User talk:Billinghurst/2023

Tech News: 2023-02
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags.
 * Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
 * You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page.
 * A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time.
 * Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use  to create Matrix links on wiki pages.
 * You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages.

Changes later this week
 * Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on  at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Author:Y. Victor Brozek
May I ask if you could have a look at Author:Y. Victor Brozek? I failed to find any information about him except this and this? Do you think you could find his birth and death dates in some records? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Will do. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:20, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Done Yaro Victor Brozek (1898-1959). Detail on author_talk. I will let you populate WD. — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:59, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much, that is wonderful. Knowing the first name helped me to find even some more sources. Wikidata updated. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:11, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hanging indent & character-tag questions
Hello Billinghurst,

I had a couple of questions that I posed over at the discussion section for a transcription project I'm working on, but I am not sure how long it will take someone to answer there, so I wanted to ask directly to you: (1) how do you make a hanging indent carry across two pages? (2) what should I do if a dialogue tag is centered, but in the work in question the dialogue itself won't line up under the tag in the same way it does in the initial document? For reference, the work is at Page:Hamilton play 1917.pdf/15. Thank you, Packer1028 (talk) 03:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * hanging indent/s / hanging indent/e if it is just the one paragraph. One of those start/finish (open/close) type &lt;div> scenarios. Re the second question, I am not I understand the question. Are you talking about presentation in the Page: ns, or are you talking about presentation when transcluded to the main ns? In the main ns, where it becomes terribly lop-sided, then we would usually utilise default layout per "Layout 2". If that is not the right answer to the question, then please try again.  Also to note that the best spot for answers is WS:Scriptorium/Help as most eyes to help beginners is on that page. — billinghurst  sDrewth  04:03, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Broken links
When you moved The Western Mail/22 September 1919/Welsh Artist - Death of Mr George Howell Baker without leaving a redirect, you broke the links on my user page and on Index:Welsh Artist - Death of Mr George Howell Baker - Western Mail - 22nd September 1919.png. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:01, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? You moved that page in 2021. All I did this week was to remove a redirect under a disambiguation page that shouldn't have been there. Why have you have left pages linked to a redirect sitting under a disambiguation page when you moved it, and you were fully aware of it? Seems that is a question you should asked yourself, plus why didn't you fix that up forever ago. Please stop shooting workers cleaning up messes left by other people, and accept some of your own responsibilities. — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:48, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Allow me to rephrase:

When you deleted the in-use redirect at The Western Mail/22 September 1919/Welsh Artist - Death of Mr George Howell Baker, you broke the links on my user page and on Index:Welsh Artist - Death of Mr George Howell Baker - Western Mail - 22nd September 1919.png. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:49, 17 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, if you have links to a redirect of a subpage of a work that is a disambiguation page, that is likely to happen. We typically do not have subpage redirects to subpages as they problematic to manage, and often misleading. Expecting subpages to be checked for links, especially on user pages is an unreasonable burden on those who are needing to do bulk maintenance to fix problems created by others. The available tools for doing bulk moves do not allow that sort of maintenance readily. As we have a number of local templates that utilise WD, that is how I would recommend that you link on your user page for link continuity. — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:03, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

The links were working. You broke them.

Index:Welsh Artist - Death of Mr George Howell Baker - Western Mail - 22nd September 1919.png is not my user page. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I explained to you a better and more resilient way to link. It was you who made and had redirects from a subpage of a disambiguation page, and you did not fix them, and you knew that you had created them. As I said, there are not the tools to find these linked pages and no bot to fix them, and there is zero way that I am checking these one by one when I am having to bulk moves. Help us out, don't use redirect subpage links, and when you do make them, fix your additions. Don't expect others to do this for you. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:04, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-03
 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The URLs in "" links on page history now contain  in place of  . This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on  and   namespaces.  These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as  .  They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including   pages (e.g., at the Village Pump).  You can change your preferences (beta feature).
 * On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.

Future changes
 * The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:10, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Parsing error
One of your (seemingly automated) edits removing portal link has produced Portal:Little, Brown and Company as "Little" at Keeban, which may be because of a problem parsing commas. Just wanted to let you know. PseudoSkull (talk) 03:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh... This is actually a MediaWiki parsing problem. Portal:Little, Brown and Company automatically produces Little ... PseudoSkull (talk) 03:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh shit, I forget that the w:help:pipe trick dumbs out on a comma rather than at the end of the phrase. I will have to dig these out and resolve them. Grrr. — billinghurst  sDrewth  04:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

✅ — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:50, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Broken links in Dictionary of National Biography
Hi, I've found a couple of pages where SDrewthbot has broken links, e.g. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Townshend, Charles (1674-1738) and Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Montagu, Edward (1602-1671). I've since fixed these, but there may be others. DivermanAU (talk) 06:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Think I found them and fixed them, subarticle code that I didn't find in my testing phase, and usually I will grab and test from a range of the subfolders. Interestingly, we actually don't tag those for difference. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-04
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity.
 * The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

DNB27
Things are now proceeding. We should get on the same page about format, in particular, before going much further and starting to create articles.

The decision, about ten years ago, was for DNB12 to treat the name in the initial place in articles as in a bold font, even if the letters are less thick and black than in the earlier volumes. (That is what is done consistently on https://www.oxforddnb.com/ for their transcriptions, for example.) So we should do that for what is in caps. I don't think we have to use caps for small caps, though. E.g. for, we should reproduce the original small caps, for legibility.

It is a convention going back to the DNB work before 2009, when I started here, that DNB article titles do not include titles of nobility, or Sir, Dame etc. So that should clearly continue for the third supplement also.

We'll need DNB27 which I suppose should be based directly on DNB12. The remaining thing would be to decide on the standard transclusion formula to use. I did have a recent comment about a past version. I don't mind, but we should agree on how to do it.

Charles Matthews (talk) 09:54, 25 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Seeing that these are the norm for DNB12 and also DNB01, I don't see a problem with continuing any of this in DNB27, so I might bold the relevant stuff in that edition provided there's no objection. ミラP@Miraclepine 18:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that we have a house style for DNB and it should continue, that there is some variation in publishers over the years can be classed as interesting, rather than binding. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:01, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * template created, just rudimentary. I need to tidy these all out and get them updated to modern versions. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:17, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

about your eyes for reprints....
I seem to remember encountering several reprints here that were spotted by you. I was trying to sort through the volumes of two trade journals that merged, and the only way the volume number makes sense is if it is a reprint after the merge, but, I determined this after some confusion, so maybe you could look at it?

Railway Age, still exists, is the oldest (1856) and was merged into in 1908.

Railroad Gazette, 1870 until merging in 1908.
 * https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021737674 <--reprint? Hathi calls it Volume 2
 * https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021737658 <--the one I am working with.

If I got the wrong person, sorry to take your time.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:37, 25 January 2023 (UTC)


 * No idea. I typically find things when fixing something else. We just have to make decisions based on best advice. Suggest that WS:S is the place to put the issue, and we can reach a community consensus. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

The Eleventh Hour
I don't see any policy that verbosely excludes the "See also" heading. It appears on quite a lot of disambiguation pages. Why remove this one only? PseudoSkull (talk) 05:50, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * What is the point of it in that situation? It is either disambiguating (include it) or it isn't (don't include it). The other uses of "see also" are typically other namespace, or other disambiguation pages. — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:53, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A title can look similar but not be exactly the same. The template says a disambiguation page "lists works that share the same title", but some searchers may be one letter off from the work they're looking for, so it's valid IMO to include a "See also" for some similarly titled works that do not share the exact same title. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:00, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A good example would be at the page The Living Dead, which puts in See also Night of the Living Dead. The film was never at any point just called The Living Dead, but I felt that this was such a significant film that a huge amount of people would associate the phrase "The Living Dead" with "Night of the Living Dead", so I included it. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:02, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Disambiguation pages are not for titles that are similar, they are to disambiguate where of the same name or usage. Users can click the links in the top right for "intitle" searches. So if you have done that, please take those pages out. this is not directory type listings, those belong in Wikisource: or Portal namespaces. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:05, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Per w:WP:Disambiguation disambiguation pages serve the purpose to resolving conflicts in article titles. The "similar" used is around "A" "The", plurals, where the usage is insignificant and often casual. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:10, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Would it not also be helpful to include works whose titles can very easily be confused with the headword of the disambiguation page? Removing this stuff is just impractical. I put it there for a logical reason, and that logical reason is that I thought it would better serve readers than if it wasn't there.
 * When people think of the phrase "The Living Dead" do you think that most people would immediately think of some obscure poem by an obscure Canadian author, or another obscure poem by a somewhat obscure American author? No. The first thought that comes to the head of someone in the modern West is the 1968 hit horror film, Night of the Living Dead, so it's obvious to me that film should be represented somewhere on that page for when searchers will be inevitably confused in title searching. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:22, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't remove it, I blended it into the list. Apart from that you are extending the use of disambiguation pages. The reasons that we have the title prepend and intitle links is to cover those cases, it is not to convert disambiguation pages into something else. We had that conversation when we created the current template. If you want to change the consensus of the community, then please do it by overt conversation, rather than by incremental stealth. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:27, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * And to note that the top text of Help:Disambiguation spells out their purpose. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:32, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * So you start the conversation then don't like the other opinion and the community consensus and just ignore it? — billinghurst  sDrewth  13:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

AF
Can you have a look at, please. Apparently a false positive, but I do not understand the code to find the mistake. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:40, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is hitting something in the last line  while meeting the top three lines (there is an AND condition with all the lines below being grouped OR conditions. I will add a condition to line 2 to help us out. — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Change of plan, that low level of false positive and the conditions of that account would work for having to do some weird condition making. The block impact is temporary and not draconian, finding the matching slab of text for the regex in such a large addition is ugly, and of low value. If we are seeing this sort of positive come through repeatedly, we can dig deeper then. — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:19, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The fourth condition in the last line of the filter matches line 221 and 715 of the added wikitext. This condition is too wide and too likely to be used legitimately as is IMO (the character classes in square brackets allows any single character from that set; so even the common english word as normally spelled will match). Xover (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! So I have removed that condition. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

plain sister
cf. this. If the page is connected to a Wikidata item it gets sister links in the left sidebar automatically. See e.g. Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls, with a giant list in the sidebar plus in the plain sister output. Is there a reason for having both, or is it just overlap with something else? Xover (talk) 13:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is the same implementation of logic and process that is used in all of our headers, and is what the community determined was our solution and process long ago. Naturally the evolution of things with WD changes some aspects, and similarly what we display and when we display is always there for the community consensus. [That I never notice interwikis in the left column and rely on the overt nature of the top labelling is probably both a personal weakness and an indicator of the difference with overt labelling. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:31, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Yeah, the sisterlinks in the sidebar are fairly recent (they were added in the last year or two I think), and it took me a good long while to notice them too. I guess we chalk it up as something to look at closer at some point to see whether we defer sisterlinks to those provided by MediaWiki, and if so whether we can do so in only some or in all cases. Once I did take notice of them I found them immensely useful for some of the things I do, but on the other hand I never really noticed the duplication with explicit plain sister until I happened to see you add it to an otherwise empty Category: page that also happened to exist on many sister projects. Xover (talk) 07:56, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Gut feel is limit the number or prioritise. I think that WP, CommonsCat and WD are priorities, and the rest can sit in sidebar, and that could be just for cats, or for all. — billinghurst  sDrewth  08:04, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Thinking a little laterally, it would be useful with this template if was able to put some commentary that checks which data in Module:Author/data populates the automated additions from the WD components. Though I have a feeling that may be a tad complicated, I have done an example to how manually => insert P & Q values Template:Plain sister/sandbox => Template:Plain sister/testcases => Category:Monks (parameters p/1, q/2, and only showing up in category namespace, and if one of the parameters is present) — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:35, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-05
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage.

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Feb 2023 to do

 * records checks
 * Author:Florence Briscoe
 * author:William Scott Palmer is a pseudonym of author:Mary Emily Dowson???
 * Author:Algernon Blackwood move works to subpages of parents
 * header maintentenance
 * subpages The Origin of Continents and Oceans
 * subpages The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet) & prev/next
 * Tracts for the Times author -> contributor
 * subpages Tales from the Fjeld

quickstatements
Need to redevelop set of DNB contributors and feed through QuickStatements. (re-)Read instructions at d:Help:QuickStatements= — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * category pushes for authors /data additions
 * category:British Museum
 * category:Fellows of the Royal Society
 * category:Faculty of King's College London
 * start working on the other fellowships recorded
 * example of query in Petscan, and then the set up for addition through feed to QS 23824645 — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:35, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-06
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
 * Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
 * Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add  for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 10:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

To do (Jan 2023)
— billinghurst  sDrewth  21:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Author research Author:Warren Bert Kimberly
 * Author:William F. Fleming
 * Author:John Keith
 * Author:Reginald Herbert Mason
 * Author:John William Slater
 * Author:Andrew Francis Lockhart
 * Author:Mary Alice Murray
 * Author:George Alexander Thompson
 * Author:John Henry Norman
 * convert Template:Weird Tales link to template:article link syntax
 * relative links special:prefixindex/The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant/
 * relative links special:prefixindex/Collected poems, 1901-1918/
 * relative links special:prefixindex/Pieces People Ask For/
 * relative links special:prefixindex/Passages from the Life of a Philosopher/
 * fix In Exile and convert to disambig due to The Schoolmistress and Other Stories/In Exile and Reuben and Other Poems/In Exile, deeper dig required there, and add link from Exile
 * Portal:Little, Brown and Company fix pipe trick half trick
 * Thomas Howard remove and delete similar links to it; reconsider John Hunter same criteria; John Grey, Thomas Green too
 * DNB self references with "(DNB00)#", identify extent of issue, done in a lot with "contains subarticle" pages for unexplained reason

March 2023 to do

 * records checks
 * track death for Author:Michael Barrett
 * detail for Author:John George Anthony Skerl
 * Author:Thomas Helsby
 * Author:Charles Everitt
 * revisit author:Robert Edward Anderson
 * Author:Adam Luke Gowans
 * R. M. Gray
 * author:Ada Maria Skinner
 * Author:Algernon Blackwood continue moving works to subpages of parents
 * ponder St. Nicholas pages, have edited by through subpages, not just volumes, and the illustrators have been added as related_authors; definitely needs work, apply  to the pages, and remove the css code that sets a max-width
 * al set this up so it substitutes automatically, then clean up
 * pol set this up so it substitutes automatically, then clean up
 * Translations from Camoens; and Other Poets, with Original Poetry needs a AuxToC built, and contributor components rather than authors, maybe also use override_translator rather than translator for cleanliness
 * Works to consider
 * https://archive.org/details/blightinsubordi00marigoog
 * find the best ocr of https://archive.org/search?query=Peasant+Proprietorship
 * Think about "redirects here" fpr disambig pages (The ..., The ...s, A ..., ...s)
 * DNB contributor => 1st supplement separation from 1885-1900, and each their own? also remove sc from usages
 * bring over my /archive/ edit filters from metawiki
 * more work to do on Index:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/styles.css and template:hussey Churches table header related pages

DNB contributor

 * DNB contributor
 * DNB contributor 2ndSupp
 * DNB contributor 3rdSupp


 * 1) need to ensure that all data is present on author pages
 * 2) push "contributor to creative work" / "biographer" / "initials"
 * 3) construct the QS components (see if we can do anything with harvest tool first)
 * 4) convert usage of "object named as" to subject

Portal: YYYY
Return to the components of reconstructing the year templates for portal namespace.


 * Build overarching to replicate national approach
 * Build subsections (get consultation)
 * review Portal/dpl
 * components (what do we want?)
 * latest Portal/dpl-latest
 * novels
 * poems
 * films
 * births
 * deaths
 * short stories
 * speeches
 * songs, lyrics, song lyrics
 * court decisions
 * executive orders
 * treaties
 * constitutional documents
 * magazines, journals, and newspapers
 * build years, and pump into corresponding WD items — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:57, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Author:E. A. Terhune
Could you have a look at this author please? I failed to check the identity of this author and the new contributor who founded that page does not answer, see User talk:Timzy D'Great. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:51, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * the 1905 work definitely isn't written by a 1921 birther. There look to be three E. A. Terhune and I am guessing that this is number 1, as I don't think that we are having the 1895 birther being the author.  When I can get access to my full search kit I will track it down, though I am guessing that we are looking for someone born c. 1870s — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, obviously, I must have been stricken blind not to notice that :-) --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I had the awareness of 2nd and 3rd versions of authors and dates, so I was more looking at the date for the guidance, hence a different focus. Got to love "working in the zone" — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:57, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ and I will leave you to populate WD. If you need more data, then please let me know. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:32, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-07
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 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. 

MediaWiki message delivery 01:48, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Act 2015
You've adjusted this page to remove all sub pages and convert to a versions only page. Could you clarify the reason for this? It has created several broken links, and in terms of usability, it's made navigating between versions of a particular section more difficult, requiring clicking up two levels to the version page, then down two levels to the section. The change does not appear to be an improvement. ElDubs (talk) 02:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The top level page is per help:versions, and each version is standalone. We don't create versions pages at subpage levels. Comparison between versions is not typically our mission, though we can create something like that within the notes sections to flick between versions if it is truly needed.    — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:57, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Re broken links. Please do not wikilink section, that is not something that is encouraged or wise. That parameter is meant to be plain text. I will run my bot through those and clean them up once we have further consensus on what else needs to be addressed with these versions. In terms of versions, we would usually have other versions at the top of the root page of each version, and NOT have wikilinks to the versions page from the title field. Subpages usually have relative links to the root page of the work itself, not to a disambiguation page. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I hadn't looked at the work in detail, so some comments. We would not normally reproduce a work like that in sections of the Act, we would more normally do something like that in Parts of the Act, rather than sections as readability is important. [We are not trying to replicate those sites that like austlii, that is not our purpose or what we are trying to be. Wikibooks is more the space for the analytical aspects of works, we are here for the reproduction] At the top level of our works is where we put year / portal / category as they apply to the whole work, we would only add detail into subpages where it differs from the parent page. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:27, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I do understand that you're laying out how things are usually done. And yeah I took a different approach for what I saw was a fairly unique situation, which is laws where the majority of the act is largely identical across all sections, and there's value in easily switching between versions of that particular section that has been amended.
 * I agree comparison between versions is not *typically* our mission, but the entire value in storing versions of a law is in their comparison. So I took actions that make this easier. In this sense, flicking between versions would always be needed, but since acts can have dozens or even hundreds of versions, putting this in the notes section seems far less effective than having a page for each section.
 * Running your bot through those would remove a very useful navigation feature which makes navigating this legislation, so please don't just send in your bot before seeking that further consensus, which I will be happy to engage in. Ideally sweeping changes that are disagreed with should occur after this.
 * There is stuff here that is not done how we usually do it, but that is not a bad thing. It's a good opportunity to discuss. ElDubs (talk) 03:23, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The purpose of main namespace is the transcription of a pure work, first and foremost. All commentary and comparison is meant to be separate from the pure presentation of our works. Shifting the focus for these works without consultation with the community is always going to tripping up something and somewhere. There are better tools for comparison, and those are what we should be exploring. We have been amenable to how we can do such things, and the namespaces that we utilise, though we do demand that clean work with which to start. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:57, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Noting that the wiki has installed mw:Extension:DoubleWiki which seems ideal for the comparative aspects, though we need to see how function that extension would be. It aligns respective sections so maybe we can get to play, though it was not set for this exact task, so we will need to play. — billinghurst  sDrewth  04:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm definitely happy to keep the namespace "pure" as you put it. That seems reasonable and definitely happy to explore other avenues. It's why I started with a small act like the one we're discussing, I didn't want to start big and find I'd stepped on toes. I'd say linking to sections is still an essential part of the way legislation is structured, and that can be done while respecting the concept that first and foremost we're replicating the pure work. The idea of linking was indeed to keep that comparison separate. Happy to shift that linking to the notes if that's sufficient but I do think linking between versions of a section is pretty important. DoubleWiki is an interesting concept that I hadn't considered. Appreciate the thought you're putting into it! ElDubs (talk) 04:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

the change in where the date shows up
Hi! In regards to your changes to WD author I have had a person replace the template for a subst due to inconsistency in display. While I don't know for sure it was because of the change in the location of the date in the display, I suspect it might be and also, I did not hear of the changes you cited. Perhaps you could announce or re-announce this change so that I have a link to paste in explanation.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:23, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * What are the focus for author pages, and their order? 1) Title, 2) where published if it is inside source, 3) date, then follows other data. We are not building a structured bibliography to go anywhere. That is why we are there for our author pages. — billinghurst  sDrewth  07:50, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I see that this is the productive way in which you organize your thoughts. I would like to start with a visual representation of the template and how the seasoned sourcerer "fixed" it. So, from an author page:
 * The template:
 * The return to consistency:
 * "Two Old Ladies, Two Foolish Fairies and a Tom Cat", illustrated by Arthur Rackham (October 1897)
 * The original publication, from a magazine, via template:
 * There were some limitations with the module that prevented me from making the template I had first imagined. The one problem I remember at this moment is that I wanted to get linked "Volume"/"Issue" data for journals and that did not work at all.  So, "Published in" was used for this and I think that is sloppy.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:39, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "Published in" is correct terminology, with qualifiers like volume, issue, page number, and publication date, etc. It is not sloppy at all. Having them as their own items rather than as qualifiers simply not correct. There are some who forget the exact purpose of our author pages and they can do it on their edits. Having templates that do not wander away from purpose is problematic. When we are on an author page, we are not trying to build a reference list for a journal article. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:42, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There were some limitations with the module that prevented me from making the template I had first imagined. The one problem I remember at this moment is that I wanted to get linked "Volume"/"Issue" data for journals and that did not work at all.  So, "Published in" was used for this and I think that is sloppy.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:39, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "Published in" is correct terminology, with qualifiers like volume, issue, page number, and publication date, etc. It is not sloppy at all. Having them as their own items rather than as qualifiers simply not correct. There are some who forget the exact purpose of our author pages and they can do it on their edits. Having templates that do not wander away from purpose is problematic. When we are on an author page, we are not trying to build a reference list for a journal article. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:42, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-08
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Link templates updates...
You had concerns about attempts to standardize links?

Yes these were bold edits, with a view to having one link format, but as you say there isnt' a consensus, fair enough.

Is there a fast way to unwind the relevant edits? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:09, 26 February 2023 (UTC)


 * The reason for attempting to standardize the links, was to ultimately add a tracking category to the relevant templates, so that it was possible to see which pages had links to scanned works that could be obtained for Commons/Wikisource use, from specfic external sites. It's not as far as I know possible to do that with ext scan link. Running a query against a specfic template pattern, or pages in a category is far easier then having to run a generic grep against every single instance of ext scan link ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:06, 26 February 2023 (UTC)


 * No, there is no need to undo it as it has been done. The issue is about doing something noisy and of little value in the first place. Plan, consult, seek consensus of the community first, saves on the angst and lack of understanding of your actions. When you are putting something to the community, be prepared to explain what is the value of a tracking category, and how it improves our tasks. It is not overt to me what would be achieved, or couldn't be achieved by tinkering with existing templates. The community is full of ideas and opinions, so asking first is always best. If people don't respond to a request for consultation, then they lessen their ability for criticism. One piece of feedback about any grep of a string is contingent upon someone having made the right choice of scan in the first place, so I am not seeing the imperative, they are indicators only. The works need their appropriateness and quality checks done on upload, not on data entry, so I still don't see the value in the exercise. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:58, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-09
<section begin="technews-2023-W09"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Emma Orczy
I see that you removed Emma Orczy from the category "Translators as authors" - why was that ? -- Beardo (talk) 19:29, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Have a look again. It was already automatically added by the WD entry, so the manual addition was duplicate. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah - I see. Sorry ! -- Beardo (talk) 18:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-10
<section begin="technews-2023-W10"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
 * On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-11
<section begin="technews-2023-W11"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Evansville Courier and Press/1942/Mineola, N. Y., June 29 …
I assume that "it he Sahara desert" should have been "in the" - was that typo in the original ?

I think that item has the wrong copyright note. -- Beardo (talk) 23:31, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, my tyslop. And you are correct about the CN, I am so used to typing UK articles, good pick up! — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:00, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-12
<section begin="technews-2023-W12"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg A link to the user's page will appear on  — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via and via the API.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-13
<section begin="technews-2023-W13"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000.
 * Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects.
 * Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the link in the  menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion.

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

Future changes
 * You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:13, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Author:E. Irene Rood
Could you have a look at Author:E. Irene Rood and find some details about her when you have time, please? There is no hurry. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:01, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have finally managed to find out the full name and date of death, which are imo the most crucial data. What remains is date (and place) of birth, but that is not so urgent, although it would be helpful too. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:43, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-14
<section begin="technews-2023-W14"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The deprecated <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> or <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide.
 * Some of the links in will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account.
 * You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> magic word. There will also be a new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page.

Future changes
 * The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Portal talk:Film
Any reason for the protection? I don't see any vandalism going on there. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:11, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * LTA. Abuselog. Shorten the duration if you think that it needs to be done. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:55, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-15
<section begin="technews-2023-W15"/> 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-gift.svg In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-gift.svg You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Reversion of edit on Index:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu
Hi. I was wondering why you reverted my edit on the above. According to its help page, the 'running header' template requires three inputs for a standard LEFT-CENTRE-RIGHT header, but the text in the 'header' box only generates a header to accept two, hence my change, which added an extra 'pipe'. Regards, Chrisguise (talk) 05:27, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I was wondering why you changed my edit in the first place. The reason that I have it set as I do, is that the available text appears at the top of the raw page of text, one drops a pipe between the page number and the text, and drags and drops it into the header. Voila, all ready to go. Your way means that I have to go and delete a redundant pipe. [I will also note that the RunningHeader has positional parameters, and actually only requires 3 or 4 when the third and fourth are required. Though I do have good practice of having three when I do it.]

Tech News: 2023-16
<section begin="technews-2023-W16"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed.

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:54, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Sister projects task force
Hi, I hope things are well with you. Perhaps you might be interested in applying as a voluntary advisory member of meta:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Sister Projects Task Force? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:01, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I clearly have been hiding away from wikipolitics--and just editing--I didn't even know that it existed. I will give it some thinking. A quick glance clearly shows that the excuse that I am not qualified isn't going to hold water. Thanks for the push. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:10, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * muddy footprints applied. I will now wander back to editing. — billinghurst  sDrewth  15:43, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-17
<section begin="technews-2023-W17"/> 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-gift.svg The date-selection menu on pages such as will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities.
 * For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:03, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-18
<section begin="technews-2023-W18"/> 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-gift.svg The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads.
 * The page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar.

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Not actually transcluded
Do we have the means to search Indexes marked as "fully transcluded" to find those works that aren't actually transcluded. I just found half a dozen such works in a very short time, most of which had not been transcluded 'at all, but were marked as "fully transcluded". Can someone run a bot and/or auto-change the transclusion status on these works? I think User:JAM3SP196 does not understand what transclusion actually means, and has long been marking works as "fully transcluded" when they have been proofread, but not transcluded. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:25, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, one of the transclusion queries on my user page User:Billinghurst.— billinghurst  sDrewth  22:33, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I do not see a query that matches what I described. I am looking for Indexes that have had the Transclusion status marked a "fully transcluded", but which are not actually fully transcluded, or not transcluded at all.  I see a more general search on your page for identifying Validated works needing to be transcluded, but that is a far more general than I am looking for. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:48, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Although, that list is only 43, so it is not too long at the moment to check. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:49, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, fully transcluded? My brain heard validated. Umm. No, that is not a possible check as I understand things. Yes, I can run a bot for a namespace and a status, though a little harder where someone was the last editor. Just easier to go and undo all those Index: ns edits. The changes that someone has made to the tool has been problematic from the means that I undertook. Now it is way to easy to do this incorrectly, at least my harder way did add some certainty as it was done by experienced users. I am undoing all those edits, plese speak to the user. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:20, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I already left a message with the user. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:25, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * But looking further, they're also marking works Validated that have not yet been validated. . . --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:27, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Every existing edit in the Index: ns that did not have a subsequent edit has been reverted. I will also note that some of the changes were indeed correct, some were fully transcluded, some have been changed to reflect the proofreading status, just way to many incorrect changes to retain them, and I definitely wasn't going to step through one by one review. — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:15, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree. Thanks. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

A recent edit of yours uncovered a potential glitch..
https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Fine_block/s&oldid=13195286

You changed this, meaning that for some reason the classing isn't taking effect when the template is called.

See for example Page:The_railway_children_(IA_railwaychildren00nesb_1).pdf/307 which doesn't apply 'fine' after your recent update to the template. It would be nice if you could provide an explanation as to where the the glitch is, so that it can be repaired. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:52, 7 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I suspect what's happening is that the templatestyles tag needs to be inside the onlyinclude (which means the parent template may need to be updated as well.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did it late at night and just interchanged, I missed it. I hate the misuse of &lt;includeonly>. — billinghurst  sDrewth  08:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update. Can you go into more detail about the difference between onlyinclude and includeonly? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:21, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * &lt;includeonly> only displays a component WHEN it is transcluded, and does not display it when it is NOT transcluded. &lt;onlyinclude> always displays the component, and when the page is transcluded it only shows that tag component, not other content on the page that is outside of the tags. See mw:Help:Transclusion — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:26, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks.  ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-19
<section begin="technews-2023-W19"/> 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-gift.svg Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
 * Octicons-gift.svg When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as, , and , can now be replaced.
 * Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the that uses <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">.

Problems
 * Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph . The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review.

Future changes
 * During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames.
 * There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg  will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with   can be commented out.   can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W19"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:36, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Author:George Bayldon
I've placed what little information I could find onto the Wikidata entry. He is listed as "Rev." on the title page of the one book he seems to have authored. I could not find him in the DNB, on Wikipedia, or in Wikidata. VIAF lists only the one book by him, and doesn't list him at any of the larger databases. IA likewise lists just the one book, but it's a significant one. Any additional information you can manage to find would be appreciated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:28, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I notice the Czech database has biographical information apparently cited from a 2015 book The Victorian Parson by Barry Turner, so I've ordered a copy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:39, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * All done => Author talk:George Bayldon (1816-1900) and noting that the 1874 Crockford's lists more than one book — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:41, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Happy, how to say what this star represents?


I'm very happy about you and had no time to express it, so I try this image.

Congrats, and lots of thanks: so many tools that you have taught me how to use, so many ingenious solutions for transmitting texts in so many different languages, does this image tell how solid and always present your help has been?

--Zyephyrus (talk) 19:55, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * G'day . Not sure what I have done that has you smiling today, though thanks for taking the time to connect and to let me know that I am having some success in my efforts to enabling us all to have a bigger, interesting, participative interwiki of Wikisources. I cannot take credit for the knowledge, as it will have been handed to me by many, and I thank them for their generosity. Though I suppose that I have done some of the interpretation for novel solutions—some winners, some losers—and it is great when we can try, and through consensus, get to better outcomes. And again thanks for reaching out.  — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:15, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-20
<section begin="technews-2023-W20"/> 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
 * Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes
 * There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget and userscript developers should replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W20"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-21
<section begin="technews-2023-W21"/> 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-gift.svg The "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal.

Changes later this week
 * An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W21"/>

16:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Copyright status of Constitutions
Hi, I was trying to transcribe some constitutions on Wikisource and just wanted to make sure that these sources https://web.archive.org/web/20200724123709/https://confinder.richmond.edu/admin/docs/Chile.pdf and https://en.gouv.mc/Gouvernement-et-Institutions/Les-Institutions/La-Constitution-de-la-Principaute would fit the requirement for the PD-EdictGov template. Thanks. Constdoc (talk) 07:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * For works published by governments in English, it is pretty easy to say yes PD-GovEdict. For original works in another language, then a third party translation, then yes if the translation is out of copyright, and no if the translation is within copyright, see Translations and translation licence where we need yes and yes. If there is no pubished translation, then we can host a Wikisource-generated translation, per previous link. To note that for copyright questions, typically we would use WS:S for opinions fro the community.— billinghurst  sDrewth  09:59, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-22
<section begin="technews-2023-W22"/> 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
 * Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The page now has "" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W22"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Template:Table class/3184136.css
It was both the talk page and the unused stylesheet that should be deleted. I can't mark the stylesheet for deletion directly, hence I used the talk page instead. Thanks regardless. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 06:02, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I am pretty sure that if you comment the line, then use sdelete that it has some effect. It definitely makes it obvious that it needs removing. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'd also like to request some kind of mentoring, Please see my talk page for the reasons. I might need some help in determining what's considered 'disruptive' when it comes to mass editing.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 06:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not the person to assist. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

June 2023 to do

 * records checks
 * track death for Author:Michael Barrett
 * detail for Author:John George Anthony Skerl
 * Author:Thomas Helsby
 * Author:Charles Everitt
 * revisit author:Robert Edward Anderson
 * Author:Adam Luke Gowans
 * Author:Reginald Littleboy
 * Author:Griffith Price Williams
 * Author:Mrs. Ernest Newman
 * Author:Richard Foster 1910 obit The Times
 * Author:J. P. Kimball
 * Author:John Pre Vanewords
 * Author:Algernon Blackwood continue moving works to subpages of parents
 * ponder St. Nicholas pages, have edited by through subpages, not just volumes, and the illustrators have been added as related_authors; definitely needs work, apply  to the pages, and remove the css code that sets a max-width
 * al set this up so it substitutes automatically, then clean up
 * pol set this up so it substitutes automatically, then clean up
 * Translations from Camoens; and Other Poets, with Original Poetry needs a AuxToC built, and contributor components rather than authors, maybe also use override_translator rather than translator for cleanliness
 * Works to consider
 * find the best ocr of https://archive.org/search?query=Peasant+Proprietorship
 * Think about "redirects here" fpr disambig pages (The ..., The ...s, A ..., ...s)
 * DNB contributor => 1st supplement separation from 1885-1900, and each their own? also remove sc from usages
 * bring over my /archive/ edit filters from metawiki
 * more work to do on Index:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/styles.css and template:hussey Churches table header related pages

DNB contributor

 * DNB contributor
 * DNB contributor 2ndSupp
 * DNB contributor 3rdSupp


 * 1) need to ensure that all data is present on author pages
 * 2) push "contributor to creative work" / "biographer" / "initials"
 * 3) construct the QS components (see if we can do anything with harvest tool first)

Petscan / QS pushes
— billinghurst  sDrewth  23:49, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:Ornithologists as authors needs push in, then tidy up

Tech News: 2023-23
<section begin="technews-2023-W23"/> 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 RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
 * Octicons-gift.svg Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "". This has now been fixed.

Problems
 * For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W23"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Files and fix
The “missing pages” have been interspersed among San Kuo, Volume 1. The “Hudson” files are now superfluous to Index:Arthur Rackham (Hudson).pdf. The “fix” edit was because your edit broke the page, which you would have noticed if you looked at it. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:39, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The “Wells 8” files have been incorporated into The Works of H.G. Wells (Atlantic Edition), vol. 8. The other file was created in response to a copyright discussion, for which see. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Does that mean that they are now able to be deleted? I am not certain how to interpret a comment into discrete action. If they use is now complete, then they can be marked with sdelete and a comment. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I don’t want to put the template on all of the files, because that would take some time. The San Kuo, “Hudson” and “Wells 8” images can be deleted. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It is both a WS and a WMF requirement that all of our files have their source and copyright information. If they are truly temporary files, then we need for you to actively manage them, not set and forget. We are not in a solitary and personal sandbox, the information needs to be complete, or obvious to others what is happening or needs to happen. Temporary files can have the same information file and instruction on whey they can be deleted. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:26, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-23
<section begin="technews-2023-W23"/> 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 RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
 * Octicons-gift.svg Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "". This has now been fixed.

Problems
 * For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W23"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Author:William Delisle Hay
The databases are divided over the birth year of this author. Are you able to sort out the discrepancy? Three database entries are linked on the Wikidata item Q33671477, and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database gives another layer of sources where the others do not. But it isn't clear which (if any) of those sources give an actual birth year or date. At least one of the cited sources is from 1851 (the year given in the Lib. of Congress) whereas the Speculative Fiction site gives a date of 1853. --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Definitely 1853 birth. Definitely not 1885 death. I can see indication that alive in 1896, though nothing after, and nothing evident for a date of death in England or Wales. Last known publication in 1887 tends to indicate that a 18890s death most likely, though that could have been anywhere if they were unwell and seeking a healing clime. — billinghurst  sDrewth  13:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-24
<section begin="technews-2023-W24"/> 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-gift.svg The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article.
 * The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software.
 * The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages.

Problems
 * For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended  (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed.
 * Currently, the "" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing  keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr" style="white-space: nowrap;"> . See an example fix.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Future changes
 * From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W24"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-25
<section begin="technews-2023-W25"/> 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 Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing  or pressing  . It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W25"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:08, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Weird Tales
I note that in Weird Tales/Volume 2/Issue 3/The Sign from Heaven, you said "we do not drill down to month with the year parameter" - is that rule stated anywhere? (I was just following the way that earlier stories in that issue had been done).

Also, you removed that story from the category "1923 works" - is the policy that only the issues of periodicals go in that sort of category, not the stories within an issue? I don't see any issue of Weird Tales appearing in that category. -- Beardo (talk) 22:51, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Year is year per template:header, if it is done elsewhere with month in the then it is wrong and should be fixed. I saw this case as it appeared in my watchlist in one of my watched categories for needing fixing. Re categories of works by year, we do it by the parameter, not manually. At the moment, the only manual 'YYYY works we do is where we have translated works and we add the original language date to pair with the parameter used for the English language work. If you think that this is something that the community should review, then please address it to the community at WS:S. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26
<section begin="technews-2023-W26"/> 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 The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to all <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the  database table.

Problems
 * Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition ) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution.
 * All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary.
 * The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W26"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:18, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-27
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the rolling out of the audio links that play on click wishlist proposal, small wikis will now be able to use the inline audio player that is implemented by the Phonos extension.
 * Octicons-tools.svg From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W27"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Need your input on a policy impacting gadgets and UserJS
Dear interface administrator,

This is Samuel from the Security team and I hope my message finds you well.

There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed policy governing the use of external resources in gadgets and UserJS. The proposed Third-party resources policy aims at making the UserJS and Gadgets landscape a bit safer by encouraging best practices around external resources. After an initial non-public conversation with a small number of interface admins and staff, we've launched a much larger, public consultation to get a wider pool of feedback for improving the policy proposal. Based on the ideas received so far, the proposed policy now includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, best practices for gadgets and UserJS developers, and exemptions requirements such as code transparency and inspectability.

As an interface administrator, your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on the policy talk page.

Have a great day! Samuel (WMF), on behalf of the Foundation's Security team 23:02, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-28
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * The Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
 * Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments.
 * is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata.
 * The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The default protocol of and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https.
 * and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago.

Future changes
 * There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20.
 * There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W28"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Criminal Law Act 1977
It seems that WS:MOS mentioned nothing about deprecating Roman numerals in subpage titles (and before 2001), so did you amended them to make them more understandable?廣九直通車 (talk) 05:39, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Help:Subpages — billinghurst  sDrewth  07:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for your explanation.廣九直通車 (talk) 08:08, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

w:template:if
check to see if this is readily usable and understandable so we can look to manage some of the redlink mess that some are creating. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:32, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * template:if ✅ yes — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:13, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-29
<section begin="technews-2023-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
 * Octicons-tools.svg We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> API now.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W29"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

centering tables
What is the current method preferred for centering tables, as I gather that align="center" will be going away? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Billinghurst/styles for index css — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything there that would center a table on a page (unless I'm missing it), though I do see things that would align items within table cells in various ways. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * keeps a table centered;  centres text — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:36, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * also used in — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The list at table style is lengthy, organized alphabetically, and relies on the user to figure things out for themselves. The only things I've used that template for is formatting cell content because I had no idea it was useful beyond that.  It practically needs a manual for anyone to use it, but lacks one. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:03, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it has bloat, primarily of those who think that that facsimile of a book is required. We should be looking to use the respective index: css as they don't suffer the issues of template bloat. However, I have given up that battle, apart from the occasional acerbic comment. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-30
<section begin="technews-2023-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
 * Octicons-tools.svg  On July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W30"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 02:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-31
<section begin="technews-2023-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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
 * The tag filter on and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool.
 * The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work.

Problems
 * It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W31"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

PD or Fair Use
Hi! I noticed that you have uploaded: You added a PD-license + a do not move to Commons. If the file is PD it could be moved to Commons. If it is copyrighted then perhaps add Fair Use instead? --MGA73 (talk) 18:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * File:Andy_Warhol_Foundation_v._Goldsmith,_opinion_of_Justice_Kagan,_page_6_image.jpg
 * File:Andy_Warhol_Foundation_v._Goldsmith,_opinion_of_the_Court,_Figure_5-1.jpg
 * File:Andy_Warhol_Foundation_v._Goldsmith,_opinion_of_the_Court,_Figure_5-4.jpg
 * Comment: Wikisource does not allow fair use, per WS:WWI and WS:CP. I've nominated Fair Use for deletion as a misleading and apparently useless template. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:05, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sigh. These are clearly and obviously (and speediably) not PD. Even if it wasn't obvious on the face of it that Andy Warhol's paintings are not PD (ditto the photo he used as a reference, of which the painting is a derivative work), the images are extracted from a SCOTUS case that says they are protected by copyright, and that not even the asserted fair use defence by AWF was valid. The only person who thinks they are PD is the one who uploaded them to Commons, as with the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. case, because they for some reason think the court's fair use inclusion of a third-party copyrighted work somehow magically means Justice Kagan painted Andy Warhol's pictures and that Justice Souter wrote the lyrics for Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman. Xover (talk) 20:57, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Xover: And per that discussion on Commons, which you still refuse to acknowledge, they are in the public domain. If you try to delete stuff like this (again), save the trouble and start another discussion. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I just moved them over from Commons where they were deleted. I had meant to do more with the process, just too many tasks and too many distractions, and not currently at home so limited screens/tools is a right PITA. This conversation belongs on WS:CV or WS:CV. [While I do not think that we should individually carry copyrighted work, where it is evidence in a court case, and reproduced in that sense in something equivalent to enWP's fair use, then we may have that consideration BUT we also say that anything can be reproduced, so it needs that conversation of the nuance--but not here on my talk page.] — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Template:United States Executive Branch Navbox edits
I am aware that it is common practice to remove redlinks, however, you have fundamentally altered the template to a point where it does not look or act in a way that is compliant with standard Wikimedia formatting. Multiple links to subpages of portals have the name of the main page where it is not necessary, the sections which display the names of the departments are far larger than they should be (which is the reason I used  ), and the formatting of the list of subdivisions of the departments are encapsulated within blocks which are visually unappealing and take up far more space than necessary. While I created the template, your modifications, while removing the redlinks, have drastically changed the template and its functioning for the worse. I reach out to you to notify you of this problem, and I request that you improve the formatting, as you are far more knowledgeable on common practice of not only standard formatting but also wikitext where I feel you would be far superior as one to solve this problem than I. I thank you for your proactivity and attempts at improvement, but I also request you take reparational steps for your actions. Thank you. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:01, 5 August 2023 (UTC).
 * template artefact, fixed. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:12, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-32
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "" in your settings and use the "" button in the "" menu.

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-2023-W32"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:20, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33
<section begin="technews-2023-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
 * The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes
 * A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W33"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 05:59, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Constitution for the Federation of Earth
Dear Billinghurst, VRT is in contact with the World Constitution and Parliament Association and they claim this constitution to be public domain as government work of the World Government. I'm not sure is this is an acceptable claim, and/or if the WCPA is eligible to make such definitions. Please advise if you think this is sufficient to keep the mentioned article, or what exactly we should request from them. --Krd (talk) 14:23, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. We just need the work suitably licensed for Commons or English Wikisource, whichever is going to host the work. If the publisher is putting it into the public domain / making freely available, then excellent news. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:42, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-34
<section begin="technews-2023-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
 * The GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons.
 * From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
 * Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
 * a Wiktionary in Pa'O
 * a Wikisource in Sundanese
 * To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
 * Wikifunctions
 * a Wiktionary in Mandailing
 * a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin
 * a Wikinews in Gungbe
 * a Wiktionary in Kabardian
 * a Wikipedia in Fante

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W34"/>

15:25, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Academic Journal
Hi @Billinghurst, I want to ask about the journal that can be in the Wikisource. Can you show the path the academic journal is requested to be in the Wikisource. Thank you! Maqa001 (talk) 15:24, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no specific path, any public domain journal simply needs to meet our inclusion criteria per WS:What Wikisource includes. Depending on how it meets that criteria may put some process in place to demonstrate or to otherwise put a work in the public domain. — billinghurst  sDrewth  15:32, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for answer. I see Works created before 1928 is this meaning that i cannot create a academic journal which published 2017 even the Publisher and Copyrighter want to the Journal to be in WikiSource? Maqa001 (talk) 15:38, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You have misread that, prior to 1928, all works are in the public domain in the US per PD-US. Works after that need to meet other criteria. If you are talking circa 2017, typically such a work would be creative commons or similar.  See what tag the author wishes the work to be from the guidance at help:Copyright tags. — billinghurst  sDrewth  15:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * My user talk page is not the best spot for this conversation, as I am only one opinion. Typically we would encourage conversations about contributions of a journal and copyright to be at WS:Scriptorium or WS:CV — billinghurst  sDrewth  15:50, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your attention and information! Maqa001 (talk) 06:55, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis.
 * Octicons-gift.svg All pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date.
 * Wikisource users can now use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> tag.
 * Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "" is now shown on the "" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "" tab at some wikis. The preference "" is now also shown on the "" tab at all wikis, instead of the "" tab.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
 * All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks.

Future changes
 * The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
 * A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W35"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:00, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes Problems
 * EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects.
 * There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via and via the API.
 * One new wiki has been created:
 * a in Talysh
 * The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W36"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Equality Act (H.R. 5; 117th Congress)
Were there actual pages and index for the Equality Act of 2021 anywhere ? I notice that there are now a number of broken redirects following your deletion of pages, and also see that Equality Act (H.R. 5; 117th Congress) is showing an error. -- Beardo (talk) 17:22, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * All fixed. Special:prefixindex is your friend, well that and forcing some cache fixes. Thanks for the ping. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:29, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

A Naval Biographical Dictionary problems
I was looking into Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections when I noticed a lot of page from A Naval Biographical Dictionary showing up there. It uses Naval Biographical Dictionary for some automation of the header and transclusion; but it looks like there are a lot of cases of mismatch between the section labels used in the Page: pages and the subpage name used when transcluded. Specifically it looks like the contributor tried to use an "Addendum: " prefix in both labels and page names for entries in the work's addendum, but was inconsistent in applying both. In any case, all the entries showing up in that category are various kinds of broken and my stack is a bit deep just now. Any chance you could take a look?My thought was to just drop the "Addendum: " prefix entirely, in both labels and page names, because it looks unneeded and makes things a lot more complicated than it needs to be. But I'm neither familiar with this particular work nor the biographical dictionaries in general, so I'm not confident in that assessment. Xover (talk) 07:40, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Done. They were all duplicate transclusions, it seems that I had fixed those gaps previously as they appeared missing in the indexes. Fixed the errors in the others. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:16, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "" and ""), please report them.
 * When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W37"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Page:Horse_shoes_and_horse_shoeing.djvu/37
Hi,

The reference in this contains unterminated P tags (and it looks to be a semi-formatted plainlist anyway, The situation here was why pbri and blockref) existed as possible work-arounds. However, given your concerns expressed elsewhere, I was wanting to ask what you felt a stable repair to this would be. I can of course ignore these if you think there isn't one. (Aside: I had been using */s */i */e as work-around for list-limitations in certain situations, that may help if the nominal 'list' extends across multiple follows.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 05:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think that you should fuss it. It is displaying perfectly finely, and every browser known will happily deal with it, and the internet is never going to break due to . Nothing will break with how it is displayed, and creating fake workarounds to "trick" the lint filter to do something different because cite is broken is completely the wrong way around it and will never get Extension:Cite resolved. Wrong semantic approach. Don't be driven by the creators of the lint filter to do unproductive work. There are many more broken things that actually need people to look at and fix, rather than fuss such inane editing. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Now I can actually agree with you on that. Cite (or the parser) needs fixing to cope with block based-refs. However I'm not holding my breath on this, given that took over 6 years for a phabricator ticket I raised on some linter based concern.
 * For now I can safely ignore in the linter results.
 * ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:43, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * On a different issue, do you have any experience with writing regular expressions to look for the situation of a non-html tag appearing as one mistakanely in dumped OCR? It would be nice to when de-linting Page:'s with, Missing Tags, between those that are ' or  pairing issues and those that are    in the OCR (The latter being a situation that also arose at Latin Wikisource where the bracketing used for reconstructions was in the original text.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:43, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

A concern -
https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:In_a_Glass_Darkly_-_v1.djvu/11&diff=next&oldid=12905327

Here an edit you made put the noinclude portions into the body. What went wrong? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:21, 13 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Found with the following search - https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%2F%5C%3C%5Cnoinclude%5C%3E%5C%3C%5C%2Fnoinclude%5C%3E%5C%3C%5Cnoinclude%5C%3E%5C%3C%5C%2Fnoinclude%5C%3E%2F+-insource%3A%2Fpagequality+level%5C%3D%5C%22%5B0%5D%5C%22%2F&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns104=1&ns114=1 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Clearly looks like a HotCat gadget and ProofreadPage not playing nicely together. See the edit summary. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:40, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. I read that as well. Is there a "feasible" repair for this, as all it seems to do at present is give a dual validation bar. (Aside: I found the above concern because I was attempting to find Pages with no-content that weren't marked as ql-0. I had not yet found a reliable regexp to do that. ) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not here to help you search for non-problems, or things that are inconsequential. Please concentrate on fixes that have true value. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:54, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The reason I was attempting to find 'blank' pages not marked as ql-0 was because in de-linting a page here,
 * Page:Vedic Grammar.djvu/60 I was reading back through other pages in that work, and found some scan pages with content, where the equivalent Page: was blank. The plan was to do an OCR/initial cleanup of those pages. Adding cleaned up pages is hardly inconsequential.  But you've managed to convince me otherwise. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:04, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Delinting is primarily aimed at Wikipedias and their content ready pages. We are simply not that case example here due to our different processes, page status, etc. Until delinter is designed and fine-tuned for us, it is only a guide for what we can do and where problems exist. It should not be driving what we do, just assisting and informing for a small part of what could be wrong. — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:21, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38
<section begin="technews-2023-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.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
 * All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W38"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

tosection vs onlysection
These are not equivalent. Please don't substitute one for the other without making sure it has the intended result.

Also, please do not strip dates from the header of works. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:58, 20 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Again, please do not transclude willy-nilly into the mainspace text that should not be so transcluded. onlysection and tosection are not equivalent.  This is a serious lapse. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:18, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Header and section repairs...
Thank you. Do you have a list of other 'high visibility' repairs that whilst time consuming would not need significant debate? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:54, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Authors and other parameters of the headers in works' chapters
I have noticed that you remove various parameters like "author" or "portal" from the headers of chapters of works. It is much better when people can see the authors (incl. translators) of a work in the top of every chapter without the necessity of going to the title page to find it out. I do not think that easier maintenance can justify such inconvenience, so I would like to ask you not to remove them. It can be useful to have there other parameters like portals too, although it is probably not as important as authors are. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39
<section begin="technews-2023-W39"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The ResourceLoader <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
 * Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes
 * New variables will be added to AbuseFilter:  and  . They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W39"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40
<section begin="technews-2023-W40"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new user preference for "". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget definitions now have a new " contentModels " option. The option takes a list of page content models, like  or  . Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W40"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Extra vertical bars
Hello. Some time ago you were replacing templates like  and   and others for   and   etc.,  but there was often an extra vertical bar left, like here or here. I have already corrected a few of these, but I suspect there could be many more. Could your bot check it, please? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:32, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Another one spotted. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41
<section begin="technews-2023-W41"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * One new wiki has been created: a in Fon

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> will be replaced with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W41"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:39, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42
<section begin="technews-2023-W42"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome.
 * Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

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

Future changes
 * In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W42"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43
<section begin="technews-2023-W43"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W43"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:16, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

On the excellence of tracking cats over doomscrolling recent changes :)
File:Contemporary English Woodcuts (1922) illustration 18.png is still missing from Contemporary English woodcuts (I'm guessing it just slipped by when you fixed the others, but I didn't look beyond seeing it was missing). Xover (talk) 05:37, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ thx — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:56, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44
<section begin="technews-2023-W44"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
 * The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.
 * Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months.

Future changes
 * There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
 * The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W44"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:21, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk page archiving
My user talk page is getting a bit long, and my understanding is that you have a bot available that could produce talk page discussion archives? Would you be able to set this up for me? Thank you. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:05, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


 * @PseudoSkull Done. @Billinghurst sorry to highjack your page, I was fixing errors in archiving pages. Mpaa (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45
<section begin="technews-2023-W45"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content.

Problems
 * Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W45"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:05, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

One_Step_Forward,_Two_Steps_Back_(The_Crisis_in_Our_Party)/Chapter_16
Fair enough. And thanks for fixing the reference error. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:32, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Do we have any more information on the translators? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:32, 8 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I do not know how many times I need to tell you keep out of the way of other people's active editing. I am fixing up complex mucked up refs, and you go an do that piddly pissant edit that just fucks up what I am doing. KEEP OUT OF THE WAY and stop with the pointless and valueless edits. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:39, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Is there a relatively simple backlog, that wouldn't be pointless to work on, that will not conflict your appreciated efforts? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:50, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you truly that tone deaf? Please go and play away from my talk page. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46
<section begin="technews-2023-W46"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Four new wikis have been created:
 * a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh
 * a Wikipedia in Dagaare
 * a Wikipedia in Toba Batak
 * a Wikiquote in Banjar

Problems
 * Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved.
 * Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.

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

Future changes
 * Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W46"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Author:Rebekah Crockett Kading
This author page has just appeared on the orphaned page list. I guess that a page that previously linked there has been deleted.

Do you recall anything about her ? -- Beardo (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Nope. Guessing it was a scientific paper that was up[loaded to Wikisource: namespace at one time. That is a different story. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:29, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Odd that she had no works listed. Do we just leave her there as an orphaned page ? -- Beardo (talk) 14:12, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47
<section begin="technews-2023-W47"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more.

Future changes
 * There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W47"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:55, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters
Mantioning orphaned pages, I notice that there are half a dozen pages of the form Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CCLXXXI etc which have no content or links. Are those pages wanted ? -- Beardo (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If blank, then no. Give me a list and I will kill them. I don't remember the specifics, guessing that I moved them out of main ns. — billinghurst  sDrewth  11:49, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The others are:
 * Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CCLXXXIII
 * Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CCVII
 * Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CCXXVII
 * Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CLXV
 * Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero/Letters/CXCII
 * They date from 2009. There may be others, but these are the ones which show up as orphaned. -- Beardo (talk) 14:37, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48
<section begin="technews-2023-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> / syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately.
 * The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume 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-2023-W48"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

deletion at test.wikipedia.org
Hi. Would you mind deleting this for me? "Category:Pywikibot Protect Test" at test.wikipedia.org. Thanks Mpaa (talk) 21:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * already ✅ — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The category was supposed to stay one these pages (User:Sn1per/ProtectTest1 and User:Sn1per/ProtectTest2), so these actions and  should be reverted. If you could add me as admin, I will stop bothering you. Mpaa (talk) 10:10, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, someone else re-added the category on pages, so nothing to be done. Anyhow, request for admin is still valid. Mpaa (talk) 15:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * . I m not a 'crat, speak to one of the active users at https://meta.toolforge.org/stewardry/testwiki?bureaucrat=1 — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:30, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-49
<section begin="technews-2023-W49"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences.
 * The "" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> keywords.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown process will start on December 14. Maintainers of tools that still use this old system should plan to migrate to Kubernetes, or tell the team your plans on Phabricator in the task about your tool, before that date.
 * Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events
 * Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W49"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Global IP block exempt status on Commons
Hello! I am wondering whether it would be possible (and appropriate) for you to give my alt account User:Beleg Âlt "IP block exempt" status on Commons. When I am using my alt account, my Internet is usually routed via Azure, which is globally blocked as an open proxy. I hope that I am trustworthy enough to be permitted this access :) (I've already given my alt this status on enWS, but editing enWS without Commons access is rather limiting as I'm sure you are aware) —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)


 * PS Koavf had some questions when I made a similar request about Wikidata, so I'll give you the answers I gave them: I'm asking you because you're the Commons admin I interact with the most, and the most active Commons admin on enWS; and also I can't ask on Commons directly from this account because of the global IP block, and I keep forgetting to do so from my own account at home :) —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:41, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Done, for 5 years. Zero issue, all the right does is reinstate the status quo, which is never an issue for a trusted user, and entirely the purpose of the right assignation. Trusted users should just need to say that face an IP block, and no need to explain further. — billinghurst  sDrewth  21:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-50
<section begin="technews-2023-W50"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * On Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons.

Problems
 * There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed.

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W50"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 02:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

imagetransfer.py
Regarding this. was broken for a while due to MW and API changes, but through the patches in T267535 and T300531 it should be working again (I last checked at the start of November). . If the file is over 100MB add  (20MB chunks, adjust as needed; 4096 through 20MB are all reasonable sizes, others will probably work but may have unexpected side-effects).I happen to have a terminal window with PWB open always for other reasons, so this is fairly convenient for me. Your mileage may vary if you primarily use AWB for bulk changes or whatever. Xover (talk) 07:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-51
<section begin="technews-2023-W51"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from ). There will also be support for manual redirects.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
 * The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W51"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Request
Any ideas on who Author:A. Donald Rahn is? PseudoSkull (talk) 00:59, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Possibly Angelo Donald Rahn b. 1871? MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:59, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It is, I just don't currently have access to my (semi-dead) PC with all my research tools. — billinghurst  sDrewth  07:50, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

What's good for the goose...
Considering your previously expressed stance, I thought it interesting to observe that you just renamed every single image in c:Category:The Gentle Grafter (1908) despite them obviously having an extant naming schema—one consistent across all the many works in this series—as well as making entirely pointless substitutions of c → center, di → dropinitial, rh → RunningHeader, etc. without so much as a by-your-leave. I'd be happy to discuss optimal naming schema for this, but the extant schema was deliberately chosen and, absent persuasive arguments otherwise, my preferred schema. Xover (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I haven't changed the case of your titles, nor moved any of the pages, nor made any structural changes to the work, beyond file names (discussed next para), fixing a few typos and moving some formatting to the index: css. The files were renamed per Commons naming criteria as over there the chosen names make little sense, and they make for no clear re-use nor ability to be found in the form that they were uploaded, with the only context being you know where to find them in a book of an edition. The purpose of Commons is to be more universal usage than the scope for, and single focus of, English Wikisource. The descriptions at Commons were also updated to add the missing text, context, and the short story names. I am happy to have that conversation over there about the naming of files. Re the template name expansion, I have been doing that since somewhere 2010 to 2012. It also followed a conversation in WS:S about the way that we obscure template function with shortcut names, and the having a better practice than the use of often unobvious/ambiguous/confusing of redirect template names. It is scripted, so it was of zero effort produces no known fault. Think it started with hws/hwe pair, rh, among others. Happy to hear what problem it causes or why the conversion from the redirects is a problem. — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:29, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I am curious which of the six reasons on Commons:File renaming was chosen for renaming these files, and how it is better to have them sort alphabetically by caption instead of by the order in which they appear in the book, especially since the containing category is for that book and the reason they were uploaded is to be illustrations from that book.
 * Descriptive names, and ideally images have more than one category. Please don't have your enWS blinkers on. I have already created an alphabetical listing in the directory if that is what is required. As mentioned, I am happy to have a Commons discussion at Commons. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:18, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have started a discussion there. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I assume that, should an editor here prepare and run a script that makes the changes center → c, dropinitial → di, RunningHeader → rh, etc. you'd be OK with that, since running the script requires no effort and no error is introduced? --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:50, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I was validating pages, and made no unrequired edit. Please don't be unnecessarily provocative. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:14, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * But that's precisely the problem. You have made multiple unrequired edits, and will not own up to that fact.  You've claimed that you renamed files "per Commons naming criteria", but your actions contradict Commons renaming policy.  You've now implied that the edits you made in validating were required, but in fact they were not.  It is not required that template redirects be replaced with the template name itself.  The entire reason that we have the redirects is to use them.  I'm getting the sense that you're increasingly out of step with current practices and norms on Wikisource. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:22, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I validated every page, just the one edit when validating. All those changes occurred in the same edit. I am running essentially the same script that i have run for ten years. I have not changed the context of those pages, nor the templates when validating. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:35, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have definitely not contradicted Commons naming practices, and will happy have that conversation at Commons. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:38, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but is effectively a strawman. I made no mention of such changes, and it should be obvious to anyone that my reference to the precious conversation was by way of analogy. I was pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of your complaining in that case about not respecting the original contributor's choices but here you have made far more fundamental changes for, at best, marginal subjective benefit.The original file names were clearly deliberately chosen, were internally consistent, logical and descriptive, and according to a broader schema for the series. In those cases the policy for file moves on Commons is to not rename them arbitrarily to a different schema (and a file mover on Commons would get their bit revoked for doing it). That you prefer a different schema is fine (no schema is perfect), but that's a reason to raise a discussion about it, not to unilaterally rename them to suit your preference. In particular, you do know the way to my talk page and know that I am active so at least dropping a quick note there would not have been an undue burden. I also think deflecting discussions about this to Commons is pretty disingenuous since you clearly made the changes as part of the work to validate a text here on enWS.That you have been running this script that expands template names for a decade does not actually make it better. The changes have, at best, hypothetical value and any value assigned to it will in any case be subjective; and that value will be offset by similar negative impact (I do actually choose these things deliberately and for a reason). It is also an argument at odds with your oft-repeated stance that we should respect the original contributor's stance, which was the point I was trying to make. I've proofread 7 of O. Henry's collections, and plan to do the remaining 10, and have put effort into making them consistent where possible. For you to come in and cherry-pick one of them where you see fit to transform it to match your preference is pretty disrespectful of that "original contributor". If you had an actual issue with some of my choices there (always possible, I've no delusions of perfection) the respectful thing to do would be raise it with me on some related talk page. Don't let's blow the importance of the template changes here out of proportion—as you say, it makes no big difference for functionality or presentation—but it does irk me somewhat out of proportion to its actual importance due to the context. Xover (talk) 14:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)