User talk:Matthewrb/Archive/2016/November

WikiCup 2016 November newsletter: Final results
The final round of the 2016 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2016 WikiCup top three finalists:
 * First Place -
 * Second Place -
 * Third Place -

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
 * Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
 * Good Article – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
 * Featured List – produced 2 FLs in R2
 * Featured Pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
 * Featured Portal – produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
 * Featured Topic – and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
 * Good Topic – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
 * Did You Know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
 * In The News – and, each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
 * Good Article Review – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:53, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2017 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. ,, and

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 4 November 2016
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:51, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-45
 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
 * Victoria Coleman is the new Chief technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation.
 * First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available.
 * Octicons-tools.svg for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to using.
 * Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability.

Changes this week
 * The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 7 November.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 8th. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 9th. It will be on all wikis from November 10th (calendar).
 * Special:ActiveUsers will allow users groups selection.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 November 2016 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Image Thumbnail API and allow SVG files uploaded on MediaWiki to have XHTML namespaces. The meeting will be on 9 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * RevisionSlider will be enabled by default on all beta wikis, on testwiki, testwiki2, mediawikiwiki and de.wikipedia.org.
 * Upcoming holidays will impact deployments. The schedule has been published.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  23:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:38, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

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New deal for page patrollers
Hi ,

In order to better control the quality  of new pages, keep out the spam, and welcome the genuine newbies, the current system we introduced in 2011 is being updated and improved. The documentation and tutorials have also been revised and given a facelift. Most importantly a new user group New Page Reviewer has been created.

Under the new rule, you may find that you are temporarily unable to mark new pages as reviewed. However, this is nothing to worry about - most current experienced patrollers are being accorded the the new right without the need to apply, and if you have significant previous experience of patrolling new pages, we strongly encourage you to apply for the new right as soon as possible - we need all the help we can get, and we are now providing a dynamic, supportive environment for your work.

Find out more about this exiting new user right now at New Page Reviewers and be sure to read the new tutorial before applying. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:29, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-46
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * When you edit with the visual editor you can use  +   +   to add a reference. The meta key is often the control key or command key.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 16. It will be on all wikis from November 17 (calendar).
 * In Special:Preferences you can choose which language menus and buttons will be in. If there is no translation for that language, MediaWiki has a list of fallback languages. A fallback language is a language many will understand better than English. MediaWiki will now use English when there is no Ukrainian translation.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Magic links might not work in the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

X!'s Tools API question
Hi and sorry if a wrong place to ask, just your nick is bolded at the https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools footer.

Say https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/pages/?user=Neolexx&project=commons.wikimedia.org&namespace=6&redirects=none&limit=10000 works just fine but I couldn't any help files for the tool and instead of testing decided to ask first. --Neolexx (talk) 00:03, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) is there any way to request JSON or XML response instead of HTML page?
 * 2) if I need to ajax-query it from a script at say ru.wikipedia.org - is it CORS-allowed to do so and what is the best way to do so (if allowed)?
 * Xtools does indeed have an API. However, it is down at the moment due to the fact wikiviewstats is down.  I've attempted to troubleshoot it but no luck. I'll take another stab at it over the next couple of days and see if we can bypass the wikiviewstats part entirely. FWIW, the API endpoint is at xtools/api.php (Currently down due to labs maintenance).  ~ Matthewrbowker  Drop me a note 00:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help. Actually as I said at the original Russian thread, I am amazed by that "stable unstability" of wmflabs.org services. OK with something just jumped on early pre-alpha stage: but WDQ, XTools etc. as well. As a result, as I said there, "attaching those services to our wiki-services is like playing Russian roulette with three bullets"... Maybe there is something wrong with the entire architecture - and besides wmflabs.org for actual development we need wmftools.org or a like with some query-only, some uptime-guaranteed services? --Neolexx (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the information. I am currently working with  on improving the stability of xtools by moving it into our own set of servers.  I hope this will fix many of the problems encountered on ru.wikipedia and other places. ~ Matthewrbowker  Drop me a note 21:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We may be able to repair the existing XTools API. What wikiviewstats did can be done by querying the new RESTBase API. I'll try to look into it soon! &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  21:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Related: Github Issue #70. ~ Matthewrbowker Drop me a note 22:14, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2016-47


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
 * Administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers can now use two-factor authentication. This makes their Wikimedia accounts more secure. This can be turned on in Special:Preferences. There are discussions on how to best turn it on for everyone.
 * You can now search for file properties. For example you can search for media type, how big a file is or what resolution it has.
 * The latest Collaboration team products newsletter has been published. It has more details about their work than Tech News has.

Problems
 * A hacker group is hacking Wikimedia accounts. They can probably do this because users have the same passwords on Wikimedia wikis as on other sites. Please have a password you use only on the Wikimedia wikis and nowhere else. This is especially important for administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers. These users can also turn on two-factor authentication.

Changes this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * RevisionSlider will be a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia. This will happen on 22 November. It will come to other wikis later.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * It will be possible to do cross-wiki search. The developers who work on this are looking for communities that want to test this.
 * Hovercards will leave the beta stage. The Wikimedia Foundation Reading Web team wants communities to set Hovercards as a default option for readers who are not logged in. Communities that are interested can say so on the Hovercards talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

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SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:41, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 November 2016
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:06, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Userspace protection
Hey Matthew. I'm contacting you to follow-up on the RfC on userspace protection that you participated in. After a discussion at, it looks like a filter is a better approach to implementing these changes. We're developing some language for a message that editors will see when the filter is triggered. Comments and suggestions on this message are welcome at the talk page. Take care, I JethroBT drop me a line 16:07, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-48
<section begin="technews-2016-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes this week
 * When someone tries to log in to a blocked account they will be blocked by a cookie. This means their browser will be blocked even if they change their IP address. This makes it more difficult for returning vandals.
 * When you use Content Translation to adapt a template to a new translation it will work differently. You can adapt big templates such as infoboxes. Translators will have control over the template parameters. A first version of this is released this week. It is possible it will not work correctly with all templates. There will be more updates for this soon.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets will have a new option called "hidden". This means you can register gadgets that can't be turned on or off from the preferences page. Hiding gadgets was already possible by using . You should now use   instead.   in old gadgets should be changed to.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Tool Labs could get two new policies. One would be to be able to adopt tools without an active developer. The other would be a right to fork. There is a request for comment on Meta.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W48"/> 21:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)