User talk:MusikAnimal/Archive 42

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Callanecc

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news
 * Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
 * Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
 * A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
 * A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.

Technical news
 * The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
 * created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous
 * A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

My page
My page is not appearing on Google search. Sham Kumar Monger (talk) 14:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Remove protection for Template:Taxonbar/Link
Can I get you to remove the protection you put on Template:Taxonbar/Link. It has barely a handful of trasclusions and is certainly not highly visible any longer. Thank you, —Uzume (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  15:20, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
 * Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Sat May 9: Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 14:48, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Edit count request for Ronhjones
Hello, I'd understand if this would be infeasible, but would you be able to have an edit count report generated for Ronhjones, who passed away last year (as I recently found out)? I can't get the XTools to generate one because he made so many edits. I'd be most interested in the top ten or so pages edited in the first few namespaces (i.e. main/talk, user/user talk, Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk), but the yearly/monthly edit counts would be interesting too. Thanks! Graham 87 14:58, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure thing! I ran it on my local and exported the wikitext: User:MusikAnimal/Ronhjones. Total execution time: 4,358.237 seconds. Ron was quite prolific! &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:48, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks ... he was quite prolific indeed ... and that report took a long time to generate! I've taken the liberty of fixing the Meta links. I've also linked it from his talk page. Graham 87 03:18, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry investigation
Hi,

Is it legal to report a sockpuppetry investigation after 3 weeks+ from the time when it was done? Eg: sockpuppetry was done on 24th April but today is 12th May. Dinopce (talk) 08:26, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No, you can file a WP:SPI case at any time, provided you have evidence to show. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  15:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Question
Hello M. I hope you are well. When you have a moment would you please take a look at this thread User talk:Anarchyte. After I posted it I realized that A might have thought that your bot would remove the template. I haven't seen any redirect PP templates removed by that bot so I don't know if it is set up to get those or not so I thought I would double check with you. Best regards and stay safe. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 02:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell it shouldn't follow redirects. If you run into another example, could you let me know (without removing the template)? &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  15:21, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I sure will M. In all my years of working on these this was the first time I saw this situation with redirects so it might be a one off. The example I used on Anarchyte's page was from May of 2019 and there were three or four (like this one) where the protection had been removed on April 21st of this year. They didn't appear in the category until May 12. Very odd. Cheers. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 18:14, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, well if it's not appearing the category then it's not the bot's fault :) Probably just usual weirdness with MediaWiki. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  18:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No they were in the cat - that is how I found them - sorry for the confusion :-) If it happens again I'll let ya know and I'll leave them in the cat. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 18:58, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

May 20: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 15:59, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot
I must inquire, to you, dear sire, concerning this, if possible is, to add a function, so that instead of removal, we have correction. This would be of great help o'erall. Regarding the poetry: Since you so kindly propose / this idea, I dare not oppose RandomCanadian (talk &#124; contribs) 21:54, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Beautiful poem! :) The bot does not apply or remove page protection. For that you will need a human. WP:RFPP is the venue to make such requests. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  23:39, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'm clearly not Shakespeare - maybe it's clearer in prose: it would be better if instead of the bot simply removing the incorrect protection template (in this case pp-protected) if it could also replace it with the correct one (i.e. pp-pc in this case, which I did manually). Of course a detail very small / (maybe not worth the effort unless it can be added without too much difficulty) but still, of some help overall. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk &#124; contribs) 23:49, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Replied at Bot requests. Regards, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  18:50, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring
Can the bot be programmed not to edit war with human editors? I kept trying to restore some discussion at Requests for permissions/Template editor but the bot was too quick for me. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:05, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You need to either deactivate the resolution template, e.g. change  to , or simply make a comment so that the bot knows discussion is ongoing. You could do this in the same edit that you use to restore the discussion. Detecting edit wars would be nice but this is a lot of work and would probably be error prone. Apologies for any headaches. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  23:30, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 May 2020
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:06, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg SQL

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.

Arbitration
 * A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

A message from Krishna Murthy DL
Can admin of this bot please update my edit count at Requests for permissions/Rollback, which is wrongly listed?

Krishna Murthy DL (talk) 07:46, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks
I am in receipt of your kind favor of the latest instant. -- Deep fried okra  ( schalte ein ) 13:44, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

User:PvtHudson Backup 3.5
appears to be a sock of. Could you please block. --Stay safe, ◊ PRAHLAD balaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 14:41, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

UserRights tool
This should be easy (I hope), but when rights are assigned temporarily can the tool write it like "✅ Granted till DD-MM-YYYY." That would be quite helpful. --<span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',Geneva,sans-serif"> qedk ( t  愛  c ) 15:25, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
Read this in another language • Subscription list



This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.


 * Reply tool : This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon.  The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing  . You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster.  Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
 * New requirements for user signatures : Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable.  Most editors will not be affected.
 * New discussion tool : The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions.   You can see the initial design on the project page.
 * Research on the use of talk pages : The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles.  We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25
<section begin="technews-2020-W25"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

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

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

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

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

June 17: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 01:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
Hello ,

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

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

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

Auto Wiki Browser
MusikBot II blocked. Request for Auto Wiki Browser the web browser on Android — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hassan Kibiti (talk • contribs)
 * I'm sorry I don't know what you're asking about here. MusikBot II did not block any requests, that much I'm sure of. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  00:22, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26
<section begin="technews-2020-W26"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors.  should be replaced with   to fix this.

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W26"/> 18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 June 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:Sjones23
You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Sjones23. — Goszei (talk) 07:59, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: this discussion has moved to — Goszei (talk)  21:05, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27
<section begin="technews-2020-W27"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now.
 * Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed.

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W27"/> 16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 16
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#606060; background-color:#f8f8f8; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:7px; border-radius: 1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks"> News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (May and June 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 16th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
 * Cscr-featured.svg Ed6767's redwarn is this month's featured script


 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Enterprisey: abusefilter-diff-check* abusefilter-hide-search* live-reload* quick-vand-block*
 * abusefilter-mass-test* simple-notifs* User:Enterprisey/rc-thanks
 * DannyS712's RemindMe* Majavah's Aligner
 * BrandonXLF: ShowUserGender* ReferenceExpander
 * Awesome Aasim: oneclickdelete* noeditredlinks.js* editrequest
 * TheTVExpert: searchForSection* scriptDocumentationTabs
 * Alex 21: script-categoriessort.js* script-imageres.js
 * Ed6767's redwarn


 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Twinkle released new features, including a rollback links on history pages and Special:Recentchanges,
 * the ability to rollback-in-place on Recent changes and Contributions, a new option autoselect warning
 * level, and an XfD log. (Enable in your prefences; See full list of changes)
 * Headbomb's unreliable source detector script now allows users to add their own custom rules. See the documentation at User:Headbomb/unreliable.

Open tasks
 * Recent changes to the vector skin may have broken some scripts and gadgets. Uses of the  selector
 * should be replaced with . Additionally,   should be replaced with , and
 * should be replaced with . See T255718 and T254797 for more.

Pending requests
 * A script to simplify the process of nominating articles for good article reassessment (request)
 * A script to help create navboxes (request)
 * ...and many more, all available at User scripts/Requests



If anyone else would like to contribute to future issues, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

About the newsletter

Subscription options

Discuss this issue

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

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Malcolmxl5
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg John • TheCoffee • Tim!
 * Pictogram voting rename.png →
 * Pictogram voting rename.png →

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Bbb23

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

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news
 * Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).

Arbitration
 * Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
 * The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for reverting the vandalism on my talk page! 47.227.95.73 (talk) 15:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3


Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:


 * The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
 * More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
 * Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
 * The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
 * Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode.  You can enable it in your preferences.
 * On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
 * In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!
<div class="boilerplate metadata" style="background-color:#E6E6FA; border: 1px solid #7D00B3; margin: 0.5em auto; padding: 0.5em; width:90%; text-align: center"> Happy First Edit Day! Have a very happy first edit anniversary!

From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 06:36, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

MB II, FixPP, and hatnotes
It was brought up that Twinkle doesn't respect MOS:ORDER when adding deletion or protection tags to pages. I gave it a whirl for TW, but realized that was probably doing the same thing. Not exactly an urgent concern, but in theory she probably should too. I expanded Twinkle's string to check for hatnotes if you're curious; it seems to work but is getting a bit unwieldy. ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 15:12, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note! I suspect the guideline really only applies for full-width templates, though. With yes, the placement within the wikitext is less important since visually it's always at the top-right. For this reason I'm not sure it's worth the complexity to implement this logic for the FixPP task, but perhaps it is for Twinkle since it has an option to use the full-width variant. You might also want to check for manual hatnotes, as with . I imagine an all-encompassing regular expression would be unwieldy, for sure! Regards, &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  15:50, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My knowledge or interest is fairly limited, but yes, the larger issue for Twinkle is probably the deletion tagging, so you're in the clear there. I think there's a concern around screen-readers, but I'm not sure about that (although I know how to test it!). ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 17:00, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I'm referring to the banner-style protection templates, as with  (as opposed to  ). Twinkle let's you do the former, while MusikBot II always adds yes so that the reading experience is unaffected. MOS:ORDER I can assume is about visual ordering; with a screen reader I shouldn't have to go through a series of deletion/maintenance templates to then finally find the hatnote which tells me I'm on the wrong page. One might argue there's value in being consistent within the wikitext too, but it seems like a trivial matters, as you say, and full-width protection banners are rarely used as it is. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  17:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28
<section begin="technews-2020-W28"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed.

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

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

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

Tech News: 2020-29
<section begin="technews-2020-W29"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W29"/> 16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30
<section begin="technews-2020-W30"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W30"/> 19:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

New message from Prahlad balaji
◊ <b style="color:#095">PRAHLAD</b> <sup style="color:#707">balaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 17:14, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W31"/> 13:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Requests for permissions approved in future
I wonder why Requests for permissions/Approved/August 2020 (perma) has already been created by MusikBot. Obviously not a fatal error, I just stumbled on it. Nardog (talk) 16:03, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

FixPP disabled
Hi ,

the automatic removal of incorrect protection templates makes it hard to deal with vandalism such as at Articles for deletion/Code page 875, of which Wikipedia currently receives a lot.

Special:Diff/969944700 is a temporary and hopefully uncontroversial measure until a solution is found.

Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:27, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * There is an ANI thread about the sock and the issue at WP:ANI. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:35, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I recognize this was undesired behaviour in this case, but I'm not sure what to do. The bot has no way of knowing it is editing after a vandal edit. Other bots present the same problem; say AnomieBOT in adding dates to templates, SineBot adding signatures to talk page comments, etc., or the same could happen with another human editor to the page. This really is a limitation with rollback, in my opinion. Fortunately, reverting back without rollback isn't a difficult task; I think WP:POPUPS is the quickest (hover over diff > Actions > Revert). You obviously know about Twinkle, but there's also good old fashioned Undo (select the left radio button to desired edit, Compare selected revisions, Undo), or even just go to the permalink and hit edit. If admin impersonation in closing AfDs is an ongoing problem, I might be able to help there with the use of AbuseFilter. How does that sound? In the interim, I see no reason to stop the bot, as it is not malfunctioning. It is performing exactly as it was designed and approved to do. Sorry for the trouble, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  16:08, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, perhaps we could introduce a longer delay before incorrect tags are removed, or missing ones are added. Two hours could be perfectly reasonable and would prevent the problem, I think. The benefit of rollback to me in such cases is its (mass-/script-/singleclick-)accessibility from the contribution list. I will probably actually try using Popups or Undo the next time I encounter a list of such edits. I had assumed that such methods would fail after the bot edit.
 * Yeah, true, it's not specific to MusikBot. Per User:SineBot/HighPriority, one of the reasons for SineBot's (very short) delay before signing is allowing rollback, and I think I know at least one user who has disabled SineBot on their user talk page to retain the ability to rollback. AnomieBOT can be pretty slow, from two hours (Special:Diff/970109689) to 20 minutes (Special:Diff/962295605). I guess that's a technical limitation and not intentional, but it reduces the probability of preventing a revert.
 * Filter help would be very kind and welcome, thank you very much for the offer. The vandalism currently has an admin impersonation theme, but I guess that would change if an AbuseFilter targets it too specifically. Something as broad as the SPI disruption filter might be worth a try. I currently can't dedicate the weeks or months needed to build, test and activate a filter, and I lack your experience in their syntax.
 * Thank you very much and no worries; best regards ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:00, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Additional thought: Compared to SPI, AFD probably has a much higher rate of legitimate non-autoconfirmed edits with syntax errors or other mistakes. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:03, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Old revisions of a page will render with their old wikitext, but magic words and such will use the current protection level. With that in mind, here's an idea: when the bot finds a page that either has a protection template it shouldn't or doesn't have one that it should, have it look at who made the last edit to the page, and then find the most recent revision that wasn't by them. If that revision also shows up as needing the template added or removed, then the reason is that the page's protection level changed (the common case), and the bot should make the edit immediately, as it does now. But if that revision looks good, then the reason is that the last editor improperly added or removed the template (the uncommon case), and the bot shouldn't make the edit until the latest revision is [insert bikeshedded amount of time here] old. Thoughts? Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:49, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I'll be; it's great to see back editing again, ! For removal of templates, the bot actually looks at members of Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates, so I'm not sure your idea would work for that function. Regardless, having the bot wait ~20 minutes (two runs later) would be much simpler to implement. Removal of templates isn't very urgent, anyway. As for the addition of templates, the timing isn't generally a problem since vandalism would have naturally stopped after protection has been applied. I was going to leave that logic untouched. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  21:00, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it'd still be possible, just needing a few more API calls per page to figure out what to do before each edit. Although if you're willing to make it always wait 20 minutes before removing the templates, that definitely solves the problem too. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:05, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

A message from 85.64.2.190
Hi, we're doing a research regarding Stocks prediction and we want to use Wikipedia statistics as you provide, but we need data per minute. Do you know if we can get this information? How many users access a specific page per minute or hour.

Thanks so much! Matan

85.64.2.190 (talk) 14:05, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * This information is not publicly available. Sorry! &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:38, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot PermClerk and replag
The enwiki_p replag is at about 75 hours and climbing right now thanks to T254462. That's caused MusikBot to not notice a user rights change Special:Diff/970374232, causing minor confusion. You might want to add something to handle this. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:35, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Eek! That specific query doesn't need to use the replicas, so I can switch it to use the API when I get a chance. However the database maintenance should be over soon, probably within 24 hours based on what the DBAs told me the other day. Thanks for letting me know! &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:43, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Joy Rianne Goedkoop
Hi, I want to recreate Joy Rianne Goedkoop, a page you deleted. As I don’t know it will be a similar page, can I see the page content of the deleted page? SportsOlympic (talk) 17:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My bot actually just moved the page to the draftspace. From there it was deleted by . I'll still share the content, though there's not much to see:

"Joy Rianne Goedkoop (born 5 November 1993) is a Dutch female artistic gymnast and part of the national team. She participated at the 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and at the 2010 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands."


 * I believe the page was deleted en masse with many others over WP:BLP concerns, so please make sure the above is accurate before reintroducing it. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:50, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, that’s clear. Thanks for the information. I will recreate the page as she is in the news this week for other reasons. Regards, SportsOlympic (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail!
Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Red Phoenix
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Euryalus • SQL
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg GB fan
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news
 * There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
 * Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
 * Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
 * There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

A message from Techie3
The MusikBot Database reports/Stale drafts, lists drafts, that have already been saved from G13, such as Draft:Hamish Michael

Techie3 (talk) 12:48, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's probably due to the ongoing database replication lag, see the discussion at WP:VPT (permalink). &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:29, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Time limit
Hi, I was wondering if you are able to increase the time limit the MusikBot is set to remove protection icons from unprotected pages by a couple minutes or so? Currently, the time limit is set to a very short amount of time. As you can see on Articles for deletion/Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE Society, the MusikBot comes in and immediately removes the protection icon set my the LTA account and makes it very difficult to rollback their edits across their many AfD's that they vandalized. If you can increase the time limit the bot can function off of, that'll be ideal. But if not, then no worries. Thank you. ɴᴋᴏɴ21 ❯❯❯  talk  18:19, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do plan to slow it down (see above), but I am also working to stop the vandalism through other means. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 August 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32
<section begin="technews-2020-W32"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W32"/> 15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33
<section begin="technews-2020-W33"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact.

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

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

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

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

Regarding xtools
Hi, hope you're doing well. I moved Arya Linux (OS) (an unsourced page created by other user) to draftspace using the MoveToDraft scrip, but after the page redirect was deleted under R2 it appeared on my article creations list. Is there any way to remove this from the list? Thanks TheBirdsShedTears (talk) 17:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * XTools just reads what's in the public database. To remove it from this database, I think you'd need to use suppression or perhaps revision deletion to remove your username from the initial revision. I'm not sure this situation qualifies for use of suppression or revdel, however. It's nothing to be worried about, anyway. Most all prolific users are going to have a few deleted pages, which by itself is no indication of wrongdoing (if that was your concern). &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  20:42, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! TheBirdsShedTears (talk) 01:28, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Sun Aug 16: Great American Wiknic NYC & Beyond
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 22:29, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34
<section begin="technews-2020-W34"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

Bot
Can you teach your bot not to tell blocked users "if you do not resume editing ..." - which may come across as little empathy ;) - Tell me how you solve it, because I face a similar problem. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:38, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

API access to xtools authorship stats
Are the authorship stats (example) accessible via the xtools API? If not, it would be great if it could be added. In theory, it would enable tools to place deletion notices and the like on the talk pages of the correct editors (though in practice not really because of arrrgh, CSP ...) SD0001 (talk) 05:31, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is not, but really it would just be a proxy for the WikiWho API. I suppose that's still worthwhile to add. XTools authenticates and does not have rate limiting, it make the response format a little cleaner, and also it'd mean scripts and other tools don't have to query outside WMF infrastructure (though CSP restrictions would still apply, of course, since Toolforge/VPS isn't considered "safe"). &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:42, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-35
<section begin="technews-2020-W35"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 August. It will be on all wikis from 27 August (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W35"/> 17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot down?
MusikAnimal, it looks like MusikBot is down. Its last edit was at 20:00, 25 August 2020 (UTC), which means, among other things, it has missed two updates on the DYK nominations page. (I've done manual edits to make up for the lack both times.)

Interestingly, DYKUpdateBot was also down for its 00:00, 26 August 2020 (UTC) edits, so it may be that whatever prevented MusikBot from running then also prevented DYKUpdateBot from running; Shubinator had to restart his bot, and I imagine you'll have to restart yours as well. Best of luck, and thanks for the bot! BlueMoonset (talk) 01:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, MusikAnimal, I noticed that Database reports/Stale drafts hasn't updated in a couple of days. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 16:35, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * For the time being you coulduse User:SDZeroBot/G13 eligible sorting. SD0001 (talk) 16:50, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Whoopsies, I reset the password without realizing I also needed to update the bot passwords! Everything should be back in order now. Apologies for the downtime, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:22, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:33, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

Reply tool


The Reply tool  has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.


 * More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They  posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
 * Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
 * Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة.  ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

 * The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
 * Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily . Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected.  Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures.  If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 17
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#606060; background-color:#f8f8f8; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:7px; border-radius: 1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks"> News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (July and August 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 17th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
 * Cscr-featured.svg Yet another Articles for creation helper script ("AFCH"), a gadget used by Articles for creation reviewers, is this month's featured script


 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Opencooper's collapseBots declutters talk pages by collapsing comments made by bots
 * SD0001's GAR-helper is a script to easily create a GAR nomination and carry out the necessary related steps
 * SD0001's shortdescs-in-category can be used to view short descriptions of pages in a category
 * WikiMacaroons's Talk to Wiki allows for voice-activated functionality and navigation of Wikipedia
 * WikiMacaroons's AutoShortDesc simplifies the addition of short descriptions to pages
 * IagoQnsi's ipareader adds a button next to IPA pronunciations to have them read out by a text-to-speech program
 * Awesome Aasim's xfdvote makes it easier to participate in XFD discussions
 * BrandonXLF's CitationStyleMarker adds "CS1" or "CS2" beside citations to show their style with an optional toggle
 * GeneralNotability's spihelper a script to help CheckUsers, SPI clerks, and patrolling admins with sockpuppet investigation case pages
 * Evad37's TimestampDiffs adds a link at the end of every comment to the diff in which it was added


 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Twinkle has a number of improvements including additional redirect category templates
 * Updates to Enterprisey's reply-link include compatibility fixes with Mdaniels5757's markAdmins script and Kephir's unclutter script
 * Evad37's rater is now at version 2.6.0, which updates including OOUI tweaks and the inclusion of banners for inactive projects

Miscellaneous
 * If anyone would like to help contribute to this newsletter, please leave a note at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++

Pending requests
 * A script to simplify addition of "connected contributor" templates to talk pages
 * A script to simplify removal of the "persondata" template on mlwiki
 * ...and many more, all available at User scripts/Requests



Stay safe --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

About the newsletter

Subscription options

Discuss this issue

Tech News: 2020-36
<section begin="technews-2020-W36"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

You've got mail!
Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:15, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Eddie891
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Angela • Jcw69 • Just Chilling • Philg88 • Viajero

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg SQL

Guideline and policy news
 * Following a request for comment, the minimum length for site ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
 * A request for comment is ongoing to determine whether paid editors must or should use the articles for creation process.
 * A request for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between the draftification and alternative to deletion processes.

Arbitration
 * A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2020 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
 * An open request for comment asks whether active Arbitrators may serve on the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee or Ombudsman commission.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:56, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

IRC bot not accepting filter subscription
Hello MusikAnimal! The amazing MusikBot is refusing to subscribe me to new filters :( It says "08:23 <MusikBot> Your IRC nick must be identified to subscribe to filters. See https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration", but I'm sure that I am identified. It is even continuing to honor my previous filter subscriptions. Can you see what is up? I was trying to subscribe to filter 1082, which I just created. Thanks! ST47 (talk) 12:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm not sure what the problem is. I know it does not check to see if you are identified when sending you messages, rather only when (un)subscribing to filters. I ran  and indeed it suggests you are logged in. Could you try again? Sorry, this is really hard to debug. I can confirm I'm able to subscribe to filters. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  14:14, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No change:
 * 10:18 <ST47> !subscribe en.wikipedia.org 1082
 * 10:18 <MusikBot> Your IRC nick must be identified to subscribe to filters. See https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration
 * ST47 (talk) 14:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Works fine if I change nicks first:
 * 10:24 <ST47> !subscribe en.wikipedia.org 1082
 * 10:24 <MusikBot> Your IRC nick must be identified to subscribe to filters. See https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration
 * 10:24 <ST47_> !subscribe en.wikipedia.org 1082
 * 10:24 <MusikBot> You have subscribed to filter 1082 on en.wikipedia.org
 * 10:24 <MusikBot> To unsubscribe, use `!unsubscribe [lang.project.org] [filter ID]` or `!unsubscribe [lang.project.org] all`
 * 10:24 <ST47> !subscribe en.wikipedia.org 1082
 * 10:24 <MusikBot> Your IRC nick must be identified to subscribe to filters. See https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration
 * ST47 (talk) 14:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37
<section begin="technews-2020-W37"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Why am I blocked???
I thought all restrictions were removed?? I have never posted anything that wasn't true, Any amendments were either factual or removing bias Hollandnigel (talk) 23:22, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? You're not blocked, and you haven't been for months. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:19, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail!
BilCat (talk) 01:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38
<section begin="technews-2020-W38"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W38"/> 16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Please help me
I need protection on Wikipedia page Mr.chinmayroy (talk) 05:56, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W39"/> 21:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Database reports/Stale drafts
Hello, MusikAnimal,

I don't know if you've noticed but this daily report has recently been blank. I wanted to let you know that it's not a problem with MusikBot but a change in editor behavior. Some editors are getting ahead of the report and tagging stale drafts in the 24 hours between when the drafts are eligible but before the report gets posted. I noticed this change earlier in the month and it's not one editor but a variety of editors. I'm not sure of why this change happened but I wanted to let you know in case you thought it was a problem with the bot. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 00:35, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. My guess is editors are now going by User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon sorting. I'm amazed at how eager everyone is to delete these old drafts! Perhaps MusikBot's report isn't so helpful anymore. As far as I can tell, User:SDZeroBot/G13 eligible sorting provides the same information and while also including userspace drafts and neatly sorting by topic. Is that correct, ? I'm quite alright with retiring MusikBot's report, if no one is using it. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  15:53, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Sat Sep 26: Met Fashion Virtual Edit Meet-up
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 17:49, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot II blocked
Who is the chor club of India?? It shows east bengal..

May I know why?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.72.15 (talk) 12:32, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

MB II is "stucked"
Hi. I was about to report you an issue with MB II and Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates until I saw you are an interface admin. The report is at the noticeboard to give you the full picture. Since September 19 the bot only removes pages from 0 to ete (before this request it only removed pages from 0 to aho). Like with AHollender, ThePenguin contacted other editors that are active and can remove the templates without problem. The user pages listed at IAN, however, are inactive and whose protection problem is mostly solved by an "includeonly" tag (or replacing "pp-template" with "pp-protected" in those pages that are truly protected). Although the current number of pages is low, it was because ThePenguin and I have been removing those templates since this problem started, but it would be better if the bot worked as intended. Thansk for your attention. (CC) Tb hotch <big style="color: #555555;">™ 02:16, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up. I've fixed it and the maintenance category is now empty. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  16:16, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you. (CC) Tb hotch <big style="color: #555555;">™ 18:58, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

User:MusikBot
Hi. FYI: Please see Special:Diff/980565255, bot removed my request in error. -- <b style="color:black">CptViraj</b> (talk) 08:25, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed with Special:Diff/980639575. It seems the syntax you used was slightly different from what the bot expected. I will try to get that bug fixed when I find the time. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:00, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 September 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 September 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40
<section begin="technews-2020-W40"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

TAFIN
Hi MusikAnimal. WP:TAFIN hasn't been been maintained since the end of July. Would you take a look? —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 22:44, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed! There was some fauly regex for parsing timestamps (see the error log). It should be good moving forward. Thanks for the ping, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 01:14, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

A glitch with TemplateProtector
Hi MusikAnimal

There seems to be something odd happening with the User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector task.

Over the last few months, I have watched the task protecting several templates which I have deployed, all in accordance with User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector/config. Thanks for your good work in automating this task.

However, something odd is happening with Template:YYYY in nationality sport category header and its two sub-templates /outer core and /inner core.

I began deploying them widely around mid-September, and on 17 Sept, the bot helpfully semi-protected Template:YYYY in nationality sport category header:

A few days later, the transclusion count passed 5,000 ... but the protection level has not been upgraded to templateeditor, as it should be per the config.

I assumed that this was some side-effect of the huge lag on the replication servers as they were reconfigured, and that everything would sort itself out in a few days. But the lag cleared last week (around 22 or 23 Sept, AFAICR) ... yet the protection has not been upgraded.

The transclusion count https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name=YYYY_in_nationality_sport_category_header is currently showing 9,976, and it has been showing over 7,000 for several days. So I expected the bot to act, but it hasn't.

This is an intricate template with 2 sub-templates, and over 10,000 categories are now wholly reliant on it, so I think needs the higher protection. I can easily list it at WP:RFPP, but I just wanted to check with you what the score is with the bot. Have I misunderstood its config? Or has it somehow failed to recover yet from the great lag?

Thanks, -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 09:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It only looks for unprotected templates right now. I'd like to expand it to raise to template protection when it hits 5000 transclusions, but if we do this I think it also needs to lower them if it ever goes below the bar. That's where it gets tricky; First, there's the question of when it's appropriate to change existing protection at all, if it was imposed by an admin other than the bot. We could simply ignore, I suppose, to keep it simple. Also we already have some problems with it not lowering protection, say this report from today where someone temporarily transcluded a /sandbox template on some other highly-visible template, hence it got protected. Finally, the database queries needed to do all of this extra stuff might slow it down a lot, and as you can see from the error log it already has problems timing out. So anyway, lots of things to figure out first. Let me do some testing, and if it all seems feasible I'll start a discussion at WP:AN soon to iron out how it should behave. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  21:58, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, MusikAnimal. I had assumed wrongly that it would increase protection as appropriate.  So I have listed Template:YYYY in nationality sport category header at WP:RFPP.
 * It sounds like a move to the bot increasing protection needs both testing and discussion. Thanks for looking into it, and if you do get to the point of starting a discussion, pls can you let me know?
 * One suggestion: maybe if the bot identifies such templates, it could place them in a holding pen for a few days, to allow scrutiny. Russbot does something similar with category redirects. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:45, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Ajpolino • LuK3
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Jackmcbarn
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM
 * Pictogram voting rename.png →

Guideline and policy news
 * A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news
 * The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (T261630).

Arbitration
 * The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
 * Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous
 * The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
 * Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41
<section begin="technews-2020-W41"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
 * You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page.

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

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

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

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

Tech News: 2020-42
<section begin="technews-2020-W42"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

Semi protection for Article
Hello can you help me to protect my article and give me some information how i can correct my article as good way — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acafix2 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You have created a few pages. Which one are your referring to? -- The SandDoctor Talk 12:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Line Haddad
108.49.100.163 (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2020 (UTC) One year ago, I noticed you reverted my changes to Line Haddad's page because I was just giving her full birthdate based on what I found about her on the Olympic Sport Reference website. I was not trying to vandalize the page or anything; I was just trying to give more information that people should know about.

Tech News: 2020-43
<section begin="technews-2020-W43"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Delayed geonotice
Hi, why did take so long to be  to watchlists? Had the bot crashed? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You could say that. Yesterday I happened to be checking which jobs were running and saw two (not just this bot task) were stuck. I have seen this only one other time and similarly it happened to several bot tasks, all at the same time, which indicates it was some sort of Toolforge hiccup. If it happens again I will raise it with the Cloud Services team. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  22:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

210.54.147.161
Darn you! You beat me to it by mere seconds! ;-)  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   01:46, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I would've made the block duration two years... But, you know... :-P  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   01:47, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hehe! No opposition to increasing to 2 years, please feel free :) &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  03:23, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

October 21: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 04:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Protecting template /doc pages
Hi, why is MusikBot II protecting template /doc pages? . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:21, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , it's because the templatedata in the doc page is now being used, so I guess the page load counts as a 'transclusion'. I'm not sure if MusikBot will soon bump it up to TE protected, due to the number (since it hasn't yet, I guess not), but if it does it should probably be lowered (to semi or none, either/or). On a similar note, is the MusikBot exclusion list required if it does, or if an admin lowering it is sufficient these days (since I know there's many TEs that get bumped down to ECP, not on the list, and the bot doesn't try reprotect)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:56, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think has it right. I have made it ignore Template doc pages with Special:Diff/984186880, and I've unprotected Template:Infobox station/doc. For now, the bot does not ever change protection levels. In other words, it only looks for unprotected pages, but there has been talk to have it raise/lower protection according to the configuration (see docs). If an admin removes protection, the bot ignores that page for 7 days (as specified by  ). Best, &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  18:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for setting it to pass over /doc pages, but I'm puzzled: Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox station/doc shows a lot of transclusions, it should only show transclusions to template space, and then only about two - the use of <noinclude ></noinclude> at Template:Infobox station and Template:Infobox station/sandbox means that it shouldn't be transcluded to any articles at all. Something strange is going on. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:33, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I was quite puzzled too. Seems this issue would have come up by now, if it is "normal". My guess was the TemplateData needs to be trasncluded for VisualEditor to make use of it wherever the template is used, but I'm not really sure. I imagine it dynamically loads that when you enter editing mode or when you open the dialog to change the parameters passed to the template. I can try to investigate more when I have time, but please let me know if you figure it out first. I'm very curious! If something indeed is awry here, perhaps it's a good thing that the bot is monitoring template docs so that it can continue to surface issues like this? &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  22:32, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is caused by the use of Module:Parameter validation, which automatically parses the TemplateData (and thus the wikitext of the doc page) to populate tracking categories (Category:Pages using Infobox station with unknown parameters, Category:Pages using Infobox station with duplicate parameters, and Category:Pages using Infobox station with deprecated parameters). I personally don't think that is a good idea, both because of the side effect that led to this discussion, and because the exact same feature was rejected at Module_talk:Check for unknown parameters/Archive 1 * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:52, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , the feature wasn't rejected there, by my reading. It was agreed it's a good solution, just nobody got around to coding it (& concern raised was with updating that module with all its transclusions wholesale - this is a separate module). But yes, you are correct that said module is causing the transclusions. As for this side effect, easy solution is to move TemplateData into another template and transclude that into doc, and it also prevents doc updates from queueing templates for recompiling or w/e. The doc is very infrequently edited so that's not a burning priority (for me) currently, but there is that solution long-term. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:46, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44
<section begin="technews-2020-W44"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

Nomination for merging of Template:Talk header preload
Template:Talk header preload has been nominated for merging with Template:Usercomment. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 29 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).

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 November 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45
<section begin="technews-2020-W45"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W45"/> 16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi you have protected LU Biscuits wiki page
You have locked it with wrong information it’s headquarter is located in US, please make this account protected after marking correct information Tayyabkk1 (talk) 06:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The bot does not protect articles, rather it just adds the template that indicates it's protected. See the FAQ for more information. Protection was added by with Special:Diff/986411018. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  18:53, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot II blocked
I need you to unlock the falafel page as it has bias and inaccurate information — Preceding unsigned comment added by Reinhearted (talk • contribs) 03:50, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The bot does not protect articles, rather it just adds the template that indicates it's protected. See the FAQ for more information. Protection was added by with Special:Diff/986075612. You correctly are using the talk page to discuss changes. To request specific changes be made, you can submit an edit request. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  19:01, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Request for protect article's
Hello, can you help me for protecting Isyana Sarasvati article? Yemimas29 (talk) 06:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This page does not appear to have experienced enough recent disruption to justify protection. By design Wikipedia articles are supposed to be open to editing to allow for collaboration. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  20:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

G13 database report
Hi! I think your bot does the G13 database report. WP:G13 actually seems to only count human edits, although your query will count any edit. There's a few discussions scattered around various pages about a bot run that caused a lot of pages to be omitted from the G13 eligible cats. I wrote a Quarry which filters out bot edits (here), and it says ~1017 currently eligible for G13 (~1250 from tomorrow), although Database reports/Stale drafts says there is a backlog of 0 (bot query). I was wondeering if it may be a good idea to update that with the bot check from mine, so it excludes bot edits on the report? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:53, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Is it safe to filter out all bots, you think? Off the top of my head I can't think of where bots should matter, but I can't be sure. Note there's also User:SDZeroBot/G13 eligible (and a few other SDZeroBot reports) that may have the same problem. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  03:47, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd think so, as WP:G13 only counts human editors, although I'm not active in AfC/G13 deletion. There's been recent complaints after SDZeroBot edited drafts in a task, and now their timer is reset in the cat, even though those drafts are still G13 eligible. Various other bots (eg minor typos, template substs, etc) also patrol drafts and make minor adjustments. I believe that page also has the same issue and SD is looking into editing his query. Discussions on this are scattered around many pages but off the top of my hed. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * To add, some people do use AWB to stop G13s being categorised for bulk articles, so that should be respected. But these are on personal accounts. No BRFAs are approved for this, afaik, so it won't end up being caught by my quarry. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:22, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've run into lots of different bots making edits to drafts. If the drafts aren't being actively edited, it just delays them reaching G13 for a few months. I don't think it's a big issue that needs to be addressed. As for SDZeroBot, its edits were only categorizing drafts that had been moved from main space to draft space, a task that was requested by folks at AfC. As far as I know, that's the only kind of edit to drafts that SDZeroBot makes but you can ask bot operator SD0001.
 * But ProcrastinatingReader, after getting a boost yesterday to almost 1,900 drafts, now Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions is down to 1,690. So, whatever you did to fill it up, could you do it again or find a permanent fix? It really should be around 2,000-4,000 drafts. Thanks. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 04:53, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, there are two distinct issues here causing that. The first, bot editing on drafts breaks all eligible soon/ready cats (by resetting the clock). The cats can't be fixed via the populating template, so the closest to a fix is having SD/Musik update their queries with the lines from my quarry to filter out bots. This has apparently been a problem since forever; SD's bot just processed a lot at once so it's more apparent. The second, the job queue is meh. Which I think means it's pretty arbitrary when pages show up in the cat. The cat was perhaps updated because I forgot to disable the code for Special:Diff/987197233. To test this 2nd theory, I've used my bot's task 5 to do a sample ad hoc template purge and see how it affects Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions. It's at about 2k now, so I think this theory also holds. I can't purge categories regularly, however, to keep doing this -- that would be my bot's task 6 currently submitted for approval, feel free to comment at that BRFA if this is something you're interested in. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:41, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ProcrastinatingReader, I don't understand the technical aspects of what happened and why, but just thought I'd tell you that the number of drafts is up to 3,300! Just about normal. So, thanks! I guess I'll put in a word for your ProcBot 6. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 00:56, 6 November 2020 (UTC)


 * This would trigger the deletion of those 1000-odd drafts before the people who review the G13 soon category get a chance to look at them. I guess it would be better to add the feature to G13 soon and other such reports if any, before the feature is applied to the "eligible" listings. – SD0001  (talk) 12:07, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46
<section begin="technews-2020-W46"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

About MusikBot's error log
I didn't want to close it because of not taking risk (and apparently there's not a malfunctioning). Could you check its error log? Thanks.--Ahmetlii (talk) 18:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Toolsdb is under maintenance, so indeed, the FilterMonitor task will not work properly. I'll comment at WP:EFN shorty about this. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I just edited the template directly for now and disabled the task. I'll re-enable it once ToolsDB is back up and running. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  20:22, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47
<section begin="technews-2020-W47"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

Changes later this week
 * If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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

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

October 18: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC (plus weekend editathons)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 17:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48
<section begin="technews-2020-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

The Signpost: 29 November 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49
<section begin="technews-2020-W49"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W49"/> 17:44, 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.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

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

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 18
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#606060; background-color:#f8f8f8; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:7px; border-radius:1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks"> News and updates associated with user scripts from the past three months (September, October, and November 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 18th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
 * Cscr-featured.svg SD0001's W-Ping is this month's featured script


 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Sportzpikachu's bookmarks adds a bookmarks section to the navigation toolbar
 * SD0001's deleted-metadata-link.js adds links to the deletedrevisions API output for deleted pages
 * SD0001's GAN-helper makes it easier to create a GAN nomination.
 * 1234qwer1234qwer4's XfDstarted scripts add links to today's XfD log pages to the personal toolbar
 * Awesome Aasim's rcpatrol is a tool that can be used to patrol recent changes, including reverting edits and warning users
 * A new JavaScript snippet, MediaWiki:AFC-add-project-tags.js, can be used to add WikiProject tags to drafts at WikiProject Articles for creation/Add WikiProject tags without actually needing to install a user script.
 * Nardog's PlayAudioNow makes audio links playable while staying on the page, regardless of the format
 * GeneralNotability's ip-ext-info.js adds extended info on IPs in a popup with their range, ASN, and ISP
 * TheTVExpert's submitRMTR adds a button to Special:MovePage to submit a technical request at Requested moves/Technical requests
 * TheTVExpert's rmCloser helps with closing and relisting requested moves.
 * Enterprisey's parsoid-round-trip uses Parsoid to convert wikitext to HTML and back, and then shows the result and the difference between the original wikitext and the post-conversion wikitext.
 * Frietjes's infoboxgap assists in renumbering infobox labels/data/classes, so that a new line can be inserted in the middle of the infobox.

Pending requests
 * A request for a script to help with maintaining the lists of vital articles
 * A request for a script to make it easier to archive specific list entries, rather than whole discussion sections
 * ...and many more, all available at User scripts/Requests




 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Twinkle has made a number of improvements, including using a change tag to identify actions made with it and automatically filing edit requests for protected XfD nominations.
 * SD0001's shortdescs-in-category is now compatible with scripts modifying category listings, such as Equazcion's CatListMainTalkLinks
 * GhostInTheMachine's TalkHelper2 is a newer version of their prior script, TalkHelper
 * GeneralNotability's spihelper updated to 2.2.10, fixing a number of small bugs, automatically tagging globally locked socks as such in the sockpuppet template, and restoring open cases following an SPI history merge.
 * Enterprisey's script-installer gadget has been updated with more internationalization of messages, as well as addition of a user preference,  to allow controlling where new scripts are to be installed.

Open tasks
 * Enterprisey is looking for beta testers for their new section-watchlist user script. See the announcement.

Miscellaneous
 * The second edition of the m:Coolest Tool Award will be taking place in December.
 * Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core, see 640761 and T207562.

My apologies for the delayed issue. As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

About the newsletter

Subscription options

Discuss this issue

MusikBot II inappropriately protecting template
Hi MusikAnimal. Your bot, MusikBot II, seems to be inappropriately protecting a subpage of a template: Template:Service awards/compose/sandbox. It has already been unprotected once, by request at RFPP, but the bot has protected it again. I'm trying to figure out why the bot would be protecting a template subpage as a "high-risk template" when it only has 22 transclusions. My guess is that the bot is programmed to protect template subpages when they are transcluded in the main template, because many templates are constructed in such a way where various elements are defined in subpages and the main template transcludes all of those subpages to create the final template. Therefore, if the main template is a high-risk template, then any template subpages that are transcluded to it should also be considered high-risk templates.

I worry that this might be too simplistic of an algorithm, and it will result in the inappropriate protection of many pages. For instance, in the case of Template:Service awards/compose/sandbox, it is true that Template:Service awards appears in the list of pages that transclude that subpage. However, tracing the path of that transclusion shows that it truly is a benign sandbox that should not be protected:
 * Template:Service awards/compose/sandbox is transcluded within Template:Service awards/core/sandbox
 * Template:Service awards/core/sandbox is transcluded within Template:Service awards/sandbox
 * Template:Service awards/sandbox is transcluded within Template:Service awards (which is a legit high-risk template), but that transclusion is wrapped with noinclude tags.

I realize that in order to avoid this error, your bot would need to investigate the "lineage" of transclusion from all subpages that are transcluded to a high-risk template, to understand if they are really part of that template, or if they are wrapped in noinclude tags are some point. And that is likely not a trivial task. However, until that can be done, I wonder if your bot should really be attempting to protect template subpages at all...

I'll unprotect this subpage for now, but I expect the bot will probably re-protect it at some point. ‑Scottywong <span style="font:0.75em Verdana,sans-serif;color:#004400;">| [express] || 16:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * is there a necessary reason for the sandbox to be transcluded to the main template page? (I removed that for now - revert if there is a good reason). — xaosflux  Talk 17:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a valid question. From what I remember, that particular template was using the sandbox page to give an example of what the template looks like for people that are viewing the template page itself. I don't know if this is a common practice. But perhaps it would be better to use an /example subpage for that purpose instead of /sandbox, or simply transclude the template to its own page. Either way, this example exposes a circumstance where the bot will inappropriately protect a page. I don't know how widespread of a problem this is.  ‑Scottywong <span style="font:0.75em Verdana,sans-serif;color:#994499;">| [spill the beans] ||  19:22, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * using the sandbox page to give an example of what the template looks like for people that are viewing the template page itself Providing the template copy on the template page directly is very rare, and the practice is most-often (maybe even 'standard') to provide an example in the context of the documentation block, or (much more rarely) to re-embed the template example directly in the template itself (I bumped into a few of these ds/alert way). --Izno (talk) 20:54, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The query can be viewed here. Under no condition whatsoever should it be protecting a template with juts 22 transclusions. When the bot protected it, it must have had 200+ transclusions (as specified by the configuration), probably because it was being used in the parent template at the time, as Xaosflux pointed out. In my view that kind of testing with a sandbox is bad practice. It has happened before that someone transcluded a sandbox version into a highly-transcluded template and forgot about it. The bot protecting the sandbox exposed the mistake, which I think is a good thing. In that specific case (you can find it somewhere in my talk archives), the transclusions were in the mainspace, so it was a very good thing that the bot plugged up that vulnerability.
 * At any rate, you can make the bot ignore specific pages with the  list, or specify a regular expression in the  . See documentation at User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector. I've no reservation against excluding service award sandboxes, if you want, but I would argue against excluding all template sandboxes. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  22:51, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I suppose that it depends on how you count the number of transclusions. The template itself had 22 "direct" transclusions (i.e. pages that literally had the wikicode in them). It certainly had thousands upon thousands of "indirect" transclusions (i.e. pages that had  in their wikicode, which transcludes the sandbox template through 3 degrees of separation). However, since the sandbox template was wrapped in a noinclude tag when it was transcluded on the main template, it wouldn't actually have shown up in any of those thousands of transclusions.
 * Either way, this particular example has been taken care of, thanks to Xaosflux. It's likely that this is an edge case that won't come up often. And if it does come up, it's probably due to poor template design. Thanks. ‑Scottywong <span style="font:0.75em Verdana,sans-serif;color:#994499;">| [gab] || 23:15, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Either way, this particular example has been taken care of, thanks to Xaosflux. It's likely that this is an edge case that won't come up often. And if it does come up, it's probably due to poor template design. Thanks. ‑Scottywong <span style="font:0.75em Verdana,sans-serif;color:#994499;">| [gab] || 23:15, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

This is not a problem with the bot. The /compose/sandbox template was being erroneously called by the main template until Special:Diff/991794151 * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 03:37, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

TAFI moved
was moved to per Special:PermaLink/989870710. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 19:31, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like some of the pages the bot works off of, such as Today's articles for improvement/Nominations, and the Schedule, Accomplishments, etc., still haven't been moved. There are also several templates that probably need to be updated. Or were those all intentionally left as-is? Pinging for input too. For now I've disabled both TAFIWeekly and TAFIDaily until this is ironed out. Thanks for letting me know, &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  19:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Those will be moved. My script to move all of the subpages is still running. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 19:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Done moving now —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! There are still many categories, templates, etc. that should probably be updated. I will wait to hear back from Northamerica1000 before going any further. Perhaps as a template editor and nominator of the move would be willing to help with this effort, too? I'm a bit tied up at the moment so any assistance would be appreciated, but I'll be ready to have the bot-side of things fixed by Monday 00:00 UTC in time for the next weekly selection. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  21:16, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , whew, there ended up being a lot of cleanup to do there (some of which appeared to be leftover from previous moves from article->articles or the initial switch to weekly selection). I think I've managed to take care of pretty much everything, though; "Today's article(s) for improvement" and "TAFI" should be "Articles for improvement" and "AFI" everywhere. There might be some things that can only be fixed within the bot, though.
 * I do love how automated the project is; hopefully we'll catch and clean up everything that might have been broken by the moves. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I do love how automated the project is; hopefully we'll catch and clean up everything that might have been broken by the moves. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Thanks for the notification here. From spot-checking various pages, subpages (e.g. Articles for improvement/2020/48/1) and templates, things appear to be in order, in that the new project title is being used. However, I did notice that, for example, when editing the Articles for improvement/2020/48 page, the following is in place: is the TAFI article for week in the year 2019. It is currently week. Notice how the old project name continues to be used. If I'm not mistaken, it appears that MusikBot automatically generates these pages. If this is the case, it would likely be best to 1) change the links such as "TAFI" and others so that it goes directly to the main page without redirecting, and 2) update the script for links/pages that are generated to match everything else, so it's all consistent. North America1000 06:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I believe that comes from Articles for improvement/Schedule/Preload. I'm glad you pointed that out because that template hadn't been updated yet (I just took care of it). With that and the bot fixes, we're hopefully good to go. Tomorrow I'll do a semi-automated run to be on the safe side. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  06:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt reply, as well as for your dedication in helping to keep the project going! Cheers, North America1000 07:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Another matter I came across, on the Articles for improvement/Schedule/new page, there are now no images or captions. Additionally, week 51 of 2020 is presently a red link. It appears that the Bot automatically creates these pages, which still have the old titles with the word "Today's" such as "#ifexist:Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement///picture" . So, hopefully this can be addressed sometime relatively soon. It would have been nice of users consulted with you first, before moving pages, because now everything is all screwy. North America1000 18:29, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed the Schedule/new page (hopefully). &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Additionally, the Template:AFI weekly selection notice weekly notification sent to project participants still has the old titles within it (e.g. ). North America1000 18:38, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply. I think everything that needed to be changed by the bot has been changed. The outstanding changes need to be made to the templates. Can I enlist you again to fix this since you proposed the move? I agree it would have been better to consult those who put together the automation before implementing the move. I'm guessing you all didn't realize how complicated this was.
 * The bot errored out today because I hadn't pulled in the latest code (my fault). I can run it manually, but I will wait for the above fixes to be made first. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:28, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I fixed the links in the weekly selection notice template when I did my big run, but looks like I missed one; fixed that. I'm not aware of any remaining templates that need fixing (I thought I did a pretty good sweep when I spent an hour or so on it), but some might be hiding somewhere.
 * Regarding consultation, I definitely don't think the closer/movers realized how much TAFI vs. AFI would affect, and I certainly didn't when I made the nom, but in our defense the project was fully invited to comment and raise any potential issues while it was open. After the close, any amount of disruption is obviously not ideal, but on balance this will be a positive change and the cleanup necessarily comes along with it. I'm glad that everyone has been willing to help out to get everything up to speed. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No worries! Thanks for helping with the cleanup. I have ran the task and re-enabled the cronjob. Hopefully we're all set now. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  23:21, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No worries! Thanks for helping with the cleanup. I have ran the task and re-enabled the cronjob. Hopefully we're all set now. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  23:21, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Still having some problems at the Schedule page. For example, see this diff, scroll down to the Christmas ham entry, and then notice how the page titles are still the old "Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement". The result is red links instead of images and image captions. The [edit picture selection] and [edit caption] links go to the new project pages that I just added information for, but on the Schedule page, the old page name is being displayed. North America1000 16:37, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , I think I've managed to fix it with this edit. Hopefully that's the last bit of outstanding cleanup... &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:27, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50
<section begin="technews-2020-W50"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function.

Changes later this week
 * Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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

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

New Page Patrol December Newsletter
Hello ,



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

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

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

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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here 18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot II blocked
5th Calipha Is Not Our Islamic Calipha Kindly Change It Otherwise Remove It Because It Gives Negative Impact On Islam.Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.36.152.221 (talk) 19:22, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

He claims to be a caliph but he is not, there is no such thing as ahmadiyya muslim, Islam is only one and only anyone can join it just do read Quran if you want to learn about Islam, we welcome all our brothers and sisters to read quran freely and learn about our religion and culture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.152.101.6 (talk) 19:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, please raise your concerns on the article talk page. Myself nor the bot had anything to do with this content dispute. You can learn more about the bot by reading the FAQ at User talk:MusikBot II. Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:52, 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)

pp-move
Hey Musik! Wanted to follow up on this from VPT if you have time. I couldn't get the span method to work (see reply there). Any ideas? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply. I don't have a lot of time to invest in this at the moment, but my impression is what you're after may not be possible, at least not without the extraneous spacing issue I pointed out. The other option, per the TfD, is to just hide move protection topicons altogether. I was going to say that this deserves more broader input than just the handful of editors at TfD, but I see you originally brought this up at WP:VPP and it didn't get much attention there, either. So all things considered, I would go with hiding it for everyone. For the rare cases where we want to be more transparent about move protection (say there was recently a heated page-move war), the full-sized banner could be shown instead of the topicon. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  22:23, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

December 16: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 01:54, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

TAFI template errors remain
Hi and MusikAnimal: Just a heads up to those involved, Template:AFI/Collaborations of the day is goofed up, with a big red link atop, because it has not been configured with the new project name. It seems that the bot is involved with this, so posting here. North America1000 06:27, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed I think &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  06:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 19
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#606060; background-color:#f8f8f8; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:7px; border-radius:1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks"> News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (December 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 19th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
 * Cscr-featured.svg Enterprisey's script-installer, a gadget that makes it easier to install scripts, is this month's featured script


 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Enterprisey's copy-section-link adds popups to section headers which has an appropriate wikilink and external link to the section.
 * DannyS712's FindBlacklistEntry can be used to figure out which line(s) in either the local or global spamblacklist prevent a particular url from being added.
 * Nardog's CodeEditorAssist allows customizing the code editor, including changing the color theme and enabling live autocompletion.
 * Cobaltcigs's IllWill allows searches wikidata.org for foreign-language sitelinks, to populate ill and replace plain red links.


 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Twinkle has made a number of improvements, most notably full support for expiring watchlist items.
 * Evad37's Signpost Publishing Script is now at version 2.4.2, with changes including a fix for calculating the size of pages with files.
 * Evad37's MoveToDraft is now at version 2.5.1, with changes including:
 * checks for move conflicts and better options if move fails
 * the addition of Drafts moved from mainspace after moves
 * updating the default move log and notification texts to be more in line with WP:DRAFTIFY
 * Enterprisey's cv-revdel now handles failures more cleanly, including reporting failures caused by the spam blacklist.
 * Bradv's Notepad.js script has been updated with new styles and a new launch button.
 * A beta version of XFDcloser is available for testing, and brings a new user interface for dialogs and some preferences for customization.



Open tasks
 * Voting in the m:Community Wishlist Survey 2021 is ongoing until December 21, 2020. There are 15 proposals in the "bots and gadgets" category that may be of interest.

Pending requests
 * A script to help list discussions at WP:ANRFC (request)
 * A script to allow undoing edits despite conflicting intermediary edits (request)
 * ...and many more, all available at User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous
 * The Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation on mediawiki.org.
 * As noted in the prior issue, Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with link-section-edits and abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his reply-link script is being converted in part to mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.

As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

About the newsletter

Subscription options

Discuss this issue

Yo Ho Ho
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:AliceBlue; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

Donner60 (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.

MusikBot II blocked
You have no permission to add or remove any information from any tribe history as you did. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pashtoonyad (talk • contribs) 23:39, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, the bot was performing routine maintenance. You can learn more about it by reading the FAQ. Also note that no one owns content on Wikipedia, and any user is free to contribute to any article they so desire. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  04:06, 21 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)

User talk:Clostrame7
Might want to revoke their talkpage access.--MONGO (talk) 19:22, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2020
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

A message from Joseph1772
Dear MusikAnimal, I recently drafted my first article for Wikipedia, and when it was deleted almost at once, I was referred to a list of Users who could help reinstate the deleted draft for me. I clicked on your name more or less at random (though as a musician myself I was drawn to it). So I was trying to follow the directions carefully, and thought I was creating a draft that I would be able to come back to and keep working on before actually submitting it for review. But it seems to have gotten deleted before I could even get to the next step with it. It's not a vanity or promotion piece, and there's quite a bit more to do in terms of sourcing and documentation. Any help you might be able to give me would be much appreciated. All best wishes to you. Joseph1772 (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi ! I noticed the draft was titled Draft:Joseph1772 – the same name as your username. That might have confused others into thinking the article was about yourself, and perhaps that's why it was deleted. At quick glance the article looks fine as a draft. Certainly needs work, but just as you say you weren't finished with it nor had submitted it for review yet. Pinging the deleting admin, : Would you mind restoring the draft, and renaming to Draft:Michael Hayes (artist) or something (to distinguish from the other Michael Hayes subjects)? Or did you feel the draft still met WP:G11 even with a more fitting title? Best, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:59, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty well unsourced promo, with unsourced opinions primarily known for vividly colorful, violently calligraphic abstract paintings and collages... Her work merges autobiographical narrative and social commentary inspired by literary fragments, newspaper headlines, and her own memories. It addresses a wide range of social issues including domestic violence and mass murder. She describes her style as “abstract expressionism with figural elements.” Hayes routinely creates portrait and landscape studies as well.  rather than anything to suggest that she meets WP:Notability. Also, clearly more than a hint of WP:COI IMHO, need a bit more clarity before considering recreation <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> -  talk to me?  21:04, 22 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Joseph1772, just to make it clear that if you are the subject of the article, or are closely connected to its subject in any way, you need to let us know. Once that is clear, we can look ate restoring as a cleaned-up draft for further work. MusikAnimal, let me know if you disagree with this response, I'm not going to make a big deal of it with another admin, and I'll restore immediately if you wish me too <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  06:56, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much to you both. No, I am not the subject of this article.  This is an artist whose work interests me, and I was surprised there was no article about her already; just thought I'd try to create one.  Thank you for catching that issue with the title.  I'd like to try to re-draft this in a more objective style, and continue finding and inserting sources.  Thanks again, and happy holidays.  Joseph1772 (talk) 18:06, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Making sure you see this. In my opinion the draft could be worth another shot. I personally do not suspect COI given the track record so far. Though I certainly agree more sources are needed before this draft could be published to the mainspace. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  06:12, 30 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks., I've restored at Draft:Michael Hayes, with these changes. See Emma Louisa Turner as a recent article about a female photographer, which might help you. <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  07:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

MusikBot II protecting template sandboxes
Hi, why is MusikBot II protecting template sandboxes, specifically Template:WPBannerMeta/core/sandbox? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:06, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * my guess is Special:Diff/996998904. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:38, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the aforementioned edit put the sandbox in production use, giving it 4500+ translcusions, so the bot semi'd per its configuration. Are you still testing things, and if not, can we revert that edit? Note also the bot links to the documentation in the protection summary, which reads …template sandboxes are sometimes erroneously called by non-sandbox template … The fix in this situation is to not transclude the sandbox. I assume the same holds true here. We could adjust the bot's config to ignore sandboxes, but in my opinion sandboxes should not be transcluded for large-scale testing like this. Instead you can use "Preview page with this template" feature to test your changes; or if feasible (not so much in this case), simply implement the sandbox code directly into the caller template, which has the same impact on the job queue and is just as easy to revert. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  05:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any reason to exclude sandboxes. For one, it exposes things like this, and if a template is in high use for a while it should be protected even if it has sandbox in the title. Besides, looking at the history (no non-autoconfirmed) I don't think there's any adverse affects / harm done in the interim. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for bringing this mistake to my attention, now fixed! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:41, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Previous range blocks affecting an IP
Is there any way to get a list of previous range blocks that affected a particular IP or some (sub)set of a range? Or a task hiding somewhere on Phab? --Izno (talk) 21:18, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There's no tool for this that I'm aware of. The parent task to get this in MediaWiki I think is T146628, but meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation has put all of that on hold for now. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  21:29, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * https://rangeblockfinder.toolforge.org/ may be what you're looking for. Of course, it'll all get mooted whenever WMF decides that it will... —&#8205;Mdaniels5757 (talk &bull; contribs) 22:43, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year, MusikAnimal!
<div style="border: 3px solid #FFD700; background-color: #FFFAF0; padding:0.2em 0.4em; height:auto; min-height:173px; border-radius:1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks">

Happy New Year! MusikAnimal, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 11:04, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.


 * Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Happy New Year elves}} to send this message

A message from Zenfixer
Dear MusikAnimal, I recently updated Javed Jabbar's page based on his request. He had mentioned to me that the information is misleading and sent me a detailed write up on himself along with the link to his website. It seems to be reverted back.

Can you please help me update it? Please see below his draft:

Javed Jabbar (Urdu:  جاوید جبار  ) (www.javedjabbar.net) has distinctions in diverse fields. He is a public intellectual who resides in Karachi, Pakistan and contributes to leading think tanks, research centres, public forums on a range of subjects. He has received numerous international and national honours for his services and achievements.

He is the husband of Shabnam Jabbar, an independent entrepreneur, designer and home-maker. They have two children: Mehreen Jabbar, the award-winning director of TV plays and cinema films; Barrister Kamal Kadeer Jabbar who specializes in banking and financial law  and is a partner in Keystone Law, Dubai. His grandson is Zaka Zahir Jabbar who is exploring the marvels of school education.

Javed Jabbar's 15th book "Pathways --- selected writings 2010-2015" won the UBL Literature Prize for the Best English non-fiction book at the 9th Karachi Literature Festival 2017. His 16th book " What is Pakistaniat?" is prescribed in leading education and training institutions. He devotes substantial working time to voluntary work for several public service organizations. He is presently the Chairman, and co-founder (with economist Dr. Hafiz Pasha in 1995) of the Social Policy & Development Centre,  (SPDC, www.spdc.org.pk) Karachi, one of Asia's most reputed independent research centres and think tanks. SPDC has 700 publications to date. He is the founding chairman of the South Asian Media Association, Colombo, 1992.

He is present Chairperson and  co-founder (1994) of SPO ( Strengthening Participatory Organization,( www.spopk.org ) which works in the development sector at the grass-roots level across Pakistan. He is present Chairman and co-founder of SOS Children's Villages of Sindh,( founded 1982 ) and Member, Board of Governors of SOS Pakistan which cares for hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children and provides vocational training to youth. He is  founding president since 1985 of, Baanhn Beli (www.bannhnbeli.org),  the pioneer public service organization of Tharparkar, and also works in other parts of Sindh. He is founding Chairman, Publican Alumni Trust (since 2010) which operates a reputed school for students from low-income families in Korangi, Karachi. Javed Jabbar is Chairman, Advisory Council, Malir University of Science and Technology, Karachi and Member, Board of Directors, National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA).

From his school years at Cantonment Public School, Karachi , St Patrick's College and the University of Karachi 1963-66, and thereafter, he has founded or been elected to lead a large number of initiatives and organizations in Pakistan and in overseas countries.

He is a former Senator and has served in 3 Federal Cabinets as Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Science and Technology, Petroleum and Natural Resources, and Adviser to the Chief Executive of Pakistan on National Affairs. He has represented Pakistan at major UN conferences. New laws and policies initiated by him have introduced major reforms in different sectors, particularly the inception of private TV and radio channels and freedom of information. Among several conflict management and conflict resolution initiatives he is associated with, he is a Member since 1992 of the longest-running, quiet, non-media-reported Pakistan-India Track II Dialogue known as the Neemrana Initiative, suspended since 2015.

He was elected global Vice President of IUCN (www.iucn.org) for 8 years, 2004-2012 in the world's oldest and largest environment organization comprising over 130 countries. In 2019, he was invited to serve on an honorary basis as Adviser to the National Curriculum Council.

In the past 10 years, he has been appointed by the Supreme Court and High Courts as amicus curiae and to serve as mediator to ( successfully ) resolve media conflicts, and as Member of the Media Commission, 2013 whose landmark report was written by him. He frequently writes on a range of subjects, including national history, current affairs and political economy for leading journals.

He has received numerous national and international awards and recognition for his work in diverse fields such as writing, film-making, voluntary service, environment. The cinema film "Ramchand Pakistani" (2008) of which he was the writer and producer --- and which was directed by his daughter Mehreen Jabbar --- won several international awards in Europe and Asia. In 1976, Pakistan's first -- and so far, only -- English language cinema film "Beyond the Last Mountain" (Urdu version: " Musafir ") which he wrote, produced and directed was screened to laudatory reviews at several international film festivals. He has written and directed dozens of popular and award-winning TV commercials and documentaries.

In December 2019, at Adasia 2019 in Lahore the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations inducted him into its Hall of Fame for his distinctive contributions to mass communications. In February 2020, the All Pakistan Newspapers' Society presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015, the Pakistan Society of Advertisers presented its first Lifetime Achievement Award to him.

The Human Rights Society of Pakistan presented him with a Gold Medal for outstanding public service .He is a visiting professor at leading institutions in Pakistan and overseas.

Zenfixer (talk) 12:49, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Happy New Year!
<div style="border:3.5px solid #FFD700; background-color:#FFFAE0; padding:0.1em 0.2em; height:auto; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);" class="plainlinks">



 MusikAnimal , Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! North America1000 05:45, 3 January 2021 (UTC)


 * – Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.

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:, , , , , ,.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

ArchiveSent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 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)

A message from Zenfixer
Javed Jabbar wiki page

I am family friend of javed Jabbar who has requested me to help update the page with information about him. Can you please help me update with accurate information?

Zenfixer (talk) 09:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello ! First off, I apologize others who have edited Javed Jabbar recently have not helped you or provided you with resources to learn what the problem is. For starters, I left a note on your talk page with some helpful links. It also goes into details about managing a conflict of interest, which is important since you are writing on behalf of the subject of the article. Note that if you are being paid money to make these contribution, you must disclose this. As for the content itself, it most importantly needs to be supported by reliable sources, but may also need to be rewritten to be in a more neutral tone. I'm afraid I don't have much free time to help you, but the kind folks at the Teahouse and the help desk should be able to help. Kind regards, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  04:08, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Friday Jan 15: ONLINE Wikipedia Day NYC
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 14:50, 14 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)

User talk:Kilt And Sporrans-Choose Your Best Cultural Kilt And Sporrans.
Hi MusikAnimal - you blocked the above as a spam user earlier, you might want to consider talk page access as they just published the spam there (I reverted back to your notice) JW 1961   Talk  18:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  20:44, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Automated comment on my PCR request
Hello, on my application for Pending Changes Reviwer renewal (I had a 3 month trial) you (or a bot of yours) marked mine as already done because I had the role already. I was reapplying so I could get the rank indefinitely, so can you maybe take the comment off? Helpthepeople9  chat?  17:32, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
 * ((re|Helpthepeople9}} it is safe to ignore, the admins that process that will understand what is going on. — xaosflux  Talk 17:36, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I appreciate you letting me know nonetheless. This is actually a bug. The bot is supposed to only comment if the user still holds temporary rights, such as with this example. I'll look into it when I find the time. Thanks, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:58, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

A message from Elliot321
Hey, would you mind considering not removing protection templates from File Upload Wizard/sandbox (assuming MusikBot has an exclusion list)? The sandbox should generally match the mainspace page, otherwise there might be an issue when copying back. I think keeping the protection template there is worth it, though I don't have too strong of an opinion here.

Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 04:00, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There isn't actually an exclusion list for that task, but I can add one (or make it respect ). I see no problem with this, but the humans who work off of Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates might still remove the template. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  18:51, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, respecting the bots tag would be good. Wondering if there's a better solution here - usually documentation would do the trick, but this isn't actually a template after all. Will try to come up with something better. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 21:19, 22 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"/> 18:29, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Full block requested
This IP range needs a full block, not just from that one page. Thank you. Crossroads -talk- 21:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I agree, yet... but I am quite tempted. I'll keep an eye on it. If you see more disruption feel free to write me back here or report to WP:AIV. Thanks, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  02:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Block evasion
Hi MusikAnimal. On 12 January 2021 you blocked from editing the namespaces User, User talk and Template with an expiration time of 6 months  has, today, created 3 draft articles - all with deliberate errors Draft:Gagalheri‎ is a retitling of Kailashpur with the same population figures and reference - initially it claimed it is in Harit Pradesh - a proposed, but non-existent state, which I changed before I smelt a rat. Draft:Buggawala claims it is the non-existant Buggawala district and has 2 references - both about totally different places - the dot on the map is also outside the claimed state. Draft:Mohand Saharanpur reuses one of those references about another village, claims it is the non-existent state of Saharanpur which is actually a district in Uttar Pradesh, not Uttarakhand, as shown on the map. I don't know what vandalism caused the 6 month block, but it looks as if they are using Draft articles to try and circumvent that block - Arjayay (talk) 13:26, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This seems problematic too but is unrelated to the vandalism we've seen in User, User talk and Template namespaces. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  16:19, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2021
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Request for Rollback
Hello Sir, I had made a request for rollback permission at WP:RFP/R on 25th of Jan but there is no progress related to that request. I request you to kindly look into this matter. Thankyou Peerzada Mohammad Iflaq (talk) 20:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, someone will tend to your request soon enough. Apologies for the wait. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  21:55, 31 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!

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

ArchiveSent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)