User talk:Zhaofeng Li/Archive 12

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:00, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:42, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:20, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  22:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
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This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.


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

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

Tech News: 2020-25
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Koding for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Koding 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/Koding 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. Light2021 (talk) 06:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W28"/> 20:19, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W30"/> 19:06, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2020-W31"/> 13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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

Reply tool


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


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

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

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

New requirements for user signatures

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

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

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

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)

Citegen
Hello, I just to inform you that the tool you have developed (CiteGen) id doesn't work with men, I use Brave browser which is based on Chromium system, but it doesn't work, every time I try to use it or launch it, it just tells me is loading and there is nothing, waiting for your help.--صفاء (talk) 22:05, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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)

Orphaned non-free image File:Bilibili main page June 2014.png
Thanks for uploading File:Bilibili main page June 2014.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:30, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Mark WikiProject Linux as inactive?
Hi! I was directed to your talk page by the participants list on  WikiProject Linux. I've started a discussion whether we can keep it running, or mark it as inactive.–  Abuluntu  ( talk 06:38, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use File:Sphero.png
Thanks for uploading File:Sphero.png. I noticed that this file is being used under a claim of fair use. However, I think that the way it is being used fails the first non-free content criterion. This criterion states that files used under claims of fair use may have no free equivalent; in other words, if the file could be adequately covered by a freely-licensed file or by text alone, then it may not be used on Wikipedia. If you believe this file is not replaceable, please:


 * 1) Go to the file description page and add the text  below the original replaceable fair use template, replacing   with a short explanation of why the file is not replaceable.
 * 2) On the file discussion page, write a full explanation of why you believe the file is not replaceable.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on [ this link]. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Saucy[talk – contribs] 10:17, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

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

From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:33, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Refill out of order for days now
See Title, your tool is not working now for several days. CommanderWaterford (talk) 09:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * @Zhaofeng Li courtesy ping even if semi retired CommanderWaterford (talk) 11:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The tool is still not working. Can someone take a look?.--BabbaQ (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @BabbaQ There is a ticket at Phabricator but they seem to be somewhat out of knowledge and the developer does not seem to help anymore. CommanderWaterford (talk) 21:31, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That is disappointing. It is an essential function for new articles with references needing to be processed properly.Skilgis1900 (talk) 22:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Truly weird situation. Hope someone can override it somehow and take control of the tool. BabbaQ (talk) 22:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @BabbaQ, @Skilgis1900 seem to work again - thank you @Zhaofeng Li for fixing it! CommanderWaterford (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Great! Thank you.BabbaQ (talk) 20:59, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Great News, thanks so much for the upadate!!Skilgis1900 (talk) 22:35, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Happy Birthday!
<div style="display: flex; align-items: center; height: 100px; padding: 1em; border: solid 3px #2B547E; background-color: #E6E6FA;"> Wishing Zhaofeng Li a very happy birthday on behalf of the Birthday Committee! CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:46, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

You have been removed from Local Embassy due to inactivity
Hi Zhaofeng Li! You're receiving this notification because you were previously listed at Local Embassy, but you haven't made any edits to the English Wikipedia in over 6 months.

Because of your inactivity, you have been removed from the list. If you would like to resubscribe, you can do so at any time by visiting Local Embassy.

Thank you! Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. &#124; Sent at 18:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)