Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2024-04

Tech News: 2024-14
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed.

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

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

All small caps
Is the all small caps template supposed to work in non-Latin scripts like Greek? They are sometimes working here:



The Greek line previewed correctly, showed correctly when I posted the comment initially, but then did not work when I emended my comment. Because the behavior is variable, sometimes working and sometimes not, I can't tell whether this is the asc-template, the polytonic-template, an interaction between the two, or something else entirely.

They do not seem to be working in those scripts in the Page namespace. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I winder if this is related to the issue I posted at WS:S/H, and some OpenType features are not working? —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 18:51, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Just for testing:
 * Default font:
 * Junicode:
 * GentiumPlus:
 * For me the first two work, and the last one does not; which suggests that it's just the GentiumPlus font that polytonic uses that might be the problem —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Global ban for Slowking4
It looks like we are in danger of losing one of our most prolific editors: meta:Requests for comment/Global ban for Slowking4 (2). If you have any opinion on this, speak now or forever hold your peace. (I realize this is mentioned further up the page, but wanted to bump the issue in case folks didn't notice it.) Nosferattus (talk) 22:42, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * This was posted above under the heading #Global ban proposal for Slowking4. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:23, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * But we needed to make doubly sure the WS community was aware this was going on, since that "discussion" (more of a notification really) was buried. Thanks Nosferattus! SnowyCinema (talk) 00:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * you're very kind, however, it is unclear to me, that any amount of reason matters. only go there if you have a strong stomach. the drama caucus (one of your admins among them) will continue to put the stewards to the test, until they get the result they want. lest you think that the neglect of the WMF is bad, just consider the active hostility of a solipsistic clique of functionaries. i got my compliment from "notorious RSG", so the name calling is amusing. Wikimania was becoming tiresome, one of you should go, and help out Vigneron, and there is the wikisource conference to plan for. "all who wander are not lost". --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 02:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Transcription speculation
Just a fun little exercise—I was wondering what projects you guys would be working on if more modern works were in the public domain today. So, I started this editable user subpage, User:SnowyCinema/Speculative transcriptions; the idea is to list your favorite copyrighted works that you might be working on if they were not under copyright. Anything is on the table—video games, TV shows, or books like is our general focus now, etc. I'm curious to see what your answers are. Feel free to add items to the list if you can think of anything. SnowyCinema (talk) 15:35, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Document in Jamaican patois
Is Yuunivorshal Deklarieshan a Yuuman Raits within the scope of English wikisource ? -- Beardo (talk) 04:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I'd say it's a clear no. Jamaican creole is not generally mutually intelligible with Standard English (although as a primarily spoken language, and as a creole, the degree is pretty fluid from person to person and situation to situation). This is just one such case for which we have mulWS. Xover (talk) 07:10, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * at enWS as a closely-related language to English. We should keep JC works if we're going to host works in Old English, which is at least as unintelligible, if not more so, than the Jamaican Creole provided. SnowyCinema (talk) 14:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not primarily a question of mutual intelligibility (although that is certainly also a factor). Old English is a direct precursor of English, and there is a direct lineal relationship linguistically speaking. Jamaican creole is a hodgepodge of languages, where there happens to be a large dash of English in the mix, but it is inherently a mix of languages that do not fit neatly into one specific language family. mulWS is for precisely such cases where you cannot slot a text neatly into one language. Xover (talk) 15:48, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * > where there happens to be a large dash of English in the mix
 * The major of Jamaican Creole is English.
 * > but it is inherently a mix of languages that do not fit neatly into one specific language family
 * Its language family is . Here is its classification on Glottolog.
 * I just wanted to point that out. I didn't know that mulWS existed when I uploaded it, so if that's a better place, then great, I can put it there or an admin can move it. Or if here is fine, that's great too. I'll wait for you all to decide, since I'm brand new to this project and don't know how things work here.--Vuccala (talk) 23:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * This is in Jamaican Creole (a stable language resulting from a mix of languages), not a patois (nonstandard speech within a language).  Clause McKay published poetry in the Jamaican patois, but the document under consideration is in Jamaican Creole.  Further, this document is a translation of a document that was originally written in English.  Since the document is a translation, and is not in English (or Scots), it falls outside our coverage and should be housed at the Multilingual Wikisource. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Question (from me, the uploader): is there a more suitable Wikimedia project I could have uploaded this to? There is no Jamaican Creole Wikisource, and we're using this document over at Wiktionary for demonstrating attestations of Jamaican Creole vocabulary using this template:. --Vuccala (talk) 23:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * See the above discussion. There is a multilingual Wikisource that houses all languages that do not have a dedicated Wikisource project for the language. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:00, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Is there a way to move something from here to there ? Or does it need to be input separately there ? -- Beardo (talk) 01:20, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I am an admin and can import. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:10, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * s:mul:Yuunivorshal_Deklarieshan_a_Yuuman_Raits. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * s:mul:Yuunivorshal_Deklarieshan_a_Yuuman_Raits. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I've updated the link in the Wiktionary template to point there instead. You guys can now delete it from English Wikisource. --Vuccala (talk) 10:59, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Random line break
Hello. I have recently started a project of Tarka the Otter and some pages seem to have a random line break towards the end for no apparent reason (like page 14). Did I do anything wrong? I can't figure out what is wrong. HendrikWBK (talk) 01:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You did not join the separate lines to make a continuous paragraph, and that line break is a consequence. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:58, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems that only the last line is affected. In the rest of the page, if I leave two new line spaces, a new paragraph is formed, while one leaves the subsequent line in the same paragraph. I don't understand what you mean, I believe I did kept lines from the same paragraph immediately next to each other. HendrikWBK (talk) 02:06, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ️@HendrikWBK The software parses the text in unpredictable ways if you don't remove the newline character at the end of every line, and the consequence is that random line breaks appear for no apparent reason. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 06:21, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * See Scriptorium/Help Mpaa (talk) 06:59, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15
 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
 * Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
 * Octicons-gift.svg A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check.
 * Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings.

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).
 * New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Primary sources concerning Wyatt Earp
This page contains a number of short newspaper articles all on a related topic. It's been proposed to separate the page, which seems like clearly the right thing to do if the page is going to stay on Wikisource, if somebody is going to take the trouble to find scans, etc.; but this is a labor-intensive task that seems unlikely to happen in the near future. In the meantime, even though it contains actual source material, I would suggest that moving this page to the Portal: space might be the best way to tidy things up. -Pete (talk) 17:35, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Index:United States Statutes at Large Volume 44 Part 2.djvu
Raw OCR dump. Should be removed (along with other Raw dumps) unless someone is prepared to provide alternate scans that are ACTUALLY READABLE as opposed to bordeline illegible on numerous pages. I've been trying to remove lints by attempting to proofread pages that where showing up in a list of mismatched Italics. Raw OCR Dumps diminish my enthusiasm for continuing, and there should be concerted effort to clean out the gibberish generated from them. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:25, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * the scan is fine, with the improved OCR. awaiting for the volunteers to proofread. if you remove it, then the volunteers cannot do the work. (i would be more motivated if there were a consensus to ditch the side notes, which are more trouble than they are are worth). --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 13:16, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16
 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
 * Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now 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).
 * Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked).
 * A new variable  will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made.

Future changes
 * Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the  and  tables. Some queries might need to be updated.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Converting to copyright-until
I had a bunch of work links added by a new editor, and had to turn them into copyright-until. So I tossed a short script in sed that did 90% of the work, and decided to post it here, as much in hopes that someone would do a more universal and correct job, then in hopes that it would be useful.
 * cat file | sed 's/\[\[//'

--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't know about universal and correct, but if the input is entirely regular like  I'd probably do something like:
 * Which, admittedly, looks like line noise, but then most regex does. It does avoid a useless use of cat though. Xover (talk) 07:28, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Which, admittedly, looks like line noise, but then most regex does. It does avoid a useless use of cat though. Xover (talk) 07:28, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Scanned microfilm sources
Some time ago a large number of periodicals were posted on the Internet Archive in microfilm form (as seen here). Are there any concerns about using these as scan sources? Arcorann (talk) 02:29, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * copyright will be tricky. i would use https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/serialprocess.html for guidance about US formalities. you might want to include the serial information in the upload metadata, since commons is simplistic.
 * mass upload will require expertise, since Fae is gone.
 * you might not want to drop a lot of periodicals without building a team to proofread them. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 02:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to join April Wikisource Community Meeting
Hello fellow Wikisource enthusiasts!

We are the hosting this month’s Wikisource Community meeting on 27 April 2024, 7 AM UTC (check your local time).

Similar to previous meetings, the agenda will be split into two segments. The first half will cover non-technical updates, such as events, conferences, proofread-a-thons, and collaborations. In the second half, we'll dive into technical updates and discussions, addressing key challenges faced by Wikisource communities.

Simply follow the link below to secure your spot and engage with fellow Wikisource enthusiasts:

Event Registration Page

If you have any suggestions or would just prefer being added to the meeting the old way, simply drop a message on klawal-ctr@wikimedia.org.

Thank you for your continued dedication to Wikisource. We look forward to your active participation in our upcoming meeting.

Regards KLawal-WMF, Sam Wilson (WMF), and Satdeep Gill (WMF)

Sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:21, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17
 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
 * Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention.
 * You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

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
 * This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of /vector.js to /vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Vote now to select members of the first U4C

 * You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. 

Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 20:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Aux TOC arcana
Can someone explain to me why the AuxTOC portion of Page:Plays by Anton Tchekoff (1916).djvu/7 (the listed Acts) are not displaying in green the way that other AuxTOC items do? I have tried copying the syntax from another ToC where this works, but it is not working here. With no documentation anywhere that I can find, I am at a loss to understand why the syntax works in one place but not in another. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:09, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @EncycloPetey I think you need to 'import' the CSS styles in the page:  Mpaa (talk) 10:56, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In fact, there's an app… err… template for that: auxiliary toc styles. (One that doesn't require faffing about with raw templatestyles tags in Page: namespace I mean; it's doing essentially the same thing). Xover (talk) 11:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * How would I know about this template that isn't placed in any categories? --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You wouldn't, except possibly by accident. It's brand new and made incidentally to an otherwise unrelated maintenance task, so I just haven't got around to it yet. Xover (talk) 17:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I already did. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:21, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikisource and other public domain digitization projects
Newbie question here. How do our efforts on Wikisource compare to other PD digitization projects like Project Gutenberg? I gather that we used to copy from there but that's now discouraged. Are the efforts of one project redundant to the other? Besides being able to verify page scans, does one have an advantage over the other? Is there any pooling of resources to avoid redundancy? Apologies if this has been discussed ad nauseam, but searching the Scriptorium archives didn't help much. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:38, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * A couple of big differences are (1) PG tends to have just one copy of each work, but WS will house multiple editions or translations, where there is reason (see for example The Time Machine and Electra (Sophocles)), and (2) PG will modernize and editorialize texts, which is one reason we no longer accept their texts; WS tries to preserve the originally published spellings and format to the best degree possible. Of course, our texts are also interconnected to Wikidata, Wikipedia, and other projects. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:55, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * A few others that stand out to me:
 * Stricter license enforcement and labeling. A lot of effort is actually spent to identify translators, authors death dates, relevant country policies etc. There is also no "fair use" exemption. Many sites are a bit lax with orphan works, URAA-restored translations, etc.
 * Easy linking to the actual page scan for comparison
 * Things like score extension that allow transcription and playing of musical scores, movie transcription, images independently searchable and discoverable via Wikimedia Commons, etc.
 * Linking to authors and other works per our linking policy
 * MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * WS using wikicode allows integration of images and tables in the text. WS tends to do reference works such as EB1911 and DNB. other sites such as https://transcription.si.edu/, and https://crowd.loc.gov/ transcribe unpublished works including manuscripts. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 13:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Good question. You've got some good answers above about the advantages of Wikisource. There are advantages also to sites like Gutenberg and Librivox. Those two in particular do a better job than Wikisource at presenting only "finished" works to the reader; while there are certainly quality control issues with those sites (e.g., presenting the edited 1888 edition of a work that is actually the original 1881 edition), we are not immune to such issues here. In addition, there are FOSS mobile apps that make it easy to download books from those sites, making them more accessible in some ways than Wikisource contents. As for redundancy, I have come to believe that it's worthwhile to have multiple parallel projects. The workflows and cultures of different platforms are sometimes a better or worse fit for certain people. If the goal is to make such texts more attainable by the public, I feel that we're better off in a world where there are several similar but non-identical choices, than in one where central decisions leave transcribers with limited choices. -Pete (talk) 19:47, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Heads up in case you hadn't seen it: Help:Project Gutenberg —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Main Page broken?
Something seems to be up with the main page. The header, sister projects, and collaboration templates are missing. The 'in other languages' bar extends far down past the content, leaving a grey space. I've saved it at the Internet Archive. Cremastra (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I've had a look at the CSS and I suspect this edit did it, since it's targeted to all cases, regardless of whether the user is on mobile (i.e., all elements with that class get display:none;, no questions asked). I'm quite likely wrong, but could you double-check and revert if necessary (the page is protected), Thanks, Cremastra (talk) 23:49, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * If any admin could take a look, really, that would be good.
 * sorry to bug you, but you're the most recently-active admin, and if we could get this fixed sooner than later that would be good, as having half the main page missing is a little embarrassing, not to mention confusing. Cremastra (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2024 (UTC) & 01:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you for bringing this to my attention. It in fact was the edit to the Styles that was mentioned that inadvertently made this change. I reverted the change and everything is back to normal. SnowyCinema (talk) 01:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Cremastra: Bleh. Yes, this was pretty dumb. I was being hasty and threw the rules into a breakpoint-scoped block without checking it was the right breakpoint. In fact that block applies to extra-wide displays, while the rules added are intended for very narrow screens (i.e. mobile). I've redone the change properly now. Sorry for the mess, and thanks for letting us know!@SnowyCinema: Thanks for stepping in and fixing my mess so quickly. Xover (talk) 07:09, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Wonderful, thanks to both of you. Cremastra (talk) 11:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Text in Page:
Is it just me, or is the text in Page: now left-aligned, as opposed to justified? It looks awful. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @TE(æ)A,ea. me too. Mpaa (talk) 16:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that the style was moved to the right Gadget? as the style concerned (that does the justify) doesn't seem to be loading.)?
 * ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * If text in Page: is no longer justified then it is almost certainly my fault. I'll look into it and try to figure out what went wrong. Xover (talk) 16:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition
 * ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:44, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. Thanks to ShakespeareFan00 for pointing med in the right direction so quickly! Xover (talk) 16:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * (Aside: Do we have tools looking for 'mistakes' like that (amongst others)? insource:/ searches can only go so far. A different use case is == not at the start of a line, which I'd been fixing earlier, I'm not sure how to look for 'not at start of line in an insource: search though. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC))
 * Should be fixed now. Thanks to ShakespeareFan00 for pointing med in the right direction so quickly! Xover (talk) 16:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * (Aside: Do we have tools looking for 'mistakes' like that (amongst others)? insource:/ searches can only go so far. A different use case is == not at the start of a line, which I'd been fixing earlier, I'm not sure how to look for 'not at start of line in an insource: search though. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC))

Searching within pages of a work
How can I search for a string on pages of a work, not yet transcluded?

I just tried searching for:



but got no results; when I know the string "geanings" exists on, for example Page:Midland naturalist (IA midlandnaturalis01lond).pdf/202. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:23, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Wild guess, maybe "subpageof:Page:Midland..."? I guess it's probably checking all namespaces but thought I'd throw it out there anyway... SnowyCinema (talk) 15:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Andy Mabbett I saw something on an index page. engine was put before &lt;pages /&gt;. All I know is that it draws a great looking button and text entry area (meaning I have not yet tried it).  Perhaps you were looking for something like that?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * RaboKarbakian: A great tool, but only works on text that has already been transcluded. -Pete (talk) 23:42, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * "Gleanings" is capitalized on that page. Could that be part of the problem? The API is probably case sensitive. SnowyCinema (talk) 23:33, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

[outdent] Adding the "Page:" namespace does not work. Adding engine to the index page does not work. Changing the case does not work. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:18, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @Pigsonthewing: Enter  into the search field. The first bit is the namespace, the second the wikipage name minus the namespace prefix, and the last is your search term. Page names with spaces in them must be enclosed in quote marks (as is the case here). Xover (talk) 13:56, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That's it; thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18
 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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: . These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences (""). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks.
 * Seven new wikis have been created:
 * a in Betawi
 * a in Kusaal
 * a in Igala
 * a in Karakalpak
 * a in Burmese
 * a in Malay
 * a in Georgian
 * You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups.
 * Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems
 * Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using  . This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. 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).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W18"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Note that Dark Mode will require fairly big changes to our plumbing, and is likely to break quite a few things. It's way too early yet to do much about it (none of the scaffolding is really in place yet), so this is just a heads up that this is coming and will impact us significantly. Xover (talk) 12:15, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Outdent template
Please will someone with the necessary permssions import Template:Outdent from en.Wikipedia, for use on talk pages? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:20, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I think we already do have outdent. Or do you mean you want to import a new version? — Alien333 (what I did &amp; why I did it wrong) 11:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * (outdent talk is probably more appropriate here) — Alien333 (what I did &amp; why I did it wrong) 11:32, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, both. outdent talk is what I wanted. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:45, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Avoid concurrent confirmation for our `crats
Courtesy ping: BD2412, @Beeswaxcandle.

It just occurred to me that we currently have Confirmation discussions for both of our `crats going on concurrently (because we elected both of them at the same time). Now, granted, neither one of them is likely to be involved in any controversy, but it is in principle unfortunate to have them both be up for confirmation at the same time. I therefore propose that we artificially postpone the next confirmation for one of them by 6 months so that their future confirmations will be at different times of the year, and so they can more easily switch out who handles closing confirmations without getting into situations where they can be accused of being influenced by an ongoing confirmation for themselves. It's not something that's likely to happen, but since it's easy to avoid entirely…

It doesn't matter which one of them we move in the cycle, but just so there's a concrete proposal I suggest we delay BD2412's next confirmation by an additional 6 months (for the very well-thought-out reason that they happen to be listed first on WS:A currently :)). Xover (talk) 06:55, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * No objection to the plan, but we could also just add a few more 'crats. BD2412  T 15:55, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually for the period of time when Hesperian was also a 'crat, all three of us were being confirmed in the same month. I should also point out that any established wikisourceror can close a confirmation discussion and I used to close Hesperian's so that he didn't have to do his own one. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Not restricted access discussions; those have to be closed by the `crats. But, yeah, as mentioned, this isn't exactly a big issue. I just noticed it now and figured there was an easy way to avoid the problem altogether, so why not. Xover (talk) 06:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There is also this discussion, where it was suggested that if the outcome was "bleeding obvious", then it would not be a problem for a 'crat to close a discussion in which they were a participant. I suppose this might be considered to apply to a 'crat closing their own clearly uncontested reconfirmation, though this feels a bit wrong. For this month, I have no problem with the two 'crats involved each closing the discussion for the other, though this also potentially could create an appearance of a tit-for-tat. BD2412  T 15:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Beeswaxcandle: cf. this and per the above, could you please update BD2412's next confirmation date to 2025-11, referencing this discussion in the edit summary? (if you don't have technical arcana for making a permalink handy let me know; I've a script for that so I can make one easily) Also, "bleeding obvious" does indeed apply most of the time, but it's a bad idea to make systems like this that only function when things are uncontroversial. Xover (talk) 07:06, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As soon as you used the word "permalink" you went outside my knowledge base. A what? And where would I put such a thing? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 10:02, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A permalink (permanent link) is a wikilink to a specific revision of a page, so that it will always show the same content regardless of whether the page has been changed in the time between when the link was posted and someone visiting it. In this case you'd put it in the edit summary so anyone can see what the context for it was, even if checking years from now. MediaWiki has built-in tools for that at Special:PermanentLink, but sadly it's about as user-unfriendly as can be (which was why I offered to provide one). The syntax is  where the numbers are the revision ID that can be found in the URL parameters when you're looking at a diff (but is otherwise a normal wikilink). A good permanent link for this discussion is , which will show up like "WS:S#Avoid concurrent confirmation for our `crats". (I have a user script for easily generating these that I can probably clean up and make available to others if there's any interest.) Xover (talk) 10:31, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I already questioned concurrent confirmation for our admins and `crats before. Now how may we break up the confirmations? One section for an admin plus a separate section for the 'crat?--Jusjih (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Why would this be required? Over the 15 years I've been around enWS, those with multiple mops have had their confirmations deliberately tied together. This was happening long before I was asked to become a 'crat. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:59, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

With a Difference
This originally was an article in The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 109/Number 650. If allowed, it could be moved to The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 109/Number 650/With a Difference thus retaining the contributor chain, And then, so it can become scan backed, starting with Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 109.djvu/128 of the scan: paste, review and rinse -- then display with.

If all of this is "okay" I can do any or all parts. There might need to be approval or perhaps there are preordained procedures which would make this unusual in that it might easier to ask permission for than it would be to apologize for.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:21, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Now I am authoring an apology.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)


 * So, I am sorry. I moved the page to Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 109.djvu/128 thinking I could just move the page from one empty page to another and back it up to before its move and then edit out the parts that are not on that page of the scan.


 * Instead, I get a "failed to blahblah sea dragon" because, apparently, the page is lacking something that brings up the page editing tools and scan view and such.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:11, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @RaboKarbakian: You can't move pages from mainspace to Page: (or Index:) namespaces; they're completely different content models. To move text between mainspace and Page: you'll have to cut&paste manually (since Match&Split is broken indefinitely). In any case, I've undone your move so you should be back to the status quo. Xover (talk) 18:59, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Xover Could you add a little more info about "broken indefinitely"? I'd like to update Help:Match and split to reflect this. -Pete (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Peteforsyth: All the functionality of phe-tools was disabled due to the Grid Engine shutdown (they moved Toolforge to Kubernetes). Getting it running again requires porting it to a completely new environment, and it's an old inherited code base that's poorly documented and with some very tight couplings to the old environment. I still intent to try getting it running again, but that's going to require quite a bit of sustained time and attention; which is exactly what I have trouble finding these days. Soda has kindly taken on some of the stats tasks, but the rest are offline until some unspecified and unpredictable point in the future (which might be "never", but hopefully not). Xover (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Xover Thank you. I made a big note at the top of the page here; perhaps there is more appropriate formatting, of course no objection if you want to adjust. -Pete (talk) 04:27, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this can help prioritize this issue but the lack of Match&Split is a huge impediment for many transcription projects. The amount of work it saves is huge when starting from a proofread transcription that is to be matched to a scan (which is by far the fastest way to proceed). In the worst case, would it be extremely difficult and/or time consuming to code it from scratch? Unfortunately, not being a developer I wouldn't know were to start so this is an obviously very naive question. Epigeneticist (talk) 12:58, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Epigeneticist: It's not a matter of priorities, and re-implementing it is not likely to be any quicker. Xover (talk) 16:52, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I moved the page to The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 109/Number 650/With a Difference (leave the redirect up); feel free to copy-paste the text into the Page namespace and transclude when you're done. Arcorann (talk) 13:13, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry. What is the dirt on soda? --RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:43, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I know of soda as a beverage or a baking ingredient, any other definition eludes me. -Pete (talk) 04:28, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Peteforsyth: "Soda" refers to Sohom Datta, who operates SodiumBot (the bot that now updates the on-wiki stats). He's also done a lot of technical work on the plumbing for Wikisource (Proofread Page, Edit in Sequence, etc.). All `round awesome person. Xover (talk) 13:47, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Xover: Thanks for the explanation, and thank you Soda for all the work! Pinging @RaboKarbakian. -Pete (talk) 18:17, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

To the Lighthouse - page moves
Although this work is marked as 'Done' (fully validated and transcluded) it is actually missing two pages (172 and 173). To allow placeholders to be inserted, could you please carry out the following moves:-


 * The index page name = Index:To The Lighthouse.pdf
 * The page offset = 2
 * The pages to move = 174-318
 * The reason = Insert missing pages

Thanks


 * Note that this will also require updating all the transclusions for these pages. Xover (talk) 10:56, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Chrisguise: Page:-namespace pages have been shifted. Xover (talk) 13:11, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks - only just got round to uploading the file including placeholders. Chrisguise (talk) 06:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)