User talk:Rich Smith/Archive114

Tech News: 2023-51
 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
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

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). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from ). There will also be support for manual redirects.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
 * The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:16, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

cluebot NG 503
Hey there. Just so you know, the link to report false positives with ClueBot NG does not work. Says something about how the tool's admins have to set up its web service. I've gotten the ID for the false positive (4291388) but when I click the link that I'm supposed to go to in order to report it, it 503s. The bot seems really cool, it's a shame it has to not work sometimes. Thanks. AxolotlFridge (talk) 03:41, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I assume AxolotlFridge is referring to these links: Diff. Toolforge link that is giving 503. – Novem Linguae (talk) 03:48, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * affirmative. sorry, should've linked but had the code on my clipboard AxolotlFridge (talk) 04:45, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey and, looks like the webservice fell over, I've restarted it now. Thanks for letting me know :) - Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 20:21, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2023
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy holidays!


– robertsky (talk) is wishing you Happy Holidays! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user Happy Holidays, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Happy holidays}} to their talk page with a friendly message. – robertsky (talk) 06:49, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Articles for creation
Hi Rich Smith. I hope you are doing well. As you've been here for a while, I wanted to ask if any experienced editor can decline a submitted draft. The introduction section of WikiProject Articles for creation states that 'Experienced editors can help develop and create drafts, and decline submissions that are not ready to be published.' Any clarity on this is appriciated. Thank you <3 Jeraxmoira (talk) 19:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, any experienced editor can take part in Articles for Creation reviews - Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 21:05, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. Does it also include accepting drafts without being included in the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants list? I have already installed the AFC Helper script and it seems to work fine without any prior request for access! Jeraxmoira (talk) 21:19, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There is nothing technically stopping someone not on the list from doing a review, however, the page you linked does say 'PLEASE NOTE: Editors whose usernames are not on the list are strongly cautioned not to review AfC submissions.'.
 * As for AFCH, I'm not sure what that looks for, you'll be better asking or  who developed and maintain (respectfully) the tool - Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 21:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Qingsheng Song moved to draftspace
Thanks for your contributions to Qingsheng Song. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it needs more sources to establish notability. I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.

Please see more information at Help:Unreviewed new page. When the article is ready for publication, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page OR move the page back. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:23, 31 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I not sure if this message was generated by a script, but you got the wrong user, you want as the creator or  as the acceptor... I think your script may just look at who placed the submit tag, rather than looking at the u= of the tag itself. - Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 19:31, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It was the draftify script. I thought I had tagged the right people; not sure what happened there. Thanks, voorts (talk/contributions) 19:53, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Rich Smith!


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

Abishe (talk) 14:39, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

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

Abishe (talk) 14:39, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02
 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
 * mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing.

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. 

MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

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

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:26, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03
 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 Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the  option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages.
 * You can now thank edits made by bots.
 * An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

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).
 * Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The  module was deprecated and replaced with the  module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W03"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04
<section begin="technews-2024-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
 * A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It 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 . 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-2024-W04"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

RichBot: Removing invalid templates from drafts failure
RichBot's task "Removing invalid templates from drafts" failed to run per the configuration specified at Bot activity monitor/Configurations. Detected only 0 edits in the last 1 day, whereas at least 1 was expected. If/when the issue is fixed, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. When that is done, this notice will be reposted if the bot task is still broken or is re-broken. If your bot is behaving as expected, then you may want to modify the task configuration instead. Or to unsubscribe from bot failure notifications, remove the notify parameter from the template. Thanks! – SDZeroBot (talk) 17:20, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05
<section begin="technews-2024-W05"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org.
 * There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W05"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)