Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
Miscellaneous
The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more
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
At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.
Problems
A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.
Future changes
The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.
Tech News survey
Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Anton Rayne, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anton Rayne until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can I join your NPP training class?
Hi DreamRimmer, I recently got my NPP rights and made some mistakes with tagging. I saw on the NPP school page that you are available as a trainer in the Indian Standard Time zone. I am eager to learn and improve so I can get back to NPP. Would you be willing to train me? Charlie (talk) 03:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@CharlieMehta, thanks for reaching out! I will set up your training page and will ping you there sometime today or tomorrow. – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @CharlieMehta, sorry about the delay in your training. I got caught up with something, but I'll make sure to set up your training page tomorrow. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:24, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I have reduced the pace of my NPP reviews and eagerly look forward to finishing this training with your assistance. Charlie (talk) 17:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DreamRimmer thank you. I am on to it. Charlie (talk) 11:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Edit regarding Davao Christian High School
Hello! I'm currently affiliated with Davao Christian High School and found that you've reverted an edit made by someone around two weeks ago. I'd like to inform you that I'll be adding these changes back considering there has actually been a change in management within the school which the changes you reverted actually addressed. If you do feel the need to state your reasons why you had reverted the said changes, please do inform me. Much thanks. 49.146.47.129 (talk) 17:31, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there! Welcome to Wikipedia. I appreciate your contributions, but please refrain from adding those details back yourself. Instead, kindly make a COI edit request on the article's talk page. I'd also appreciate it if you could take a moment to read our conflict of interest guidelines and disclose your COI on your user page and the article's talk page before making any edit requests. Thank you! – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tech News: 2024-29
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 survey
Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Recent changes
Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.
Changes later this week
This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.
Future changes
Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [1]
Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
In replying to this discussion, I wanted to see what it was that you claimed to have done. Surprisingly Special:Contributions/DreamRimmer showed nothing. So I looked at your userpage. No mention of alternate or other user accounts that you use. I even looked at the Special:Contributions/BaranBOT; nothing there either.
To learn what it was that you have done, I had to do a search for "Premier Atlas of the World" and then, one-by-one, look at the histories of the articles listed in the search results until I discovered one history that showed a recent edit by User:DreamRimmer Alt.
Editors should not have to do what I had to do in order to discover what you did. Please link to your alternate account(s) from your user page.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:28, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Trappist the monk, I have already mentioned these accounts here when I created them. I am sorry if you had trouble finding them. I'll make sure to add them to my user page now so that folkscan easily spot them. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:46, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Nothing links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser except this discussion so finding it would have been equally problematic; see Special:WhatLinksHere/User:DreamRimmer/Discloser. Did you really mean to use 'Discloser' (a person who discloses) instead of 'Disclosure' (3. That which is disclosed; a previously hidden fact or series of facts that is made known.)?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have now added this to my user page. The third line is just a note, posted on the same day. (I was talking about the third point on the User:DreamRimmer/Discloser page.) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:05, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Umm, what? You said that you have already mentioned these accounts here when I created them. I noted that [nothing] links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser except this discussion so finding it would have been equally problematic. You then reply I have now added this to my user page. Not obvious because at this writing there has only been one edit to your user page today and still only this discussion links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser. What do you really mean by this post? How is what you said there different from what you said at this post?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Trappist the monk, sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that I mentioned my bot and my alt account on a subpage when I created them. When you mentioned having trouble finding that alt account, I said that I have now added that account to my userpage.
Both of my accounts are now listed on my userpage, so this subpage is no longer necessary, and you can ignore it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Roger that; thank you.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Monhiroe, thank you for creating these articles. I have gone ahead and marked Emagadhagan and Jama (film) as reviewed. 14 (film) was already reviewed. I didn't review the last one because I usually don't review biographies upon request. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:37, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Monhiroe (talk) 15:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Request review
Hi
I have worked on a new article around a show that releases tomorrow.
It is called Bahishkarana. It is a Telugu language show.
Request you to have a look into it.
Thank you Filmy World (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature News
Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [2]
Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [3]
Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [4]
Project Updates
Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.
Learn more
Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
I asked about this at WP:BN a while ago and everyone just kind of shrugged and said "not our jurisdiction". Well, I see that you are processing a bunch of rename requests, so I figure I will ask you directly: what's the deal with these usernames?
<-- See HTML note here with a few of them I found using SQL (e.g. "JIMBOWALES IS A NECRO-BESTIA-PEDOPHILIAC"), spanning the wide toilet language-ethnic slur continuum, et cetera. Is there anything we can do about this crap? jp×g🗯️ 10:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG, I haven't come across these types of usernames while processing rename requests. Global renamers can't really do much about them. Outrageously libelous usernames can be hide locked, so I think hide locking is the best solution for those cases. However, just having a swear word or slur in a username isn't necessarily libelous. Generally, if a username has text that would qualify for oversight, it should be hide locked. I'm not sure if any of the mentioned usernames meet this criteria, so it would be best to ask the stewards. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. What the heck is a hide lock -- is there a page for that somewhere? I guess I will go mosey towards the stews then... jp×g🗯️ 13:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Locking and suppressing. See meta:Steward requests/Global#Requests for global (un)lock and (un)hiding. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't the oversighters also have a hide username button ? Or am I hallucinating ? Sohom (talk) 13:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They do, and we do as admins, but it's only for actions (edit, pagemove, etc). I can even revdel a name from an action done to it, I'm pretty sure (e.g. I can edit the block log entry to not show the user's name) -- but none of this actually changes the name of the account, so User:JPxG IS A NECRO-BESTIA-PEDOPHILIAC will still show up in Special:ListUsers and the user creation log et cetera. jp×g🗯️ 13:45, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=5417192 has the username deleted. But then if you go to the user's page they are still blocked. It's just... the log entry is defaced? God, this is so inane and cursed. Yeah, so -- I think it has to be something central. jp×g🗯️ 13:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stewards have the centralauth-suppress right to suppress or hide global accounts, while Oversighters have the hideuser right to block or unblock a username, hiding or unhiding it from the public. I don't think hideuser is for suppressing a user account, or maybe it is for suppressing a local account. However, since these are global accounts, the centralauth-suppress right is the one that can do this. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:51, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'm not sure how hideuser interacts with centralauth-suppress, maybe there is some weird interaction that restricts this right to only stewards (and I really don't wanna setup CentralAuth locally to test it out) Sohom (talk) 14:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Administrator changes
Technical news
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