The Bugle: Issue CLII, December 2018

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 10:34, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-50

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [1][2]
  • When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [3]

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

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello Ammarpad,

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.


Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.


Training video

Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

RollingStoneAlbum listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect RollingStoneAlbum. Since you had some involvement with the RollingStoneAlbum redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Stefan2 (talk) 22:02, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

File:2019 Pro Bowl logo.jpg

Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for calculation the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:00, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51

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

Tech News

  • Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

  • Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [4][5]
  • Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [6]
  • Advanced item The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

  • <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [7]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
  • Advanced item tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [8]

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

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:2019 Pro Bowl logo.jpg

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:2019 Pro Bowl logo.jpg. 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) 03:37, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 3

Newsletter • December 2018

Welcome to the third issue of the Timeless newsletter, complete with a somewhat dubious explanation of where I've been all this time.

Somewhat dubious explanation of where I've been all this time:

I suffered a rather bad concussion in October, which knocked me pretty much completely out of commission through November, and I'm still recovering even now. One person = bus factor of one, even though it wasn't actually a bus but a very short flight of stairs.

Updates:

Comments on the RfC (MediaWiki wiki RfC page, task) or bugs, or further reports, are always appreciated.

Until next time, hopefully with no further injuries,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:35, 20 December 2018 (UTC)


Yo Ho Ho

ϢereSpielChequers is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding ((subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec18a))~~~~ to your friends' talk pages.

ϢereSpielChequers 13:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Happy Holidays. –Ammarpad (talk) 09:12, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019!

Hello Ammarpad, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019.
Happy editing,
Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 21:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding ((subst:Seasonal Greetings)) to other user talk pages.

Thank you, Dreamy Jazz. Happy Holidays. –Ammarpad (talk) 06:55, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:35, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Mail call

You've got some email. Or if you'd prefer, just look at my last edit in my contributions... WormTT(talk) 21:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Ammarpad!

Happy New Year!

Ammarpad,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
EurovisionNim (talk to me)(see my edits) 05:41, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year fireworks)) to user talk pages.

Precious

Nigeria and beyond

Thank you for quality articles such as Nigerian Academy of Letters, BBC Hausa, Farooq Kperogi and 2018 London Marathon, for creating and maintaining ((Nigeria Prize for Literature)), for support at the Teahouse, and for "Everything meaningful is welcome. "- na gode, you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:59, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Greetings.

Hello Ammarpad: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, DBigXrayᗙ 15:31, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use ((subst:Season's Greetings1)) to send this message

Hope the new year will bring more friendly debates and collaboration for us. Best wishes. Cheers --DBigXrayᗙ 15:31, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Ammarpad!

Happy New Year!

Ammarpad,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
SemiHypercube 02:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year fireworks)) to user talk pages.

Happy New Year!

Ammarpad,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 11:57, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
– Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year)) to user talk pages.

A Barnstar for You

The Original Barnstar
Thanks for your many contributions to the project and for stepping up at RfA. While that didn't go as well as hoped, your work here is greatly appreciated. Ad Orientem (talk) 01:38, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

Now feels like a good time to thank you for all you do for Wikipedia. I am sure the RfA was disappointing but I hope you are able to take some positives from it and continue the work of improving freely available knowledge to the world. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you @Barkeep49:. –Ammarpad (talk) 03:50, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLIII, January 2019

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 23:58, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Nigerian Civil War/Biafran War

Thought I'd let you know I've reopened the discussion, this time according to the book. I apologize of getting ahead of myself yesterday. As I said before, I am not particularly opinionated on this issue, and you just might change my mind. Cheers! Mikrobølgeovn (talk) 19:17, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I will comment over there. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Just some thoughts

Wanted you to know that I will continue to support you in any future bid for adminship. I withdrew from my RfA for different reasons, and you stuck it out quite a bit longer than I did. The only reason I ran was because two awesome people wanted me to run. Couldn't really think of a good reason to be an admin, since anytime I need the tools, there is always a helpful admin to make the edits for me. Since my RfA I've been on a roller coaster of yes or no wanting to be an admin, and I think the only good and solid reason for wanting to be an admin is to know that you have the trust of the community, well perhaps a couple hundred of them, anyway. This essay helped me and might you also. Happy New Year and always yours... Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  03:04, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Paine Ellsworth, for the kind words and support. Happy New Year to you too. –Ammarpad (talk) 08:39, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
I for one think this whole process has evolved into a bunch of BS over the last few years, and you are an unfortunate victim. There is no such thing as a perfect candidate, and the nitpickers will dredge up whatever bogus negatives they can find and then it will snowball against an RFA candidate. We are losing admins faster than we are gaining them, and good people like you are getting rejected. It is truly a broken system. --rogerd (talk) 22:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Ammarpad, I meant to come earlier to tell you that I hope you take some time, consider the message the Opposers were sending, work on some of your weaker areas (and we all have them!) and have a second RfA. Quite a few of our current admins had two or even three RfAs before they passed. I've been through the RfA meat-grinder, too, and going through it a second time probably feels like the last thing you want to put yourself through. I know I wanted to withdraw halfway through my RfA when things weren't going well but I saw all of the people supporting me and decided to wait it through. Still, the people opposing me had some good points and even though I passed, I've changed some of my behavior.
I don't have any doubt you would make a good admin so I hope you continue to do good work, work on a couple areas of improvement and throw your hat in the ring again when the time feels right. You had a lot of support and I'm sure those editors will show up and support you again. Cheers! Liz Read! Talk! 05:55, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you guys, @Liz and Rogerd: I appreciate your messages, and I can assure you that I am not dispirited, not even thought of something close to that. To me, I have already moved ahead and I am contented with where I am for now. Best wishes to you all. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

  • RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [9]
  • Advanced item MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [10]
  • Advanced item codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [11]
  • Advanced item On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

  • Advanced item In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [12]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).

Meetings

  • Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Paweł Adamowicz

On 14 January 2019, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Paweł Adamowicz, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Notification of AFD

Hiya, you were previously involved with the article KC International Airlines. Just wanted to know I had nominated the article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/KC International Airlines (2nd nomination). Please voice your opinions there. See below. Notified the wrong user. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 16:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Tyw7: Please explain the involvement I had with the page. I did not create it and also never edited it. I am not even aware of its existence until now. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Ammarpad, whoops. I saw you at User_talk:Kwanefung and thought you had nominated the article for speedy deletion. You were kinda sandwiched between two editors who had PROD and SPEEDY the KC Airlines article. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 17:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
It's all right. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:17, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

AfroCine: Thank You!

Greetings!

The Months of African Cinema Global Edit-a-thon was concluded on 30 November 2018, and we've had amazing results. Over 570 articles were created across 8 language-Wikipedias. 7 in-person gatherings of Wikipedians were organized across different parts of the world.

All our winners have been recognized and you can check the complete list here.

For a pilot event, all our expectations were surpassed and we have you to thank for that. Thank you so much for being part of this global event! Thank you for helping to fix African content gaps on Wikipedia! We hope to see more of your participation in future AfroCine events and activities. Please remember to signup on the main WikiProject participants page, in order to get updated with these activities.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 23:50, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

  • Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [13]

Recent changes

  • The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
  • https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

  • When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [14]
  • MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [15][16]
  • Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [17]

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [18]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

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

20:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Template:Shortdescription listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Shortdescription. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Shortdescription redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 20:09, 24 January 2019 (UTC) Redirects cause problems with the short description editing gadget. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 2

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the second issue of the new Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Miscellaneous


Lets keep up the good work! --DannyS712 (talk) 03:09, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

  • When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:2019 Pro Bowl logo.jpg

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:2019 Pro Bowl logo.jpg. 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) 03:22, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

GOCE 2018 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2018 Annual Report
Our 2018 Annual Report is now ready for review.

Highlights:

  • Overview of Backlog-reduction progress;
  • Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page;
  • Membership news and results of elections;
  • Annual leaderboard;
  • Plans for 2019.
– Your project coordinators: Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.


MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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

  • It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [20]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

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

17:11, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLIV, February 2019

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:19, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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 use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

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

18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

8th ISCB Wikipedia Competition: a reminder

Growth team updates #5

Welcome to the fifth newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

New projects for discussion

We began the "Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".

Initial reports on newcomer activity

We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.

Help panel deployment

The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:

We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.

How to create a good feedback page?

What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Tech News: 2019-08

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

  • When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [21]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [22]

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

23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

" icon depicting two speech Bubbles"

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

  1. First, sign up your group here.
  2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
  3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
    1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
    2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
    3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
    4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
    5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
  4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-09

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

Changes later this week

  • When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [24]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

21:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 February 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 3

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (February 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the third issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

You changed my edits, why?

Hey man, I saw that you reverted my edits earlier; however, I don't think you understand that my edits were truthful and agreed upon within this high school community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tupac lives in cuba (talk • contribs) 16:23, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I explained why on your talkpage, even before you ask. Wikipedia has its own standard and does not follow what individual communities agreed upon, besides the fact that you're just making up this claim. When did the community resolved to call the town "trashy"? –Ammarpad (talk) 16:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
  • The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [25][26]

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

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLV, March 2019

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 11:00, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

Problems

  • Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
  • Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [27]
  • Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [28][29]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:2010–2017 Toronto serial homicides

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:2010–2017 Toronto serial homicides. Legobot (talk) 04:32, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello Ammarpad,

News
Discussions of interest
Reminders
NPP Tools Report

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #6

Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Plans for the next three months

The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:

  • Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
  • Continued iteration on help panel
  • Make the help panel available to more wikis
  • Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
  • Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
  • Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers

Newcomer homepage

Mockup of potential design for newcomer homepage
The newcomer homepage is our current major project. We hope that community members can read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. You can see in the accompanying mockup how we are thinking about the homepage.

We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:

  • Shown in the User space
  • Desktop only (mobile comes next)
  • Four modules
    • Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
    • Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
    • Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
    • Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
  • Layout not yet personalized for each user

We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.

Help panel

Screenshot from Vietnamese Wikipedia showing the help panel open on the Community Portal, including the "search" bar.

During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:

  • 2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
  • 422 of them have opened it
  • 175 have clicked links
  • 27 have run searches
  • 40 have asked questions

We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.

Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.

  • We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
  • The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.

We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

  • When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [30][31]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [32]
  • Advanced item Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

March GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2019 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2018. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2019, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.

January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from all of the articles tagged in our original target months of June, July and August 2018, and by 24 January we ran out of articles. After adding September, we finished the month with 8 target articles remaining and 842 left in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 48 requests for copyedit in January. Of the 31 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 32 copyedits, including 15 requests. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: As of 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 108 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 851 articles.

March Drive: The month-long March drive is now underway; the target months are October and November 2018. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here!

Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Christchurch mosque shootings

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Christchurch mosque shootings. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics). Legobot (talk) 04:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

ITN

Please stop your disruptive closures. As stated in my edit summary, there is nothing that states that the posting should be closed but enough to say it should remain open. At the very least, other users should be given time to respond to the posting instead of it being posted and closed/archived overnight. Please explain how your actions adhere to Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions#ITN/C. Thank you. Nihlus 06:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, please stop edit warring. Nihlus 07:00, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
There was overwhelming consensus to post this and it was posted; that's the end of the issue as per as ITN/C is concerned. You should respect the consensus formed even though you don't like it. I also told you to air your grievance at the right place, i.e either at WP:ERRORS or by opening a new nomination for pulling. And please... stop grandstanding, edit inline with consensus is not disruptive, but editing to subvert consensus certainly is.– Ammarpad (talk) 07:10, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Please explain how your actions adhere to Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions#ITN/C, specifically the part that I keep posting: Posted nominations generally are not closed so that the nomination can be used as a workspace for an item (beyond the scope of WP:ERRORS) or if there is a possibility of additional voters later requesting that the item be pulled. Thanks. (Also, there is hardly overwhelming consensus to post it as a blurb. I see a lot of support for ongoing.) Nihlus 07:17, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
I reopened the discussion, Nihlus. I also responded on the ITN talkpage. Thanks. – Ammarpad (talk) 10:14, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13

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 new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [33]

Problems

  • There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [34]
  • The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [35]
  • Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [36]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Template namespace

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Template namespace. Legobot (talk) 04:34, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 4

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (March 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the fourth issue of the new Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Miscellaneous


Enjoy your April Fool's, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 March 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Companion (Doctor Who)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Companion (Doctor Who). Legobot (talk) 04:26, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

TV episode titles

For disptitle usage in proper TV episode title disambiguation, please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles#Italicizing Wikipedia article titles. — Wyliepedia @ 10:08, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

When I removed it, I did so to remove the page from this error category not because of the italic title. Also FYI, use of the template ((DISPLAYTITLE)) is discouraged in favor of the magicword ((DISPLAYTITLE:pagetitle)). So I changed it to use the magicword.– Ammarpad (talk) 10:59, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

User access level question

Hi Ammarpad. I have a quick question you may be able to answer given your recent edit to Wikipedia:User access levels. I do not have the "page mover" user right but until the last few days have been able to move categories. Do you know if this is now something that is restricted to this user group? Thanks. Jevansen (talk) 01:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Jevansen: Yes, previously all registered user could move category pages, this was recently changed after this discusssion. It was deployed here on April 3. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Ok that explains it. Thanks a lot. Jevansen (talk) 06:08, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLVI, April 2019

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 22:00, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

8th ISCB Wikipedia Competition: entries closing soon!

Please comment on Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Proposed amendment (April 2019)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Proposed amendment (April 2019). Legobot (talk) 04:28, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Voodoo Doughnut

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Voodoo Doughnut. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

A welcome message of yours

Did you noticed that you welcomed a Holocaust denier?[37] Doug Weller talk 05:23, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Well, no. I welcomed them because they asked for help about citation error at the Teahouse which I helped them resolve. And It seems they did the edit you're referring a day after I welcomed them; so there's no way for me to guess, in advance, what they didn't commit at the time of welcoming. – Ammarpad (talk Ammarpad) 05:40, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure you must have missed it, but the edit I'm talking about left their user page looking like this:[38] "Hello this is my user page, don't know how you found it but dont expect much as im not very great at making wiki articles. The Holocaust is a lie; The Leuchter Reports http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/16-tlr.pdf" - unless I'm reading it wrong.Doug Weller talk 07:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
Indeed I had not seen that. Thanks. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:10, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC discussion

I think you may have misunderstood. The RfC at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups is specifically about reversing this guideline which resulted from this RfC. This is a discussion about a guideline. --T*U (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

You're right @T*U: so I reverted. I of course misunderstood. I found that people are just plastering "policy" to any random rfc which led to bloating of this list and then cause unnecessary notifications to people who are not interested in such topics. But I should have check that more. Thanks for the clarification. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:24, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:User access levels

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:User access levels. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

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