User talk:The Anome/Archive 12

Bot often missed the target object
I have found numerous instances where the coordinates provided by the bot miss the intended target. Many of these are years old, so I am not too worried, but I am wondering if any steps have been taken recently to improve the bot's performance? Abductive (reasoning) 23:44, 26 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, automated processes like this will always have errors: my goal is to keep the error rate as low as possible. Ultimately, I'm limited by two things: the accuracy of the NGA GNS dataset, and my analysis code's ability to correctly match Wikipedia articles to GNS locations. When I do find errors, I generally review the edits and try to find and remove any similar errors, then go back over the code and data and add heuristics to try to stop similar errors from happening again. If I find the error rate is unacceptably high for any given type of feature, I'll stop coding that feature class. Can you give me some examples of errors? -- The Anome (talk) 07:30, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * GEOnet Names Server is notoriously inaccurate. WP:WikiProject_Geographical coordinates says it is unreliable. Maybe check against Wikimapia and OSM? As an example, the coordinates for Labirut missed the village by 4.3 km. Even if one claims that GNS rounded to D°M′, the real coordinates at 40°04′37″N 64°34′12″E should have rounded to 40°05′N 64°34′E. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:22, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I know it's unreliable. But it's (crucially) in the public domain, and mostly accurate, and sufficiently so that it's much better than nothing, particularly for adding entries to a wiki encyclopedia based on the process of continuous improvement. For instance, being 4.3km off for a village is not great, but at least is close enough that a reader can find the village on a map. Fortunately, the bot's other activity, of adding coord missing tags, now results in about 90% of all new coordinates being added by humans, instead of from the GNS, and as the geocoding rate of eligible articles also (coincidentally) approaches 90%, this has become a virtuous circle, with more and more articles being accurately geocoded by hand from the start. Because of both of these, there are fewer and fewer GNS matches being made by the bot, and thus even fewer GNS errors being added to Wikipedia. In the spirit of kaizen, I agree with your suggestion that we should consider checking against other sources, probably on the basis of large-scale cross-correlation of sources. OSM is the obvious one, as it's both public and accurate, but there are several concerns with this, including license incompatibility, the problem of matching OSM entries to Wikipedia articles, and the instability of OSM identifiers. Given the license incompatibility, I think the best thing that could be done would be to use an automated process to flag some subset of Wikipedia coord tags as possibly incorrect, and then let the wiki process take over from there. There is an ongoing effort to add Wikidata identifiers to OSM, and that's probably the most promising avenue to explore for future work. -- The Anome (talk) 08:34, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * So, what about the over-rounding? GNS says Labirut is at 40°02'37"N, 64°31'54"E. Why round? It can only make the coordinates worse on average. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:49, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The rounding is to prevent the impression of over-precision. But the example you give is interesting: that might actually be a bug. I'll investigate. -- The Anome (talk) 09:15, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it seems to be correct: from my log: reading Labirut... removing tag... writing...  written, which is the correct rounding for the value you give above. -- The Anome (talk) 09:19, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Rounding will nearly always increase the error. At 45° N (or S) latitude, one arc-minute is approximately 1314 meters. The desired (true) coordinates of the target, supposing the database is correct to the arc-second, fall in an approximately 22 m circle. If rounded, the coordinates will fall on average about 646 m away from the target in the east-west direction, and 646 m away in the north-south direction, which works out to an average of 913 meters away from the target. Abductive  (reasoning) 10:46, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I know this. The aim of these bot-generated coordinates is to convey a rough location so that the reader can find the object in question on a map, not to pinpoint the object. Given the general rattiness of the GNS data, I've deliberately rounded the coordinates so as not to give an impression of over-precision. I have a longer-term strategy to make everything nicer again, as follows: we cannot use the data from OSM directly, because of the OSM license, but we can use it as a source of facts to cross-check the GNS data. What we could do would be to cross-correlate the Wikipedia and matching GNS data with the OSM data (using a combination of name, feature type and proximity to establish unambiguous correspondence), and if OSM confirms that the GNS data is sufficiently accurate, use the full-resolution GNS data instead of the rounded data. I could then run a big batch job using my bot to replace the lower-resolution coordinates with the better ones. (Also, if the OSM data shows the current coordinates are really badly off, the coordinates on Wikipedia could also be flagged as questionable, to help other editors improve them.) Addendum: my reasoning behind my approach on this follows G. K. Chesterton's maxim "Anything [sufficiently] worth doing is worth doing [even somewhat] badly". That is to say, even poor-but-reasonable quality data is better than no data, provided that it does not give the impression of being anything else. It can then be used to a base on which to build improvements, which is very much the Wikipedia way. This contrasts with the OSM approach of "only the best is good enough", which is the other reasonable approach. Both are useful, and while mutually incompatible within a single project, they are both ways to advance the larger goal of growing and improving the overall information commons. -- The Anome (talk) 14:05, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * These DM with no S coordinates are convincing dimbulbs that DM is acceptable--and some of the dimmest bulbs, that DMS is unacceptable--in articles. Given that you are labeling the coords with source=GNS, people will be able to gauge the reliablity of the coords without the additional code of being in DM. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:21, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'm on it. I'm just taking a long view on this: I've been running the bot since 2006, at a time when Wikipedia had almost no coordinates on it, and we've now reached the point where, almost a million bot edits later, and in a collaborative process across the entire editing community, we've now reached roughly 90% coverage of all potentially-geocodeable articles. Of those bot-added coordinates, about 14,000 were sourced from GNIS (which is good quality public domain dd/mm/ss data), about 90,000 from GNS, and 100,000 from interwiki links within Wikipedia, with most of the other bot edits being the addition of coord missing. At the same time, we have over a million geocoded pages, the majority of which were not geocoded by my bot, but by the community. Quality improvement is just one part of that process, and one I take an incremental, collaborative view on. If there is poor-resolution data, or people are getting things wrong, we can help them get things right. What might help is a tracking category to let people find GNS-sourced coordinates for future improvement. Another possibility might be a more generic system to flag geodata for smaller features (villages, buildings, monuments etc.) that have only DDMM data: I'll look into it. -- The Anome (talk) 18:39, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Please let me know how it is progressing. Abductive  (reasoning) 19:19, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Will do. Please note that this may take several months for me to even start addressing; I've got quite a long to-do list in this area (see User:The_Anome), and a life outside Wikipedia. -- The Anome (talk) 19:34, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27
 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.  16:31, 29 June 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)

This page
Hello, I need some advice here. This page had undergone an Afd whereby the result was Delete. I think the subject of the article is still not notable for an article. Should I tag it for CSD or put it up again at Afd. Thanks Megan Barris   (Lets talk📧)  09:20, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28
 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.  20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for help
Hi,

I came across your proactive contribution to Internalized sexism. I have recently started a new article @ Draft:Sexual politics and I am looking for some proactive support in updating and expansion of the article. Please do help in update and expansion if topic Draft:Sexual politics would interest you.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 09:37, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Dont blind revert without justification
Im undoing ur vandalism reverts to my editrs to Exclusive economic zone of India. Remember you must justify reverts, cite the policy violation to support your justification, prove intention to collaborate iteratively by offering sugegstion. blind reverts without justification and without informing the other editor is pure vandalism. You could be banned. Refain from such outright vandalism. Respect all editors, including IPs. Thanks. 58.182.176.169 (talk) 13:12, 4 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hello! I'm a bit unsure what you find problematic about this. Here are the diffs for the edits in question. As you can see, my revert reverted an edit by my own bot (in effect, a self-revert) and I think the edit record makes it clear what happened, without needing an extra edit comment. The combination of my bot edit and my revert, taken together, left the article exactly as it was before. -- The Anome (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. In hind sight, I think your bot had also reverted my "see also". I had reinserted those yesterday and all is gine now. Please take a look at bot codes to ensure it reverts only the offending edit and not all the contiguous edits by the same editor. Apologies if I came across harsh, I do not want to make you feel discouraged specially when you are doing a great selfless work. Thanks for your contribution and hardwork. Keep it up. Big salute with a warm hug. Cheers buddy. 58.182.176.169 (talk) 17:10, 5 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hello again! If you take a closer look at the diffs, here and here, you can see that the only text added, and then removed in the next edit, was the tag . It's possible that you had an edit conflict with one or the other edits, but neither added or removed anything but the tag. -- The Anome (talk) 09:46, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

query
Hi, You recently blocked User talk:AnmunBot, because username contains the suffix "-bot". However this is actually a bot account created for bnwiki (please see bn:ব্যবহারকারী:AnmunBot). The bot owner recently made a usurpation request for this bot account on bnwiki & per Instructions here, bot owner user his bot account to leave a message on the talk page of the target account (user should have been used his main account rather that bot account for this). Because of this block on enwiki, usurpation request was denied on bnwiki. As far i know this bot won't edit on enwiki. Could you please unblock this bot, so that usurpation request can go ahead or should a formal request needed from bot's account/from bot owner? --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 17:18, 12 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I've unblocked the account. Good luck with your efforts. -- The Anome (talk) 19:06, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. However i'm still seeing it is blocked. --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Category:Joker filming locations has been nominated for deletion
Category:Joker filming locations has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. ★Trekker (talk) 05:26, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29
 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.  16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30
 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.  19:05, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Russia
I've relaunched The Russia report off your redirect. Great work on the ISC article. No Swan So Fine (talk) 09:41, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you! -- The Anome (talk) 09:52, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31
 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.  13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32
 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.  15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Districts of Bas-Uele Province
Please see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_August_4. – Fayenatic  L ondon 10:05, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages
Hello, The Anome. When you changed Computed tomography from a redirect into a disambiguation page, you may not have been aware of WP:FIXDABLINKS, which says:
 * When creating disambiguation pages, fix all resulting mis-directed links.
 * Before moving an article to a qualified name (in order to create a disambiguation page at the base name, to move an existing disambiguation page to that name, or to redirect that name to a disambiguation page), click on What links here to find all of the incoming links. Repair all of those incoming links to use the new article name.

It would be a great help if you would check the other Wikipedia articles that contain links to "Computed tomography" and fix them to take readers to the correct article. Thanks. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Note: I have reverted the disambiguation, per WP:TWODABS, and for lack of a discussion of whether the longstanding redirect target is the primary topic of the term. BD2412  T 00:57, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33
 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.  16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Illusory pattern perception
Say, I'm think that we should merge your article "Illusory pattern perception" into the Apophenia article, and make Illusory pattern perception a redirect. Sound reasonable? Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 13:20, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA)
Hello, The Anome, and welcome to Wikipedia. I edit here too, under the username Atsme, and I thank you for your contributions.

I wanted to let you know, however, that I've started a discussion about whether an article that you created, Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA), should be deleted, as I am not sure that it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in its current form. Your comments are welcome at Articles for deletion/Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA).

You might like to note that such discussions usually run for seven days and are not ballot-polls. And, our guide about effectively contributing to such discussions is worth a read. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment here and prepend it with. And, don't forget to sign your reply with. Thanks!

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Atsme Talk 📧 21:25, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA)
Hello, The Anome, and welcome to Wikipedia. I edit here too, under the username Atsme, and I thank you for your contributions.

I wanted to let you know, however, that I've started a discussion about whether an article that you created, Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA), should be deleted, as I am not sure that it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in its current form. Your comments are welcome at Articles for deletion/Bill Montgomery (Turning Point USA).

You might like to note that such discussions usually run for seven days and are not ballot-polls. And, our guide about effectively contributing to such discussions is worth a read. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment here and prepend it with. And, don't forget to sign your reply with. Thanks!

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Atsme Talk 📧 21:28, 14 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)

just to inform you
vandalize a content page for rickr0ll = bad

make an discussion on a joke talk page and rickr0ll someone = not bad.

Arandomitalo-japaneseamerican (talk) 22:20, 18 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)

"Cultural references in Pokemon" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Cultural references in Pokemon. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 27 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4
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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)

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)

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)

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)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:29, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Coord missing test
Template:Coord missing test has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 21:24, 18 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)

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)

Amenorrhea
Amenorrhea is absence of menses during the reproductive year's Can you please  tell me  what's wrong in this statement? I will appreciate your answer 🤓 AEMA2050 (talk) 19:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Amenorrhea is the absence of a menstrual period in a woman of reproductive age: Indeed it is. But since the article already says, in its first sentence: "Amenorrhea is the absence of a menstrual period in a woman of reproductive age", it doesn't need to be said a second time, in a slightly different way, immediately after. -- The Anome (talk) 20:09, 29 September 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)

Category:COVID-19 denialism has been nominated for discussion
Category:COVID-19 denialism has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. ~EdGl  talk  21:08, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Reply
Okay thank you, I'll continue to do further research. Thanks for your interest in the article topic, and my attempts to expand and improve the page, most appreciated, Right cite (talk) 13:31, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a quandary of an issue, she's clearly also separately notable for her award-winning work on the film, Diminuendo, and could even warrant a separate article under her other work with the other name. I've reached out to her to see what her wishes would be. Hopefully I'll hear back. Right cite (talk) 14:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

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"/> 16:30, 19 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)

Discretionary sanctions alert
Hey Anome, no issue with your editing and obviously thanks for taking to the talk page but I left an alert on the other two user's talk pages, so in the interests of equity. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:52, 29 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi again, not sure if you noticed but this edit was through the page protection. Given that you're involved in the dispute as an editor it would be best if reverted yourself and instead filed an edit request. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 10:59, 29 October 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)

"Pakistani-held Kashmir" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Pakistani-held Kashmir. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 November 2 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 17:26, 2 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)

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)

Barry, MO
The lat/lon of Barry, Missouri town center is 39°14'47.9"N 94°36'07.9"W. I don't know how to add those to the article. 15:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.82.165.112 (talk)


 * Thanks for letting me know. I've added them to the article in this edit. -- The Anome (talk) 15:50, 21 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)

Nomination for merging of Template:London bus and coach stations
Template:London bus and coach stations has been nominated for merging with Template:London bus, BRT and coach stations. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Hi, I noted recently that Template:London bus and coach stations which you created is almost identical to the newer Template:London bus, BRT and coach stations. As they are so similar, following advise at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London Transport I have suggested that they be merged into a single template. Dunarc (talk) 21:37, 27 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"/> 17:43, 30 November 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)

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)

“West Bank Bantustans” title
Hi The Anome, regarding your edit at “West Bank Bantustans”, there is currently an active RFC on the talk page specifically requesting comments about the title. Your edit was reverted for that reason, but please feel free to contribute at the RFC on the talk page. Drsmoo (talk) 16:21, 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)

The Bot broke my citation!
Hallo, your Anomebot2 is mildly malfunctioning: in this edit it added Coord missing, appropriately, but in an inappropriate place: in the middle of the Cite web being used as an External link. A human editor checking their work would have noticed the red error message " line feed character in |journal= at position 170" it produced, but a bot is a bot and left to run unchecked, I suppose - thus all the more important to make sure that it behaves itself correctly. I've moved the Coords template to the right place, and refined the geog parameter (though as Kent wasn't mentioned in the categories I don't blame the bot for not using it!). Happy Editing. Pam D  19:11, 22 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for spotting that! It looks like some old, old code triggered that error -- the bot's parser mistook your the wikilink beginning "Wye:" as an interlanguage link. I'll remove the support for the now-obsolete interlanguage link format, and it shouldn't happen again. Thanks again, The Anome (talk) 20:50, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Vybe Together for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Vybe Together is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Vybe Together until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. ViperSnake151  Talk  03:12, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Modibo Nama Traoré


The article Modibo Nama Traoré has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Not seeing significant coverage to satisfy WP:GNG. Rank of major is not sufficient to satisfy WP:SOLDIER"

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Dumelow (talk) 13:30, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Something I forgot to write in my latest UAA report.
Hi. I get that the username name was based on a surname, but their sole edit summary seemed promotional. I forgot to write that. Does that change anything? Sorry, I am a bit new to UAA. Thanks. Scorpions13256 (talk) 13:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Wesley Stinky
I don't understand this block at all. This is a username violation how? --Bongwarrior (talk) 07:24, 3 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It's deliberately obnoxious. Words like "stinky", "poopy" etc. are juvenile insults that tend to create a hostile evironment for other editors. -- The Anome (talk) 22:40, 3 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It's not possible that it was just meant to be self-deprecating? --Bongwarrior (talk) 00:21, 4 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Since you seem disinterested in discussing this further, I have requested comments at WP:AN. --Bongwarrior (talk) 19:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Not disinterested, but just distracted elsewhere. I've replied there. -- The Anome (talk) 21:24, 4 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)

Requesting your inputs plus some help in article expansions
Greetings,

Since I stumbled upon related sources I initiated an article draft Draft:Irrational beliefs. It seems you have earlier worked on article Irrationality. I would like to request your inputs plus some help in article expansion. Please do visit the draft, and help expand if feel interested in the topic.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 15:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Your draft looks interesting, but it's quite closely related to the topics covered in the irrationality article. In what way do you distinguish the two topics? -- The Anome (talk) 23:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

, I was expecting this question, which is as much in my own mind, and that is one of the reason to approached you to know your point of views. In fact approaching few other users has opened discussion @ Draft talk:Irrational beliefs.

Let me share my perception (/my original research); IMO Irrationality is a broader topic, Where in 'irrational thinking' is part of it; Irrational belief is 'self accepted or trusted thought with no or dubious rational' (here along with contesting of rational, emphasis is on 'self acknowledgement of some level of acceptance and or trust in given thought/thinking by some/one).

Cognitive distortion and Fallacy study irrationality in systematic manner.

Irrational beliefs when followed by more than one person over a period of time like a tradition need be called Superstition.

Now all of my own rambling above amounts to original research, If any one get to WP:link term 'Irrational beliefs' to any of articles like Cognitive distortion,Fallacy, Irrationality or Superstition all 'believing' Wikipedians will be asking vociferously for Reliable sources approachable to Wikipedia rules.

Until we work on Irrational beliefs, Which and how many  Wikipedia acceptable reliable sources and scholars link Irrational beliefs to which concepts directly will remain unclear. So that is why my own take while starting the draft has been to do encyclopedic research and write let the draft wherever it goes and let Wikipedia community decide what to do with it in due course whether to maintain it independent or merge some where; in any case related Wikipedia article topics will improve is important for us.

I can not be sure on my own that, my above opinions are in right direction and hence would like to know your point of view and how we can improve coverage of the topic at hand.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 04:10, 12 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)

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"/> 18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05
<section begin="technews-2021-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.

Problems
 * IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource.
 * Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like  as well as the   syntax for IP ranges.
 * 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
 * Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be . This will happen on February 8. 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-2021-W05"/> 22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-06
<section begin="technews-2021-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.

Recent changes
 * The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app.

Changes later this week The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. 
 * You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like.
 * 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
 * When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones.
 * Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2021-W06"/> 17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Draped garment
Hello you created the subject article 18 years ago. I genuinely appreciate it. I am always interested in topics related to textile history. It is one of the gems. I have made few edits on the same; kindly see and advise. RV (talk) 04:58, 6 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you! -- The Anome (talk) 14:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Trempealeau, Wisconsin
I noticed that you moved the village page and created a disambiguation page. You have opened a can of worms as this move was controversial. It goes against a state naming convention of about 15 years. The political subdivisions of Wisconsin are unusual. There are hundreds of villages and cities in Wisconsin. The rural area outside of these municipalities are called towns. MANY towns have the same name as the municipalities but are 100% politically independent. Towns are 6 mile by 6 mile land masses but exclude area in municipalities. The consensus in the naming convention is to give the municipality the primary topic with a hatnote to the unrelated town. In some instances, there are towns with the same name in multiple counties too! Then a disambiguation page was created. The issue that you inadvertently stepped into comes up several times every year by unsuspecting edits.  Royal broil  15:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know; I didn't realise that. I will have a go at putting everything back in place tomorrow, with appropriate comments in the hatnotes to try to make sure other editors don't fall down the same hole again. -- The Anome (talk) 16:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for understanding. Thank you for all that you do!! I have seen your name many times on Wikipedia over the years.  Royal broil  01:33, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07
<section begin="technews-2021-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.

Problems
 * There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned.
 * Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance.

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-W07"/> 17:55, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Something for Everybody (Devo album)
Can something please be done about the vandals on Something for Everybody (Devo album) ASAP? CLCStudent (talk) 14:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I've semiprotected it for 3 days. If you get any more problems, please let me know. -- The Anome (talk) 14:30, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Block evasion
Can * be blocked as soon as possible? The account is evading the block of globally locked user. Please check their contribs. -- Ashley yoursmile!  09:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. They are abusing their talk page . Ashley  yoursmile!  09:24, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've just blocked their talk page access as well. Please let me know if you get any more problems. -- The Anome (talk) 09:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you.  Ashley  yoursmile!  09:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08
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 visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU.

Problems
 * Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly.

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
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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

00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Archeological sites on NRHP in South Dakota
Hi, I happen to be building a table at Paleontology in South Dakota and creating a lot of redirects from NRHP list-articles over to rows in the table, e.g. Archeological Site 39FA86 for one in Fall River County, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. I notice in "what links here" for several of these your userpage User:The Anome/NHRP detaggables, indicating you have some interest? I think I am doing okay developing a little bit from one big South Dakota state report, but comments/suggestions/participation in development would be welcomed by me!--Doncram (talk) 04:15, 24 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know. I will try to take a look in the next few days. -- The Anome (talk) 08:35, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 February 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) 21:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)