User talk:HouseBlaster/Archive 2

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5
Skip to top
Skip to bottom

Early end of the backlog drive

A few days ago, new page patrollers got the backlog to zero. Due to the unprecedented success of the backlog drive, it will be ending early—at the end of 24 October, or in approximately two hours.

Barnstars will be awarded as soon as the coords can tally the results. Streak awards will be allocated based on the first three weeks of the drive, with the last three days being counted as part of week three.

Great work everyone! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:50, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Drive Award

The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
This award is given to HouseBlaster for collecting more than 10 points doing reviews and re-reviews, in the October NPP backlog reduction drive. Thank you for your contributions. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 08:48, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 23:30, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

NPP

Thank you for your 'support'. It's just helped me decide something I should have done more consequently after my 16 years here: Retire from this circus. Driving people away seems to be the new pastime. I'll join TNT and RexxS. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:41, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

BTW, just so you know, I was neither the initiator of the Open Letter nor of the new help page. I simply redesigned the Move to Draft UI for the new script - after a lot of on-Wiki discussion. Years ago helped get PageTriage developed in 2010-2011, led the campaign for ACTRIAL. created the NPR user right in 2016, and sat in the meeting last week with the Director of Product and Engineering with MB and NL. That's all I do. I wonder why I bother. The way Wikipedia treats its older and dedicated users is deplorable. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:29, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I have replied (and pinged you) here. HouseBlastertalk 19:50, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions review: proposed decision and community review

You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to updates on the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions review process. The Proposed Decision phase of the discretionary sanctions review process has now opened. A five-day public review period for the proposed decision, before arbitrators cast votes on the proposed decision, is open through November 18. Any interested editors are invited to comment on the proposed decision talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Request on 14:12:59, 22 November 2022 for assistance on AfC submission by Frei781


Thank you so much for reviewing my submission, although it was rejected. I was very careful and paid special attention to avoid using any peacock terms without references. If you had a chance to check the references, EVERYTHING said in the article came from "independent, reliable, published sources", including the word "pioneer". I totally support the policy against using peacock terms, but in this case, the word pioneer, for example, came from references #2, 3, 4, and 5, and it's not my idea. Those references are all US magazines with a global readership, i.e., “independent, reliable, published sources”. Feel free to check all those references. I don’t waste my time to submit something in clear violation of the well-known Wikipedia policy. But I am open to advice that can make this article acceptable. Looking forward to your feedback. Thank you so much.

Frei781 (talk) 14:12, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@Frei781: Hello! It seems that an administrator, User:Happy-melon, has deleted the draft under speedy deletion criterion G11, which is for unambiguous promotion. You would have to contact him to see if he is willing to undelete the draft. HouseBlastertalk 22:54, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
The article relied on four articles in magazines which seem to primarily feature self-published content (each reference cited up to twenty times), and a number of other SPS references. There was therefore no independent reliable source to justify peacock terms. Happy‑melon 11:49, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 November 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed 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 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:42, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:In the news on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 10:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Contentious topics procedure adopted

You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to updates on the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions review process.

The Arbitration Committee has concluded the 2021-22 review of the contentious topics system (formerly known as discretionary sanctions), and its final decision is viewable at the revision process page. As part of the review process, the Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

The above proposals that are supported by an absolute majority of unrecused active arbitrators are hereby enacted. The drafting arbitrators (CaptainEek, L235, and Wugapodes) are directed to take the actions necessary to bring the proposals enacted by this motion into effect, including by amending the procedures at WP:AC/P and WP:AC/DS. The authority granted to the drafting arbitrators by this motion expires one month after enactment.

The Arbitration Committee thanks all those who have participated in the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process and all who have helped bring it to a successful conclusion. This motion concludes the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process.

This motion initiates a one-month implementation period for the updates to the contentious topics system. The Arbitration Committee will announce when the initial implementation of the Committee's decision has concluded and the amendments made by the drafting arbitrators in accordance with the Committee's decision take effect. Any editors interested in the implementation process are invited to assist at the implementation talk page, and editors interested in updates may subscribe to the update list.

For the Arbitration Committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Contentious topics procedure adopted

The Signpost: 1 January 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

License tagging for File:1st Word Plus 3.0 screenshot.png

Thanks for uploading File:1st Word Plus 3.0 screenshot.png. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information.

To add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 03:30, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed (yes this is a bot, doing this so i don't give myself a heart attack) HouseBlastertalk 03:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

NPP Award for 2022

The New Page Patroller's Barnstar

For over 100 article reviews during 2022. Thank you for patrolling new pages and helping us out with the backlog! -MPGuy2824 (talk) 04:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Next Indian general election on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 14:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Question

It says you reviewed my user page, what does that mean?Grapefanatic (talk) 13:15, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I marked it as reviewed, which basically means that it adheres to WP:USERPAGE and does not need to be deleted. Let me know if you have any other questions! HouseBlastertalk 17:43, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 January 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

LINTy thanks

I don't really understand what was wrong, but thanks for the cleanup as I don't want to cause errors. Have a great day. Star Mississippi 22:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

@Star Mississippi: Anytime! Lint errors are things that might not display what you intended them to. On your page, you were using the deprecated <font> tag. When browsers eventually stop supporting it, it will look as if you nowiki'd the <font> tag: green text will become <font color="green">green text</font>. Why the WMF cannot implement some code to keep the font tag working is beyond me. The other fix I implemented was adding the {{stack end}} template to fix a missing end tag (this is like a <span> that is never "closed" with a </span>). Happy editing! HouseBlastertalk 22:25, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the context, and especially the stack. I had been trying to fix my userboxes for way too long and that was probably sloppy copy/paste from someone's whose were displaying the way I wanted. Not surprised the ninja star broke. I think that's a decade old, ancient in internet language. Have a great day! Star Mississippi 16:49, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Contentious topics procedure now in effect

You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to updates on the Arbitration Committee's contentious topics procedure revision process.

In December, the Arbitration Committee adopted the contentious topics procedure, which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period.

The drafting arbitrators warmly thank all those who have worked to implement the new procedure during this implementation period and beyond. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:44, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Contentious topics procedure now in effect

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 21:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Happy Fourth First Edit Day!

Hey, HouseBlaster. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 01:17, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 February 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:44, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:02, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Portal CSDs

Thanks for starting Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#RfC: Should P1 and P2 be repealed as CSDs?. I've closed the discussion as consensus to deprecate WP:CSD criteria P1 and P2 and have made the appropriate changes to implement the retirement of those criteria. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:09, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

CSD criteria are closely entangled with many templates so there are probably a whole bunch of other changes that should be made as well. This lists what I did for F10 just the other week. I will probably not have time to do it in the next few days so feel free to take a stab at it if you want. --Trialpears (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 00:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thank you for assisting with the Wednesday Martin edit request. I've been seeking editor assistance to update and improve Jonathan Karp's entry, too, if you have any interest in taking a look. A couple of the requests are as simple as moving existing text so the article reads better. I'd appreciate any help at Talk:Jonathan Karp, otherwise thanks again for helping with Wednesday's date of birth. Inkian Jason (talk) 15:10, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (conflicts and protests) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 18:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 March 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 March 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
I debated for a bit whether or not your comment on the close review was barnstar worthy, until I realized that it obviously is. You are one of the only people, on either side, who actually took the time to analyze the arguments put forth. Thank you for that! Cessaune [talk] 03:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Cessaune, before Real Life decided to pull me away from the keyboard, I swear I was typing a message to your talk page to say thank you for your conduct and comments in the discussion. I went to grab some diffs, and I saw the "you have a new message!" bar. This is the second time this has happened to me in the past month...

Anyways, thank you, sincerely. What I was going to say to you last night: you also made specific points addressing the matter at hand. But what I was more impressed with was your ability to stand by principles, even when they would "disadvantage" your "side". Thank you! HouseBlastertalk 00:53, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

CC-BY

Hi, I don't know why you're changing this to CC BY, it's not a typo and it's not incorrect... --Randykitty (talk) 11:58, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

@Randykitty: It actually is. According to the CC style guide,
  • Individual clauses (e.g., BY, NC, etc.) should be strung together with a hyphen.
  • For example: CC BY-NC-ND
  • Modifiers (e.g. CC) should not be followed by a hyphen.
  • For example: CC BY
(emphasis mine). Best, HouseBlastertalk 12:07, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I'll be darned, didn't even know they had a style guide. Seems a bit trivia to me. Anyway, thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 12:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
    • @Randykitty: Honestly, neither did I until very recently! I agree it is fairly trivial, but my thought process was that almost all typos are trivial. And I agree with this OP: "CC and its licences are so important to the project that it makes sense to go the extra mile to make sure we do everything we can to 'dot our i's and cross our t's' in regards to such technicalities". HouseBlastertalk 12:28, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #25

Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Celebrations

Leveling up release

5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February

  • In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
  • Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.

Recent changes

  • Add a link
    • Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [1][2]
    • We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
  • The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [3]
  • Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
  • Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work

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

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 April 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello HouseBlaster,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

  • There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
  • Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
  • Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
  • This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello HouseBlaster,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Tech News: 2023-15

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [11][12]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-16

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [16][17]
  • For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [18]

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from O-Mound84 on James Bradley (basketball) (20:26, 18 April 2023)

Hi, I've never edited on Wikipedia. How do I enter a person's date of death & place of death on the top info? --O-Mound84 (talk) 20:26, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Welcome O-Mound84, and good question! I believe you are referring to what we call "infoboxes". The first thing is that everything in a Wikipedia article is required by policy to be "verifiable". This means that before you can add information to an article, you must be able to add a citation to a reliable source which supports your assertion. Do you have a reliable source that indicates that Bradley has passed away? While it may be true that he is dead, on Wikipedia, we care about verifiability, not truth.
Once you have a reliable source, you can go ahead and add the information to the article, including in the "infobox". All infoboxes are templates, which have a specific syntax on Wikipedia. To use a template, you type {{name of template}}. However, many templates also take in parameters, which modify the way the template looks. To pass a parameter to a template, you type {{name of template |parameter1=value |parameter2=value}} (the line is the vertical bar; you can type it as shift+\ on most computers). In this particular instance, you want to pass the infobox parameter the "death_date" and "death_place" parameters. You should add two new lines below where it says "|birth_place = " that say:

|death_date = insert date of death here
|death_place = insert place of death here

Does this help? If anything does not make sense, please do not hesitate to ask more questions. Best, HouseBlastertalk 22:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! Very helpful. I've used Wikipedia for years as a valuable resource. Now, I'm trying to put in some stuff, as a University of Memphis Tigers' athletics fan mainly. I've noticed a lot of gaps. O-Mound84 (talk) 18:41, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
​My pleasure! Make sure you reach out if you have any other questions, and I will be more than happy to answer them to the best of my ability! Best, HouseBlastertalk 20:33, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Procedural notification

Hi, I and others have proposed additional options at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC_on_a_procedural_community_desysop. You may wish to review your position in that RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:30, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
  • There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Two-nation theory on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:30, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-17

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [20]
  • For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [21][22][23]

Changes later this week

  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [24]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:02, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:17, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Page mover granted

Hello, HouseBlaster. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, move subpages when moving the parent page(s), and move category pages.

Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving a redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.

Useful links:

If you do not want the page mover right anymore, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Thank you, and happy editing! Primefac (talk) 09:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from Priyanshu KS (07:04, 28 April 2023)

Hello Houseblaster, I see you have been assigned as my mentor. I wanted to say that I am not a new editor and this is my new ID because I lost my old ID by the name of Tylertoney Dude perfect (talk · contribs). On my old ID, I had about 650 edits so I know the basics but I will still ask a lot of questions and am looking forward to that.

I wanted to request you to block my previous ID because I don't want to fall into a sock puppet case . Thank you. --Priyanshu KS (talk) 07:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

@Priyanshu KS: Hello, and welcome back! I am not an administrator, and so cannot block your previous account for you. However, I do not think an administrator would be willing to block your original account because there is no way to prove that you actually used the first account. But in any case, because there were no active blocks/bans on your previous account, you are entitled to a clean start, where you stop using your old account and create a new one. Making a new account for this reason is explicitly as a legitimate use of an alternate account. Therefore, I think your best bet is to ignore the old account. Please let me know if you have any more questions, and happy editing, HouseBlastertalk 11:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from Priyanshu KS (07:37, 29 April 2023)

Hey, HouseBlaster. I edited the Breastfeeding section in the Safiye Ali page. Please check it and tell me.

Personally, I feel like clarity is missing. For example Sut Damlasi, which is mentioned in the article, needs to be defined in a line or two before it's mention for it to be clear. I also changed the title, so please see if it's okay or not.

Priyanshu KS (talk) 07:37, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

@Priyanshu KS: your changes look amazing! Thank you so much for your improvements, and keep up the good work! HouseBlastertalk 16:19, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the positive review.
Priyanshu KS (talk) 18:16, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from Priyanshu KS (14:52, 29 April 2023)

Hello, On the Safiye Ali page there is a reference which has been used at seven different places. Is it okay with Wikipedia's rule to use a single reference so many times on the same article? --Priyanshu KS (talk) 14:52, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

@Priyanshu KS: Absolutely! You can use a single reference as many times as you need. HouseBlastertalk 16:19, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Then I will read that article and re-instate the reference wherever it was previously mentioned.
Priyanshu KS (talk) 18:17, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from Priyanshu KS (18:51, 29 April 2023)

Hello, could you check if this line mentioned in the Safiye Ali page should be there or not :

"Her work in the Turkish Women's Union, her views on women's rights, and her photos were frequently published in newspapers."

I personally am having doubt if this counts as neutral or not. Priyanshu KS (talk) 18:51, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

@Priyanshu KS: as that sentence was uncited, I have gone ahead and remove it. If there were an inline citation to a very high-quality source, then a sentence like that may be appropriate. But without an inline citation, it should be removed. Keep up the good work! HouseBlastertalk 23:02, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from Priyanshu KS (03:35, 30 April 2023)

Hello, From the Safiye Ali page I removed the excess detail tag from the top, as I felt it had been adequately addressed but am not sure about the Encyclopedic tone tag. Could it be removed? --Priyanshu KS (talk) 03:35, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Question from ยังม่พอ รออยู่ on Forward secrecy (04:42, 1 May 2023)

facebook เข้าไม่ได้ --ยังม่พอ รออยู่ (talk) 04:42, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

@ยังม่พอ รออยู่: I am not sure what you mean. Do you have a question about editing Wikipedia? HouseBlastertalk 19:50, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:HouseBlaster/Archive_2&oldid=1196912827"