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration.

Have a question? A suggestion?
Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive
(t &#183; c)  buidhe  21:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-39
<section begin="technews-2022-W39"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

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).
 * Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias.
 * Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information.
 * In the     namespace, pages ending with will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the      and      namespaces.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2022-W39"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)