User talk:Nihiltres/Archive-47
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Tech News: 2018-22
Administrators' newsletter – June 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).

- Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
- Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.
- IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
- There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
- It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.
- A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.
- In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
Tech News: 2018-23
This Month in GLAM: May 2018
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Tech News: 2018-24
Tech News: 2018-25
Hatnote TfXs
Nomination for deletion of Module:See also
Module:See also and Module:Key people have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page.
(posting this here because you created the module these were merged into). {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:00, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for merging of Module:Distinguish (June 2018)
Module:Distinguish has been nominated for merging with Module:Labelled list hatnote. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:56, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
- I seem to be nominating a large number of modules created by you for deletion or merging today. I'm not going to notify you of each one, because that would be a little bit spammy. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:06, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
- No problem; thanks for the notifications. :) I merged these two slightly for convenience in case you make further nominations in days to come. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 20:56, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Module:Main (June 2018)
Module:Main has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- although you didn't create this module, my reason for nomination is essentially "redundant to Module:Labelled list hatnote, and thus I'm notifying you. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:52, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for merging of Module:Distinguish (July 2018)
Module:Distinguish has been nominated for merging with Module:Main list. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.
- Yes, I have gotten back to hatnote module merges after many of my previous ones failed.
Expect many more such modules to be nominated today, which I'm not going to notify you of for each one.{{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:48, 20 July 2018 (UTC)- Seems like that only one I got around to doing was Module:Redirect-distinguish. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 22:38, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Module:Main (January 2019)
Module:Main has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:29, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Nomination for merging of Module:Distinguish (February 2019)
Module:Distinguish, Module:Main list, and Module:About-distinguish have been nominated for merging. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 05:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-26
Tech News: 2018-27
Administrators' newsletter – July 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).

Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
Gogo Dodo
Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD
- An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.
- Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
- Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (
) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates. - IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
- Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Summer 2018
Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter and contribute to the next issue. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!
- Community updates
- Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd webchat
- Since our last newsletter, the Structured Data team has moved into designing and building prototypes for various features. The use of multilingual captions in the UploadWizard and on the file page has been researched, designed, discussed, and built out for use. Behind the scenes, back-end work on search is taking place and designs are being drawn up for the front-end. There will soon be specifications published for the use of the first Wikidata property on Commons, "Depicts," and a prototype is to be released to go along with that.
- A workshop on what Wikidata properties Commons will need. This workshop will be open for the entire month of July 2018 at minimum.
- Join the community focus group!
- Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
- Contribute to the next newsletter.
- Discussions held
- In late February there was a discussion around how Commons generally sees data being modeled.
- The first discussion on copyright and licensing with Commons was held in March. This was a "high level" discussion, there will be a consultation later this summer about the deeper mapping of copyright and licensing in a structured way.
- In April there was an exercise for GLAM partners in metadata and ontology mapping.
- A discussion about the design for Multilingual Captions on the file page took place in May. You can still review the designs and leave feedback.
- There was an IRC office hour in June to discuss progress so far and future plans.
- Wikimania 2018
- Three sessions about Structured Commons are officially scheduled for Wikimania 2018 - Cape Town, South Africa - July 2018.
- Wikimedia Commons and GLAM needs around the world (Friday 20 July, 10:30 local time)
- Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons and knowledge equity (Friday 20 July, 14:00 local time)
- Design challenge workshop: How can multilingual structured metadata bring knowledge equity to Commons? (Friday 20 July, 14:30 local time)
- Structured Data on Commons is also a focus area during the Wikimania 2018 Hackathon. We will, among other things, do 'live' modelling of Wikidata properties for Commons - an offline spin-off of the community consultation taking place on wiki.
- Partners and allies
- We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!
- Structured Data on Commons was presented to GLAM audiences during EuropeanaTech 2018 in Rotterdam (15 May 2018) and at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek Forum in Berlin (4 June 2018).
- Research
Two research projects about Wikimedia Commons are currently ongoing, or in the process of being finished:
- Research:Curation workflows on Wikimedia Commons—a project that seeks to understand the current workflows of Commons contributors who curate media (categorize it, delete it, link to it from other projects, etc.).
- Research:Technical needs of external re-users of Commons media—soliciting feedback from individuals and organizations that re-use Commons content outside of Wikimedia projects, in order to understand their current painpoints and unmet needs.
- Prototypes will be available for Depicts soon.
- Stay up to date!
- Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
- Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
- Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! The date for next quarter will be announced soon.
-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)
Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 21:07, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Structured Data Newsletter - Research link fix
Greetings,
The newsletter omitted two interwiki prefixes, breaking the links on non-meta wikis as you might see above. Here are the correct links:
- m:Research:Curation workflows on Wikimedia Commons—a project that seeks to understand the current workflows of Commons contributors who curate media (categorize it, delete it, link to it from other projects, etc.).
- m:Research:Technical needs of external re-users of Commons media—soliciting feedback from individuals and organizations that re-use Commons content outside of Wikimedia projects, in order to understand their current painpoints and unmet needs.
My apologies, I hope you find the corrected links helpful.
This Month in GLAM: June 2018
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Tech News: 2018-28
inline hatnotes
"I'm not opposed to adding a layer of abstraction and moving most of Module:Hatnote's functionality into, say, "Module:Navnote" that would then help implement a simpler Module:Hatnote and a Module:Prosenote or whatever. We might not strictly implement inheritance per se in the code, but the pattern should be obvious. While it's certainly more verbose, the clarity that a system like that would have by design is valuable."
Any chance you can make that happen? It's not right that improvements are made to the hatnote code without improving the inline equivalent unless we manually duplicate them. It's stilly and counter-productive. I think we need to approach this from a purpose mindset. The reason we're marking these things up at all is that they are self-refs (virtually always cross-references to another page or to a section or anchor in the same page, but occasionally they are link-free instances of Wikipedia talking directly to the user). Some of them are printworthy (cross-refs to links on same page) and most are not (it's controlled by a parameter we pass). They are in two classes: 1) <div>-based ones which are indented on their own line, and mistakenly assumed to always be in a "hat" position (several are mostly used at the bottom of material, actually), but we're probably stuck with "hatnote" as the name for historical reasons. 2) <span>-based ones intended for inline usage, in running text or in layout situations where a div will break things (they are not really always in the prose). I'm rather skittish about doing much in the Module namespace myself as Lua isn't exactly my language. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:19, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: I'd like to make this happen, but what I'm really putting off here is just outright starting a WikiProject for hatnotes so we (including others, e.g. Pppery) can hammer out the architectural details we want, and then reorganize around those. I'm a stickler for hatnotes as structural elements (and thank you for tolerating somewhat my persnickety purism there) and from my experience you tend to focus more on practical usage. I've done a bunch to standardize across hatnotes already, but it'd be incredibly valuable to hammer out, together, a proper design document for hatnote templates that we can use to clean things up further. :) {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 20:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
- Seems reasonable, although I have no specific interest in hatnotes, but instead in cleaning up the tendency to use excess lua modules for things that don't need them, across all of Wikipedia, and hatnotes happen to be the area in which this is rife. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
- I'm much more of an information architect than I let on, apparently. (E.g., the reason WP has semantic markup templates and its MoS recommends them for various purposes is mostly my doing.) I think if we focus on purpose – these are all templates for permissible self-refs (either in a very blatant sense, as at the top of this page, or in a breaking the fourth wall, directly-address-the-reader sense), then there's little room for conflict. We actually already have WP:WikiProject Inline templates, which has pretty much done its cleanup and normalization job already and gone moribund. We could just expand its scope a little to also handle hatnotes (rename the project if necessary: WikiProject inline and hatnote templates, or whatever). The problem with doing a "WikiProject Hatnotes" is it just excludes the inline equivalent as "not really hatnotes", and we're right back to the same conflict. Plus it's strongly discouraged to create redundant wikiprojects.
What we need here, to make "both sides" (maybe there are three or more, I dunno) happy is to distinguish at least three things: true hatnotes that sit atop articles or sections; derived "shoenotes" that serve a similar function but sit below content; and inline versions intended for use in mid-sentence. The top-level meta-templates / meta-modules can differ, applying particular classes and particular style (which for first two categories will be the same or similar CSS, but perhaps different classes – and in a few cases both functions will be served by a single template, like
{{Further}}– but for the inline case will differ in use of span vs. div, and perhaps other things, in addition to classes; at least one class should be shared by all three). Have them use the same low-level meta-module code, to reduce profusion of duplicate and unfortunately forkable functions.This approach would be similar to increased centralization and normalization of the citation templates; a profusion of high-level, editor-use templates all draw on the same back-end code and shared documentation. We're doing exactly the same thing with the language-markup templates. Both of those involve a lot of work by Trappist the monk; also pinging Pppery back to the thread.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:23, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- I'm much more of an information architect than I let on, apparently. (E.g., the reason WP has semantic markup templates and its MoS recommends them for various purposes is mostly my doing.) I think if we focus on purpose – these are all templates for permissible self-refs (either in a very blatant sense, as at the top of this page, or in a breaking the fourth wall, directly-address-the-reader sense), then there's little room for conflict. We actually already have WP:WikiProject Inline templates, which has pretty much done its cleanup and normalization job already and gone moribund. We could just expand its scope a little to also handle hatnotes (rename the project if necessary: WikiProject inline and hatnote templates, or whatever). The problem with doing a "WikiProject Hatnotes" is it just excludes the inline equivalent as "not really hatnotes", and we're right back to the same conflict. Plus it's strongly discouraged to create redundant wikiprojects.
- Seems reasonable, although I have no specific interest in hatnotes, but instead in cleaning up the tendency to use excess lua modules for things that don't need them, across all of Wikipedia, and hatnotes happen to be the area in which this is rife. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-29
Tech News: 2018-30
Tech News: 2018-31
Administrators' newsletter – August 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).

Sro23
KaisaL • Ymblanter
- After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
- Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
- The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
Tech News: 2018-32
This Month in GLAM: July 2018
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Tech News: 2018-33
Tech News: 2018-34
Tech News: 2018-35
Administrators' newsletter – September 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

None
Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam
Interface administrator changes
- Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
- Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says
Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_textwhich is nowpage_title. - Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is
page_age.
- The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
Tech News: 2018-36
This Month in GLAM: August 2018
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Tech News: 2018-37
Composition of the Ring
Composition normally means composition of music, therefore I am afraid your move was not good. The article is about the libretto (composition of the poem) and should be called that way. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:30, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: Hmm. Would "Literary composition of Der Ring des Nibelungen" perhaps be better? Though that might imply a noun phrase (answering "what is the literary composition of the poem?") somewhat rather than a verb phrase (answering "how was the poem composed?")… {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:37, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, no idea, perhaps talk to the author of that article. I just noticed that the new title is ambiguous. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:48, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Module:Other uses2
Module:Other uses2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:08, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-38
Tech News: 2018-39
Tech News: 2018-40
Administrators' newsletter – October 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Justlettersandnumbers • L235
Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter
Interface administrator changes
Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333
- Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
- There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
- Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
- The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
- Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.
- The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
- The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
- Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
- Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Tech News: 2018-41
This Month in GLAM: September 2018
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Tech News: 2018-42
Tech News: 2018-43
Tech News: 2018-44
Editing News #2—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.
You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [111]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).
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- A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
- A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.
- Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
- A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
- The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.
- Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
- The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en
wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Tech News: 2018-45
This Month in GLAM: October 2018
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Tech News: 2018-46
Tech News: 2018-47
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Nihiltres. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-48
Administrators' newsletter – December 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike
Interface administrator changes
- Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
- A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
- A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.
- Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
- To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
- Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.
- Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
- In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
- Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
- Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
Tech News: 2018-49
Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Fall 2018 edition
Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!
- Community updates
- Multilingual Captions, the first feature release for Structured Data, is coming in January of 2019
- Be on the lookout for the beta testing announcement
- Help using captions has been set up, if you'd like to go ahead and see the workflow
- Two IRC office hours were held since the last newsletter
- Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd webchat
Current:
- Help determine and propose properties on Wikidata for Commons
- Review designs for structured licensing and copyright
- Join the community focus group!
Since the last newsletter:
- Review a prototype for searching structured Commons (October 2018)
- "Good coverage" for depicts tagging (Sept. 2018)
- Review and discuss mockups for displaying the new metadata section of the file page (18 September - 9 October 2018)
- Depicts statements draft requirements (14 August - 31 August 2018)
- Identify Wikidata properties that Commons will need (26 June - 14 August 2018)
- Presentation by Keegan on the first features to be released for Structured Data, presented at Wikiconference North America, Columbus, Ohio, October 2018.
- Sandra presented a project update at the GLAM-Wiki conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 2018, as part of an update and panel discussion.
- Structured Data on Commons was the subject of a keynote presentation by Sandra (see slides) at the Baltic Audiovisual Archives Council conference in Tallinn, Estonia, November 2018.
- Partners and allies
- The info portal on Structured Commons now includes a section on GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums).
- We are currently planning the first GLAM pilot projects that will use structured data on Wikimedia Commons. One project has already started: the Swedish Heritage Board researches and develops a prototype tool to provide improved metadata (translations, data additions...) from Wikimedia Commons back to the source institution. Read the project brief.
- The documentation for batch uploads of files to Wikimedia Commons will be improved in 2019, as part of preparing for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. To prepare, the GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to understand better which types of documentation you already use, and how you like to learn new GLAM-Wiki skills and knowledge. Fill in a short survey to provide input!
- Stay up to date!
- Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
- Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)
Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 17:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-50
This Month in GLAM: November 2018
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Tech News: 2018-51
Help...
... your fabulous tool is gone
- DVdm (talk) 16:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
- @DVdm: This should hopefully be resolved soon and the tool back up. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:30, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, thanks!. Happy 2019! - DVdm (talk) 15:51, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).
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- There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:
- G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
- R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
- G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
- The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
- Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
- Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
- At least 8 characters in length
- Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
- Different from their username
- User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
- Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
- {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
- Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.
- Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
- Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Tech News: 2019-02
Captions in January
Structured Data - file captions coming this week (January 2019)
My apologies if this is a duplicate message for you, it is being sent to multiple lists which you may be signed up for.
Hi all, following up on last month's announcement...
Multilingual file captions will be released this week, on either Wednesday, 9 January or Thursday, 10 January 2019. Captions are a feature to add short, translatable descriptions to files. Here's some links you might want to look follow before the release, if you haven't already:
- Read over the help page for using captions - I wrote the page on mediawiki.org because captions are available for any MediaWiki user, feel free to host/modify a copy of the page here on Commons.
- Test out using captions on Beta Commons.
- Leave feedback about the test on the captions test talk page, if you have anything you'd like to say prior to release.
Additionally, there will be an IRC office hour on Thursday, 10 January with the Structured Data team to talk about file captions, as well as anything else the community may be interested in. Date/time conversion, as well as a link to join, are on Meta.
Thanks for your time, I look forward to seeing those who can make it to the IRC office hour on Thursday. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)This Month in GLAM: December 2018
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Tech News: 2019-03
Tech News: 2019-04
Tech News: 2019-05
Administrators' newsletter – February 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Enterprisey • JJMC89
BorgQueen
Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley
Interface administrator changes
- A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
- Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
- A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
- Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.
Tech News: 2019-06
This Month in GLAM: January 2019
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Tech News: 2019-07
Precious anniversary
| Four years! |
|---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:13, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
... five years now --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:07, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-08
Talk to us about talking
Tech News: 2019-09
Tech News: 2019-10
Administrators' newsletter – March 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).
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- The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
- Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
- A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
- The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
- paid-en-wp
wikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing. - checkuser-en-wp
wikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
- paid-en-wp
- The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
- Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.
This Month in GLAM: February 2019
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Tech News: 2019-11
Tech News: 2019-12
New mailing list for Wikimedia Canada
Good day, this message is to inform you that Wikimedia Canada has created a new mailing list operated by Mailman. This mailing list is for all discussions related to the Wikimedia movement in Canada, in both English and French. Announcements from Wikimedia Canada will always be bilingual, but you are welcomed to discuss in any language of your choice. The old google group will be abandoned. To join this mailing list, please go to [170]. To send messages to the list, write to general(at)discussions.wikimedia.ca. Also, please forward this message to anybody who may be interested. Thank you and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. JP Béland (WMCA) (talk) 14:01, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-13
Tech News: 2019-14
Administrators' newsletter – April 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).
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- In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.
- The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.
- Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
- As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.
Tech News: 2019-15
This Month in GLAM: March 2019
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Nomination for merging of Template:Other people3
Template:Other people3 has been nominated for merging with Template:About-otherpeople. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Gonnym (talk) 11:58, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-16
Nomination for merging of Module:Other uses2
Module:Other uses2 has been nominated for merging with Module:Other uses. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Gonnym (talk) 17:35, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-17
Tech News: 2019-18
ArbCom 2019 special circular
| Administrators must secure their accounts
The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.
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This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:47, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).
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- A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
- Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.
- XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions
; administrators found failing to have adequately done sowill not be resysopped automatically
. All current administrators have been notified of this change. - Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
- A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
- A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.
Tech News: 2019-19
This Month in GLAM: April 2019
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Tech News: 2019-20
Tech News: 2019-21
Tech News: 2019-22
COPYVIO listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect COPYVIO. Since you had some involvement with the COPYVIO redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. funplussmart (talk) 18:07, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-23
Administrators' newsletter – June 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický
- An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
- An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
- An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.
- The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
- Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.
- The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
- The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.
This Month in GLAM: May 2019
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Tech News: 2019-24
Module:Other uses
Hey, how do you think we should handle the merger of Module:Other uses and Module:Other uses2? --Gonnym (talk) 09:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-25
Tech News: 2019-26
Administrators' newsletter – July 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam1 • Flyguy649 • Fram2 • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe
- 1Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
- 2Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
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- A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.
- In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.
- The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
- The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
- A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
- In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.
Tech News: 2019-27
Tech News: 2019-28
This Month in GLAM: June 2019
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Tech News: 2019-29
Editing News #1—July 2019
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon
to start editing.
Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.
Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.
Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:
Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?
If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.
Follow these instructions and share your experience:
Recent releases
The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
- Section editing
- The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
- The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
- Loading overlay
- The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.
Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.
New and active projects
This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
- Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲Try Edit Cards.
- Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
- Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
- Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Looking ahead
- Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
- Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
Learning more
The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-30
Tech News: 2019-31
Administrators' newsletter – August 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
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- Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
- A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.
- Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.
- Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
- The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
Tech News: 2019-32
This Month in GLAM: July 2019
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Tech News: 2019-33
Tech News: 2019-34
Tech News: 2019-36
Administrators' newsletter – September 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
Floquenbeam • Lectonar
DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.
- A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
- A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.
This Month in GLAM: August 2019
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Structured Data - blogs posted in Wikimedia Space
There are two separate blog entries for Structured Data on Commons posted to Wikimedia Space that are of interest:
- Working with Structured Data on Commons: A Status Report, by Lucas Werkmeister, discusses some ways that editors can work with structured data. Topics include tools that have been written or modified for structured data, in addition to future plans for tools and querying services.
- Structured Data on Commons - A Blog Series, written by me, is a five-part posting that covers the basics of the software and features that were built to make structured data happen. The series is meant to be friendly to those who may have some knowledge of Commons, but may not know much about the structured data project.
Tech News: 2019-40
Administrators' newsletter – October 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
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- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories
.
- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
- As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.
- The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
- The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future
, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
- The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.
Tech News: 2019-41
This Month in GLAM: September 2019
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Tech News: 2019-42
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.
Help
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk Pages
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

- On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
- There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
- Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

- In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
- One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
- New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
- Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
- Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Wikimania
The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.
Looking ahead
- Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
- Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
- Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-43
Tech News: 2019-44
Administrators' newsletter – November 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).
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- An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.
- The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).
- A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.
- Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.
Tech News: 2019-45
Tech News: 2019-46
This Month in GLAM: October 2019
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Tech News: 2019-47
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
Tech News: 2019-48
Administrators' newsletter – December 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂
Interface administrator changes
- An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
- Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.
- Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)
- Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive
.
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
Tech News: 2019-49
Hi, what happened to clickz?
I talked with someone earlier, and they said your the person who deleted clickz. Is it okay to make the article? New3400 (talk) 21:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
- @New3400: I deleted that page because its content was blatant advertising, which is obviously against Wikipedia's rules. If the new article meets Wikipedia's rules, I won't have any problem with it. :) {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 19:51, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Tech News: 2019-50
This Month in GLAM: November 2019
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Tech News: 2019-51
Tech News: 2019-52
Nomination for deletion of Module:Category manager
Module:Category manager has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:25, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
"Nilotic peoples, origins and scholarly anthropology of" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Nilotic peoples, origins and scholarly anthropology of. Since you had some involvement with the Nilotic peoples, origins and scholarly anthropology of redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Steel1943 (talk) 19:10, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).
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- A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
- A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
- Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted
rather thanreasonably construed
. - Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
- This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!
Tech News: 2020-02
Nomination for merging of Template:Royal and noble ranks of West, Central, Southern Asia, and North Africa
Template:Royal and noble ranks of West, Central, Southern Asia, and North Africa has been nominated for merging with Template:Royal and noble ranks in Iran, Turkey, Caucasus, the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. PPEMES (talk) 00:14, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: December 2019
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Tech News: 2020-03
Hey, do you have a link to clickz?
I know you deleted it, but, do you have a restored link to the article? I want to see what was wrong with it. Thanks. New3400 (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2020-04
Tech News: 2020-05
Administrators' newsletter – February 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).
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- Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
- The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with
wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input
. No proposed process received consensus.
- Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [303]
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
- Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!
Tech News: 2020-06
Tech News: 2020-07
This Month in GLAM: January 2020
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Tech News: 2020-08
Tech News: 2020-09
Administrators' newsletter – March 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
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- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
must not
undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather thanshould not
. - A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
- Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
- Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
- The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.
Tech News: 2020-10
Tech News: 2020-11
This Month in GLAM: February 2020
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Checking in
Hi there!! :) I found your helpful article. I tried to do a new entry called Jennifer Freed about this woman and her book Use Your Planets Wisely. Did it work? Thank you. I had trouble with the references. I added two but have many more. Warmly, Elaine
Tech News: 2020-12
Happy Birthday!
Tech News: 2020-13
Tech News: 2020-14
Administrators' newsletter – April 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
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- There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
- The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
Tech News: 2020-15
This Month in GLAM: March 2020
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Tech News: 2020-16
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools
Read this in another language • Subscription list

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.
- On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
- The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
- an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
- a rich-text visual editing option, and
- other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch
these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2020-17
Hatnote group
HI Nihilitres, following on from the recent deletion discussion about Distinguish-otheruses there seems to be a problem with Hatnotegroup, see for example the result of this edit which produces two trailing characters in the article. Whizz40 (talk) 07:13, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know; this is why it's marked alpha. :) I've already tracked the problem to the
looseCategorieshandling and am working to isolate the problem better. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:33, 26 April 2020 (UTC)- OK, the problem should be fixed. There was a lack of character escaping in the category-matching pattern, and I've just added it in. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
- Great, looks fixed on the article, thanks. Whizz40 (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
- OK, the problem should be fixed. There was a lack of character escaping in the category-matching pattern, and I've just added it in. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
One other template issue I noticed is the DYK templates appear to have lost their automatic headers on article talk pages. See for example [[341]] which was originally fine and [[342]] where I had to add one manually recently. Whizz40 (talk) 19:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

- Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
- Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
- A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
- A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.
- The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
- Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.
- A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Tech News: 2020-19
This Month in GLAM: April 2020
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Tech News: 2020-20
Tech News: 2020-21
Tech News: 2020-22
ISBN tool certificate error
Hello, WP:ISBN#Types says https://ataraxic.net/isbn-tool/ is your page. It appears the HTTPS certificate expired on 5/24/2020; it should be renewed. --Pokechu22 (talk) 19:14, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
- The certificate should be renewed in the near future; I'll try to make sure that it's renewed before it expires next time. I hope the tool's otherwise been helpful. :) {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 03:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL
- A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
- The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.
- A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on
articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland
. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.
- A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on
Tech News: 2020-23
Tech News: 2020-24
This Month in GLAM: May 2020
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Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
Read this in another language • Subscription list

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2020-25
Tech News: 2020-26
Tech News: 2020-27
Administrators' newsletter – July 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).
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- A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.
- Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community. - The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for
all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles
.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
Editing news 2020 #3

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
- The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
- More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
- Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
- The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
- Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
- On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
- In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2020-28
This Month in GLAM: June 2020
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Tech News: 2020-29
Tech News: 2020-30
Opinion
I saw your Hatnote group and found use for it on some articles. I came across templates that had a footnote version see Template:Korean name 2 and that had me thinking on grouping footnotes together. I created a template for this Template:footnote group based on hatnote group. Its still in pre-alpha, but I found that {{reflist}} wont list the result of footnote group. Maybe because reflist is not based on an module while hatnote is. I would like to have your thoughts on this.Manabimasu (talk) 22:55, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
- Um, that'd be very complicated to implement, even assuming it's possible. If I recall correctly, Lua is evaluated at a point in parsing when templates etc. have already been parsed, which is why it can operate on the
<div>tags that are output by hatnote templates. For reference tags, the<ref>tags have already been at least pre-processed, so they don't exist to be parsed the way you're trying to parse them. The idea is interesting, but I don't think it's terribly practical. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
- Ok, what do you think about manipulating the mid-processed placeholders? Seems to me that merging two would mean deleting the last two of the mid processes placeholder and adding the second footnote content in between the first two mid-processed placeholders.Manabimasu (talk) 16:16, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
- You don't have access to the content of the footnotes: the placeholders replace both the
<ref>tags and their content. As far as I can tell, the template you want to make cannot be made. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:52, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
- You don't have access to the content of the footnotes: the placeholders replace both the
- Ok, what do you think about manipulating the mid-processed placeholders? Seems to me that merging two would mean deleting the last two of the mid processes placeholder and adding the second footnote content in between the first two mid-processed placeholders.Manabimasu (talk) 16:16, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Tech News: 2020-31
Administrators' newsletter – August 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Red Phoenix
Euryalus • SQL
Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester
- There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
- Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
- Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
- There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.
Tech News: 2020-32
Tech News: 2020-33
This Month in GLAM: July 2020
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