User talk:Rschen7754/Archive 34

Tech News: 2016-45
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:34, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

User:Rschen7754/ACE2015
I'm no longer in the business of writing ArbCom election guides as of last year (and was mostly offline around the time of last year's election). This year I will not be writing a guide either. I may ask a few questions to specific candidates if there are issues I feel should be mentioned.

However, my general thoughts on what makes good arbitrators are posted in the link above. --Rschen7754 05:28, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:18, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers
Hi.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins) .MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Accident?
Hi! You added a question to a candidate's question page for their 2015 run for the arbitration committee, rather than their 2016 run. Was this intentional? You may have meant to post it here. PeterTheFourth (talk) 05:18, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Oops. Thanks for pointing it out! --Rschen7754 05:20, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-47


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

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:33, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 November 2016
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:05, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-48
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  21:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-49
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can choose to see users from specific user groups in Special:ActiveUsers.
 * Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message.
 * ORES can now show how likely an edit is to be damaging to the wiki with different colours. This only works for languages that have trained ORES to recognize damaging edits.

Changes this week
 * You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 December at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You vote for wishes on the survey page until 12 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2015 results page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-50
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Users who have Yahoo email addresses could not use Special:EmailUser to send emails. This has now been fixed. Emails will now come from a @wikimedia.org address. Users who get an email from you will still reply to your email address and be able to see it.
 * You can now see how many categories and pages there are in the categories in Special:TrackingCategories. This is to help you find pages that could need attention.
 * Markup colours for reviewed and pending revisions in the page history and recent changes and logs now match Wikimedia standard colours. The "You have a new message on your talk page" notification will have a slightly different colour.

Problems
 * Because of work on cross-wiki watchlists global renaming is not working. The plan is to turn it on again on 16 December. Global renaming was turned off for a while in late November and early December as well.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on December 13 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-51
 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
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2017.
 * The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes
 * Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function  to get formatted data. You can also use   to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua.

Problems
 * Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.

Future changes
 * The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is done. It decides what the Community Tech team will work on during 2017. You can see the results.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 December 2016
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:03, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection policy RfC
You are receiving this notification because you participated in a past RfC related to the use of extended confirmed protection levels. There is currently a discussion ongoing about two specific use cases of extended confirmed protection. You are invited to participate. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk (sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC))

Tech News: 2017-02
<section begin="technews-2017-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 now use datasets on Commons. You can see an example that is using this source.
 * There is a new opt-in beta feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. You can try it out.
 * When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed.
 * The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
 * MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The  option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated.

Problems
 * Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter  in the address bar and set   to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox.

Changes this week
 * There is no new version of MediaWiki this week because of the Wikimedia Developer Summit.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W02"/> 19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Have you thought about being a steward?
I've posted some of my own thoughts on the role here. Nominations have started. --Rschen7754 00:12, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-03
<section begin="technews-2017-W03"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now upload WebP files to Commons.

Problems
 * video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up.

Changes this week
 * There is a new magic word called . It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators.
 * When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu.
 * You will be able to use  to write chemical formulas. Before you could use  .   should be replaced by.
 * You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist.
 * The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS:  You can change the number   to make it look like you want to.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in.
 * When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W03"/> 23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 January 2017
<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) 10:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 20
<div style = "color: #936c29; font-size: 4em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif"> The Wikipedia Library <span style="font-size: 2em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif">Books & Bytes

Issue 20, November-December 2016 by, , ,

<div style = "margin-top: 1.5em; border: 3px solid #ae8c55; border-radius: .5em; padding: 1em 1.5em; font-size: .9em"> Read the full newsletter MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Partner resource expansions
 * New search tool for finding TWL resources
 * # 1lib1ref 2017
 * Wikidata Visiting Scholar

Tech News: 2017-04
<section begin="technews-2017-W04"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W04"/> 20:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-05
<section begin="technews-2017-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
 * The OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different.

Changes this week
 * ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).

Future changes
 * The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W05"/> 18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news
 * A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
 * Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
 * Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news
 * When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
 * Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
 * The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration
 * The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries
 * JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 February 2017
<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) 10:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-06
<section begin="technews-2017-W06"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * The block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W06"/> 19:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-07
<section begin="technews-2017-W07"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July.

Problems
 * The Firefox add-on Firefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg.
 * Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this.

Changes this week
 * The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Developer Wishlist is a list where developers prioritize tools they need. The voting closes at 14 February 23:59 (UTC). This process is only for developers.

Review
 * You can read the 2016 product summary from the Wikimedia Foundation Product group to see what they did with things they said they would work on in the annual plan.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W07"/> 18:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Highway Shield Bot on Commons
, I was going to try to utilize the HWY Shield Bot on Commons, but I'm confused as to exactly how to make a request. If you could help me, that would be appreciated. Charlotte Allison (Morriswa) (talk) 02:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * How many shields are you trying to make? If they're 100 shields of just changing the number, that's something the bot could do. If they're all one-offs of different types, then it would be better to have someone else do it by hand. --Rschen7754 03:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * If you look at WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields task force/Requests, you will see all of the requested shields I added today. I counted them, and the total is just over 100. :-( Charlotte Allison (Morriswa) (talk) 03:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not the number that is the issue, but that I would have to manually edit the template after every few shields, which would not make this a good task for the bot unfortunately. --Rschen7754 03:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, unfortunately, Imzadi1979 removed a lot of my requested shields from that page. Should I add them here? Charlotte Allison (Morriswa) (talk) 03:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:Infobox road/shieldmain/ETH


Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page you created, Template:Infobox road/shieldmain/ETH, was tagged as a test page under section G2 of the criteria for speedy deletion and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. -KAP03(Talk &bull;&#32;Contributions) 23:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I removed the speedy deletion nomination. This page is not a test, but a subtemplate used with Infobox road - see Template:Infobox_road/doc/country and the code in Template:Infobox road (just after  ). - Evad37 &#91;talk] 00:44, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Please take better care before nominating something for deletion. --Rschen7754 01:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-08
<section begin="technews-2017-W08"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide.

Changes this week
 * Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options:  and  . The   option solves this problem. You can use   to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W08"/> 19:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-09
<section begin="technews-2017-W09"/> 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
 * On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file.

Changes this week
 * You will be able to use  to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later.
 * The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W09"/> 19:56, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 February 2017
<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) 01:20, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-10
<section begin="technews-2017-W10"/> 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 search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't.
 * When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view.

Problems
 * Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed.
 * Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately.

Changes this week
 * The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view.
 * The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Clarification
 * The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W10"/> 23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-11
<section begin="technews-2017-W11"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes this week
 * You will be able to show references from  tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use   tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version.
 * Octicons-tools.svg CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W11"/> 15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Talkback
Phil roc My contribs 19:20, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-12
<section begin="technews-2017-W12"/> 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  button now says   or   on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.   is when you save a new page and   when you edit an existing page.
 * DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage.
 * You can see monthly page views when you click on  in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API.
 * The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers.

Problems
 * On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it.

Changes this week
 * When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut + +  on PCs or  + +  on Macs.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W12"/> 22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Interstate 8 for TFA
Hi Rschen. This is just a friendly note to let you know that the Interstate 8 article, which you nominated at FAC, has been scheduled as today's featured article for March 27, 2017. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Today's featured article/March 27, 2017. Thanks! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:45, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it would be better to hold off on this until August 18, 2018 (40th anniversary of completion)? If not, no worries. --Rschen7754 01:57, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * A bit of a ways away, and we haven't had a road article in a while. BTW, I switched I-8 to the 26th of March. I had scheduled Mayabazar on the wrong date. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hey I recognize that TFA. Congratulations! Dave (talk) 01:24, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Additionally, I look forward to your work on California State Route 54. It is of interest to myself as a member of WikiProject Asian Americans, as it has been named (in part) the Filipino American highway.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:53, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I don't anticipate that SR 54 (or SR 125) will change that much - they've already been written and are awaiting various GA/FA processes. I-5, I-15, SR 163, and a few historical ones are still to be done but unfortunately I don't know if/when they will be done at the moment. --Rschen7754 03:00, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13
<section begin="technews-2017-W13"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes.

Problems
 * Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed.

Changes this week
 * New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 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-2017-W13"/> 14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg TheDJ
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott

Guideline and policy news
 * Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
 * The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
 * An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
 * After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.

Technical news
 * After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
 * Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:55, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14
<section begin="technews-2017-W14"/> 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  button now says   or   on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.   is when you save a new page and   when you edit an existing page.
 * The tracking category    : is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template.
 * English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again.

Problems
 * Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W14"/> 17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 21
<div style = "color: #936c29; font-size: 4em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif"> The Wikipedia Library <span style="font-size: 2em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif">Books & Bytes

Issue 21, January-March 2017 by, , , ,

<div style = "margin-top: 1.5em; border: 3px solid #ae8c55; border-radius: .5em; padding: 1em 1.5em; font-size: .9em"> Read the full newsletter Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * # 1lib1ref 2017
 * Wikipedia Library User Group
 * Wikipedia + Libraries at Wikimedia Conference 2017
 * Spotlight: Library Card Platform