User talk:The Herald/Archive 27

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

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 * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:00, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

One-click archiving
It's a useful tool, I'm running it myself, but blanking old talk threads down to nothing isn't always the ideal - the most recent thread you archived from Talk:The Mousetrap mentions a still-outstanding issue, even if it is a few months old now.

In most cases there's no problem in leaving four or five old threads on a talk page. It shows visitors what kinds of things have been discussed in the past, and what (perhaps) needn't be raised again. I'd actually leave the most recent two on the Mousetrap page, as it's useful to have a recent "but the identity of the murderer!" section on the talk page somewhere, so that well-meaning visitors don't start the same thread again and again. I'll go ahead and revert a bit now. --McGeddon (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep...go it..Go ahead..Ṫ Ḧ the joy of the LORD my strength 15:43, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-10
 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 software changes
 * A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it.
 * You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
 * You can now hide banners if you don't have an account.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
 * You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
 * Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs.
 * The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData.
 * The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters.

Meetings
 * You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
 * You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself.

Future changes
 * You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter
That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge,  led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.

In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:
 * took Bumblebee, a level-4 vital article, to Good Article;
 * worked-up the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, also to Good Article status;
 * developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
 * And last but not least, worked up a number of Featured Pictures during round 1, including the 1948 one Deutsche Mark (pictured right), receiving the maximum bonus due to the number of Wikis that the related article appears in.

You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. , and

Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 10
 The Wikipedia Library Books & Bytes

Issue 10, January-February 2015 by, ,

 Read the full newsletter MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * New donations - ProjectMUSE, Dynamed, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and Women Writers Online
 * New TWL coordinator, conference news, and a new guide and template for archivists
 * TWL moves into the new Community Engagement department at the WMF, quarterly review

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Set:Four Times of the Day by Joseph Vernet

 * Dominus illuminatio mea Hafspajen (talk) 16:37, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-11
 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 create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter.
 * VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
 * In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia.
 * The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs.
 * You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading.
 * You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools.
 * If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.

Meetings
 * You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
 * You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself.

Future changes
 * You can get help to become a developer. You can learn more on the Google Summer of Code and Outreachy pages.
 * You will soon be able to read technical reports in Phabricator.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:19, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Question about notability and new article creation
Can you tell me why this article, BikeBandit, would be acceptable? Atsme &#9775;  Consult  14:00, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not? It must be. Just look at the cites. They are reliable and trusted too. I cannot access the official page due to 503 E but all others (specially utsandiego and chicagonow.com) looks good and makes it go. But it certainly do not deserves a C-class status. The cites do not make up to that level in any of WikiProjects tagged. Ṫ Ḧ the joy of the LORD my strength 14:50, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not? If I knew why, I'd probably know why not. SMirC-mmm.svg  So we can just start adding retail stores to Wikipedia like it's the internet Yellow Pages?  Can I just change the status to stub or is there a process I have to go through? Atsme  &#9775;  Consult  15:43, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You can add retail stores if they are notable.SMirC-mmm.svg For changing it, just change it. Have you tried rater? Ṫ Ḧ the joy of the LORD my strength 16:19, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Tom Hallifax
Hello! Your submission of Tom Hallifax at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 17:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015
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Tech News: 2015-12
<section begin="technews-2015-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 servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images.
 * You can now see lists of bugs about Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary.
 * It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki.

Problems
 * Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
 * A puzzle piece icon (VisualEditor - Icon - Template-big.svg) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates.
 * You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData.

Meetings
 * You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
 * You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta.
 * You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis.
 * The final steps of single user login (SUL) will happen in April. You can see the rules to rename accounts.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W12"/> 15:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK review for W40
Hi TH,

I wanted to request, if you get a chance, that you review to my changes to the Westerhout 40 article, and if you think it's ready, pass the DYK nomination. Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Westerhout_40

Feel free to remove this message. Cheers, OtterAM (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you have any other comments on the article? OtterAM (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
 * None, fine for a B-class, undoubtedly. -The Herald <sup style="margin-left:0.5px">the joy of the LORD <sub style="margin-left:-47.5px">my strength 15:39, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015
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Please don't unnecessarily rewrite references -- it misleadingly lights up diffs, like a christmas tree, when the article's intellectual content remains unchanged.
Could you please refrain from unnecessarily rewrite references, as you did here? Doing so misleadingly lights up diffs, like a christmas tree, when the article's intellectual content remains unchanged.

If you use a rogue robot tool to help you edit, that rewrites references for you, I urge you to turn off this disruptive feature.

When I edit an article and find I have to fix, or add some fields, to references that were originally written with all the fields on one line, I leave it in that format, even though I find that format hard to work with, harder to figure out what is broken, out of consideration to other contributors, who should be able to expect diffs that only show strictly necessary changes, so that the changes to the articles actual intellectual content aren't drowned out by unnecessary changes.

If you use an automated tool to help you edit, that rewrites references for you, I urge you to turn off this disruptive feature. If you use a rogue robot tool to help you edit, could you please tell me what it is? I would like to contact the authors of tools that do this to deprecate this feature.

I started using the perfectly acceptable technique of leaving all the references within the Reflist template a few years ago. I have asked other contributors not to rewrite references, because of the chaos it causes, who have, in turn, asserted that policy requires contributors not to start using a different style in article to that already used.

However, those contributors completely misunderstood the policy's they cited. Since the wikipedia's policies have grown so complicated, this kind of confusion is inevitable. I ha started participating in the wikipedia years before we started to used the cite template, when all articles used bare urls. When someone added support for Harvard style references, I used those, as superior to bare urls. But the cite template is much easier to use. Only a small fraction of the wikipedia's article use the Harvard style. The policy that recommends not using a different style is meant to prevent the mixing of incompatible styles.

Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 04:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Whoa! that was long. Well, as far as I could see, I had only improved the refs and made some c.e. and fixes. The reason for Christmas tree is that I don;t like all that long page history with +2 and -1 change in bytes. Hope you got it. I certainly have used the cites you had provided (as you said, I rewrote them) which does make it look more better for reflist|30em tag to go on. You had provided all that unnecessary details as titles of refs and I changed it. It might be that you are using tl|cite, but it may not look good in a stub as US 708 was once. Didn't you noticed the change in aesthetic beauty of the article? -The Herald <sup style="margin-left:0.5px">the joy of the LORD <sub style="margin-left:-47.5px">my strength 15:04, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, authors, titles, dates of publication are "unnecessary details"?


 * I guess you have never encountered a site that went through a re-organization, so all the pages have new names, new URLs. When all you provide are the publication and the URL, and the date accessed, it is not possible to search that site for the new location.


 * Articles that go dead are still considered valid references, and should be fully populated so the dedicated reader can go to the nice librarian at their dead tree library, and request a copy of the article through inter-library loan. However, this requires the person who contributed the reference to record the title, date and author, and it requires that no one rewrites the reference because they think those essential details are "unnecessary".  In my ten plus years at the wikipedia you are the very first person to state that those details are "unnecessary".


 * Even when an article is only published online the date, author and title can be very helpful in looking up a mirror with the same or equivalent content, if the original URL goes dark.


 * So... I would encourage you to reconsider whether these details are "unnecessary".  Yes, for the original article, some contributors would prefer just listing the first author, "et al".  But, in academia, the grad student, post doc, or more junior faculty member, may have been the one who did most of the work.  And, IMO, it is a courtesy to credit them too.  Geo Swan (talk) 22:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I rewrote some references to add the title, author, date of publication. When I do this I resist the temptation to rewrite the reference in the one field per line format that I prefer -- because it makes it easier to fix broken references, because I want to contribute as little as possible to the christmas tree problem I mentioned above.  Geo Swan (talk) 22:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-13
<section begin="technews-2015-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.

Changes this week Meetings
 * The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
 * The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page.
 * VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor.
 * When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it.
 * You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
 * You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W13"/> 15:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Remains of Cervantes identified.
Re your "Ready" tag - did you see the comment by User:The Almightey Drill regarding need for sources in the "Literary pursuits" section of the article (i.e. there are none)? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:50, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅..Oops, didn't noticed it. I thought all were done with..-The Herald <sup style="margin-left:0.5px">the joy of the LORD <sub style="margin-left:-47.5px">my strength 13:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. ITN tends to be a good way of getting articles improved - whether or not they ever appear (and whether or not readers ever go to those articles)! Martinevans123 (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015
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Featured picture candidates/Clanculus corallinus
Could you close Featured picture candidates/Clanculus corallinus for me? Regards, Armbrust The Homunculus 13:39, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Done.. I was using my phone first and so closed it before reverting..-The Herald <sup style="margin-left:0.5px">the joy of the LORD <sub style="margin-left:-47.5px">my strength 14:18, 24 March 2015 (UTC)