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MusikBot removing protection templates from pc-protected pages

See [1] [2] [3]. I used a script (User:Amorymeltzer/scripts#qrfpp.js) to pc-protect those pages and it added these templates. MusikBot then removed them because it believed the pages are not protected. Could you take a look at that? Regards SoWhy 11:16, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @SoWhy: according to Template:Pp-blp/doc the template you placed is not for pending changes protected pages ({{Pp-pc}} should be used instead). There are a bunch of ways to fix this, but it doesn't seem the bot was wrong in removing the pp-blp template per se. — xaosflux Talk 12:29, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Good point. We probably should have pc-variants of the various pp-templates. That said, maybe the bot could replace the template with {{pp-pc}} instead of removing the template completely? Regards SoWhy 13:06, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Agree, that seems to be a "better" behavior for the bot, as it is what a human would (should) do. — xaosflux Talk 13:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Eh, I dunno, kinda seems like I should just have the script use the right template? Module:Protection banner grabs the "type" from the name of the template used, I believe, so even though {{pp-blp}} and {{pp-pc}} call the same thing, it treats them differently. I think there's a good argument for doing away with the nitpicking, since all pp templates just call the same thing, perhaps even having them all redirect and be done with it, but until then I rather think the bot is fine and I'm at fault. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:26, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@Amorymeltzer: making the script use the "current" template would be great (but I'm right on board with the idea of merging a bunch of these templates as a longer term fix). — xaosflux Talk 16:06, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
The bot was originally designed to fix protection templates (hence the code name User:MusikBot/FixPP), including the type, expiries, and so forth. In the BRFA we ultimately decided against this. I don't have a strong interest in reviving this functionality but I can if we really want it :) At any rate, I think you can just use {{pp}} and it will work for any protection type/level? This is how TheMagikBOT did it when adding protection templates. Only {{pp|small=yes}} was added and the Lua magic did the rest. — MusikAnimal talk 16:36, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Nah, it still whines with just {{pp}} on PC-protected pages. The Lua is beyond me but I think it'd be a reasonable change. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:54, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@SoWhy: Should be taken care of now, let me know if you have any more issues with it; it needs a ton of cleanup work, and pending changes in particular has given me some headaches. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:39, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

function assignPermission in your userRightsManager.js code

Hi MusikAnimal! I of course use this script to assign permissions and make life easier at WP:PERM, but I noticed that the summary when assigning such permissions just includes a bare URL to the permalink instead of encapsulating it in a wiki link. I think that if you modified how you formatted the reason parameter (see below) in your function, summaries would look much more neat and clean...

Current code: reason: '+' + permissionNames[permission] + '; ' + summary + '; ' + permaLink + tagLine,
Suggested code: reason: '+' + permissionNames[permission] + '; ' + summary + '; ' + '([[' + permaLink + '|permalink]]) ' + tagLine,

It's of course up to you; after all, it's your code... but I figured I'd send my thoughts along and see what you think. :-) Let me know... Cheers ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 09:00, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Oshwah: I think what you actually mean is to change
permaLink = '[[Special:PermaLink/' + revId + '#User:' + userName + ']]'; to
permaLink = '[[Special:PermaLink/' + revId + '#User:' + userName + '|permalink]]';
Or some such text. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Amorymeltzer - Yes; that is a much better way of coding this compared to my suggestion above - format the variable itself, then leave the reason parameter unchanged. Good call. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:48, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Oshwah:  Done with Special:Diff/880144586. I did not test this change but I don't see how it could possibly have broken anything. Let me know if it did! — MusikAnimal talk 17:08, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Your auto-template-protection proposal

This is rather cheeky of me, but would you mind terribly if I had a go at a bot for this (assuming it gains consensus)? I've been meaning to get my head around the bot approval process for a while and start looking at automatable tasks, and this seems as good an opportunity as any. GoldenRing (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: I sort of had my heart set on it, to be honest. I even have some code already written. I also already have an flagged adminbot, MusikBot II. So hopefully I can claim this one... but if you're looking for bots to write there is a steady supply of ideas at WP:BOTREQ! :) — MusikAnimal talk 17:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
No problem. I realise it was sheer importunity to ask. GoldenRing (talk) 17:47, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
GoldenRing, if you do you want a task to do, I have one that I've been meaning to code but don't mind if someone else does it: there are ~20000 IPs at Wikipedia:Database reports/Indefinitely blocked IPs (warning: massive page), with the vast majority being 2004-~2009 proxy blocks. As IPs are usually only proxies for a few months, all those old blocks are no longer necessary and a bot could easily unblock the lot. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:16, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 5, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Assassination attempts

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Street fair • Vicki Gunvalson

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 2

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the second issue of the new Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Miscellaneous

  • There was a recent village pump thread about either Enterprisey's or Equazcion's "Script Installer" tool becoming a gadget. It wasn't officially closed, and so far neither has become a gadget. Stay tuned for updates.


Lets keep up the good work! --DannyS712 (talk) 03:09, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [4]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 6, 2019)

A typical Finnish school meal lunch, served free of charge to all pupils.
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

School meal

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Assassination attempts • Street fair

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 February 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Administrator changes

added Enterprisey • JJMC89
readded BorgQueen
removed Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

removedEnterprisey

Guideline and policy news

  • 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.

Technical news

  • 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.

Miscellaneous

  • 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.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

About this edit:
it made me think extended
confirmed is so old?

It doesn't matter
but the RFC was held
in 2016.

Thanks for your efforts
with adding protection to
often-used templates.

isaacl (talk) 20:41, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

As I said, I'm going to refrain from using ECP until we have explicit consensus to use it for this purpose. I don't mind applying it as a human (when it makes sense to do so), but I don't think bots should go against consensus :) Best, — MusikAnimal talk 00:19, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

My only reason
for sending you a message
was to fix the date.

I have no concerns
about your plans not to use
extended confirmed.

isaacl (talk) 06:10, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Aha! Your beautiful poetry confused me :) Fixed. Thanks for pointing out this error. — MusikAnimal talk 06:26, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello to you both
I am a talk page stalker
Haikus are quite fun!

--DannyS712 (talk) 06:54, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

A message from AdamLibh

Dear MusikAnimal,

Sorry to disturb you! I've been trying to translate the page 'Aeons' (ga) from Irish into English, and have been blocked by the abuse filter for translations. The reason it is giving is that the translation 'contains 100% of unmodified text', which seems strange to me as I have done what I think is a complete translation. I wonder if it may have something to do with the fact that no automatic machine translation took place at the start when I clicked 'translate article'. If you would be able to advise or help me, that would be very much appreciated - and thank you very much for your time!

--AdamLibh (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@AdamLibh: Hi! I'm not sure where you saw the "contains 100% of unmodified text" message. The filter prevents any user from using the content translation tool unless they are extended confirmed. This was in response to widespread misuse, partial translations, etc. I can see from the filter log that your translations are just fine. So, I have granted extedned-confirmed rights to your account. You should now be able to use the content translation tool without worry. Regards, — MusikAnimal talk 00:17, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: That's fantastic news, and very generous of you - thank you very very much! I apologise for the lack of haiku or rhyme - next time, I'll have to try a bit harder!

--AdamLibh (talk) 12:38, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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

Changes later this week

  • It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [5]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

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17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:DannyS712 test/remind me.js

 You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:DannyS712 test/remind me.js.

I hear you like verse.
I wrote you some earlier.
Hope you enjoyed it!

DannyS712 (talk) 07:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Some SQL help please (repost)

Hi there. A while back you helped me with some SQL queries and I hope you can do so again. I tried to create a query that attempts to find deletions of a certain type and outputs both the time the page was deleted and the time it was created. Since the only way I know how to find the creation time is to look for the earliest revision in the revision (or archive) table, I tried to query that one that the same time for the earliest revision where the page id was involved. Unfortunately, the query times out and is killed but I have no clue why. Could you take a look and help? Regards SoWhy 08:10, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

(sorry for the repost, this got archived without a reply, so I assumed you just didn't see it. SoWhy 18:34, 5 February 2019 (UTC))

@SoWhy: Hey, sorry I never got back to you! This one seems pretty tricky. You might find toolforge:sql-optimizer helpful, where you can see that indeed this query is unlikely to finish. For starters, you don't appear to be filtering by user, so logging_logindex might be better (though the EXPLAIN results still look unpromising). Also, at current you shouldn't need to JOIN on user since you can grab that from log_user_text or ar_user_text. This will eventually not work (phab:T167246). On that note, I don't think log_comment works anymore (phab:T166733), at least for comments made after October 25, 2018. You will need to JOIN on comment with log_comment_id = comment_id, and SELECT comment_text. I'll take a stab at the query when I have time. Hope this helps, — MusikAnimal talk 18:44, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

The Sustainability Initiative

The Sustainability Initiative

Hello MusikAnimal: An invitation for you to check out the Sustainability Initiative, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia projects. If you're interested, please consider adding your name to the list of supporters, which serves to express and denote the community's support of the initiative. Thanks for your consideration! North America1000 10:31, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

@Northamerica1000: A year and a half ahead of you :) meta:Special:Diff/17109347 — MusikAnimal talk 17:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
I knew that would happen eventually. Takes too long to cross check against my mailing list. Oh yeah, and great minds think alike. North America1000 18:53, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
They do :) — MusikAnimal talk 19:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Edit filter request

You've been so kind to help in the past, but are you able to enable the edit filter for our Interstate Highway friend? I believe it's 646. –Fredddie™ 19:13, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Oh, my favourite. It's been almost a year... I was beginning to miss them! I've enabled the filter — MusikAnimal talk 19:29, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
He seems to be celebrating a 5th anniversary of sorts, so it might save us some headache in the future if we schedule it for the first few days of February every year. Heh. –Fredddie™ 01:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, MusikAnimal. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Sent it yesterday, no hurry. Just wondering if it was spam-filtered. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:41, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Received! I'll reply soon :) — MusikAnimal talk 16:40, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Rollback Request

Hi, i'm requesting for rollback permission. I have been undoing possible vandalism edits and i want to help protect Wikipedia articles. I do not intend to vandalize. I just want to help Wikipedia. Seby1541 (talk) 06:22, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

@Seby1541: Thanks for helping fight vandalism! Please make your request for rollback rights at WP:PERM/R. Regards, — MusikAnimal talk 16:42, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 7, 2019)

Pondicherry is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry.
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Pondicherry

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: School meal • Assassination attempts

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 February 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

PERM request

Hi MusikAnimal, I have submitted a request at WP:RFP/AWB but nobody reviewed it yet. Can you please review it? (I've contacted other admins but all of them told me to wait or that they're inexperienced in PERMS) GN-z11 ☎ ★ 12:42, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Done by Swarm — MusikAnimal talk 17:50, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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

Recent changes

  • You can use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

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18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Page protection

Hi, can you protect the Josh Okogie page? Thanks. -KH-1 (talk) 05:25, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done I assume they recently traded teams or something? Sorry the RFPP response was so slow. You can also get urgent admin help on IRC at #wikipedia-en connect, for future reference. Regards — MusikAnimal talk 05:36, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Proxy checker

Hey MusikAnimal, I now have to go through extra hurdles to use the tool. I have to sign in and it doesn't populate the IP I'm checking in the box; I have to paste it in. Why are you making lazy me work harder?--Bbb23 (talk) 00:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) From talking to Mr. SQL its because now that the tool's been advertised more widely, he had to put in place more controls so random people from the internet don't use up all the proxy checks that people have granted us. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:54, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
That explains the logging in, but what about putting the IP in the box for us?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Bbb23, Good catch. I believe i can fix that. SQLQuery me! 02:04, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Feature added. SQLQuery me! 05:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
@SQL: Thank you very much (and for the extra notice on my Talk page). There's still one thing about the rquired log-in I don't understand. When looking at the contributions of an IP on Wikipedia, the proxy check link is not available. If, however, it is available if someone accesses the tool directly, that would explain the need to require a sign-in. Is there a way to code it so it only requires a log-in if accessed directly?--Bbb23 (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 8, 2019)

Mixian rice noodles being cooked on a gas stove at a noodle restaurant in Kunming, Yunnan, China
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Gas stove

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Pondicherry • School meal

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 February 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-08

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

Recent changes

  • When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [6]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [7]

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

23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, MusikAnimal. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.--DannyS712 (talk) 01:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

responseHelper

Hey. I saw this edit and was wondering if there was a way to eliminate the duplicate "using responseHelper" in the summary. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:38, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Replace the last line with something like
var ad = " (using [[User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper|responseHelper]])";
$("#wpSummary").val($("#wpSummary").val().replace(vanity, '; ') + (response.summary + value).trim() + ad);
Wouldn't deal with multiple "Declined" but that's probably not worth the complexity. Alternatively, if you're clicking two buttons, it's also a good idea to consider a more manual summary. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:20, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

" icon depicting two speech Bubbles"

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

  1. First, sign up your group here.
  2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
  3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
    1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
    2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
    3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
    4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
    5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
  4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

earwig

Just OOC, but is it down at the moment? Sorry if there's a better place to ask! Hope you're well. ——SerialNumber54129 15:12, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. User talk:The Earwig would be the place to ask, but looks like the tool is back up and running now. — MusikAnimal talk 23:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Reports

Saw you were pretty active over at Wikipedia:Database reports. Might I be able to ask you a couple of questions about reports? --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:13, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: Of course! Fire away. — MusikAnimal talk 23:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
Sorry for the late response. Last night was date night. :-p So I'm just taking my first look at reports. I'm actually a software developer by trade so the chance to work with SQL makes me happy! My main question has to do with modules. What I'm looking to do is create a report that lists templates with high numbers of transclusions that do not implement Module:Check for unknown parameters. I'm thinking something similar to Wikipedia:Database reports/Unprotected templates with many transclusions. The issue is I don't know how to check if a template uses the module. The only way I can think of is to actually query the source code of the template, which I'm not even sure is possible. If it is possible, I would imagine it is wildly inefficient. Do you have any thoughts? Can you point me in the right direction here? Thanks in advance! --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 19:06, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Bump... If you get a chance... --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 22:48, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: If a template invokes a module, it should have a reference to it in the templatelinks table, just like it would if for transcluded templates. So your SQL might look something like:
SELECT tl_title, COUNT(*)
FROM page
JOIN templatelinks t1 ON page_title = t1.tl_title
  AND page_namespace = t1.tl_namespace
WHERE t1.tl_namespace = 10
AND NOT EXISTS (
  SELECT 1
  FROM templatelinks t2
  WHERE t2.tl_from = 42286729 /* [[Module:Check for unknown parameters]] */
  AND t2.tl_title = page_title /* t2.tl_title = t1.tl_title might be faster */
)
HAVING COUNT(*) > 5000
No idea if that actually works, but the NOT EXISTS (...) clause I think is the key part of your query. Don't expect this to go any bit fast. To spot-check your query, you could first revise it to look at a single template that you know doesn't invoke the module (that way it will go very fast), and see if you get a result. If that works, extend it to look for all highly-transcluded templates. Hope this helps. — MusikAnimal talk 23:10, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
And how do I go about getting the report to run as part of the reports page? I assume it isn't as easy as just adding the markup to that page... --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:24, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: You're going to need some rough consensus and a BRFA to add a new report to Wikipedia:Database reports, if that's what you mean. Start off having your bot write to its userspace. If the report is of narrow interest that might be the best place for it to live — MusikAnimal talk 23:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Wow I feel stupid. I didn't realize this was done by bots. *FACEPALM* --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Hehe yes. There are some MediaWiki database reports like Special:ListDuplicatedFiles, but you probably don't want to go that route. Regards, — MusikAnimal talk 23:42, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Now it makes alot more sense... lol. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:44, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 9, 2019)

A cheeseburger at a restaurant
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Cheeseburger

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Gas stove • Pondicherry

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 February 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-09

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

Changes later this week

  • When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [9]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

21:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Revdel request

Hey, can you please revdel this. Thanx, - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 03:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done — MusikAnimal talk 03:45, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
TY :) - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 03:49, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Module:Toolbar

This module should be restored to full protection: it was erroneously included by me in my list of pages to semi-protect. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:30, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pppery: Oh dear! It was actually at template protection beforehand, but with that transclusion count I'm going with full protection. Thanks — MusikAnimal talk 03:35, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm human, I make mistakes (and full was the right move, given that the template was full-protected as part of the system messages batch) {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:36, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
No worries! As the admin who pushed the protect button, it's my responsibility, hence my mistake :) I'm just glad you noticed it! I've double-checked the others that were semi'd and they look good. Thank you again for bringing all of these templates to our attention — MusikAnimal talk 03:43, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

On the bright side, this slip-up inspired me to make an edit request to Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items. This means I have five pending edit requests open at the same time, is that a record of some sort? {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

You left the move protection level at templateeditor. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 05:23, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done — MusikAnimal talk 18:14, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Feb 27 WikiWednesday Salon + Mar 2 MoMA Art+Feminism and beyond

February 27, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 09:00, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Saturday March 2: MoMA Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon

Art+Feminism’s sixth-annual MoMA Wikipedia Edit-a-thon will take place at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Education and Research Building, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 4 West 54 Street, on Saturday, March 2, 2019 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. People of all gender identities and expressions are encouraged to attend.

And on Sunday this weekend:

Stay tuned for other Art+Feminism and related edit-a-thons throughout the month!

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 28 February 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 3

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (February 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the third issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Remove a page revision

I reverted an offensive edit by User:186.11.14.74

¿Can you remove the page revision from the public archives, please?

Thanks.

Seby1541 20:35, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Borderline redactable, in my opinion, but  Done. Thanks for the report. — MusikAnimal talk 21:41, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 10, 2019)

Wanted posters in Japan, 2004
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Wanted poster

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Cheeseburger • Gas stove

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 March 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-10

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
  • The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [10][11]

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

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

  • 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.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Admin news

Hi. I saw that you sent the most recent admin newsletter. We failed to include Mr. Stradivarius having their IAdmin rights removed (for inactivity reasons). Is it okay if I do an AWB run and add that, or should it be reported next month? See Special:PermanentLink/885587867#Inactive interface administrators 2019-02-28. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 21:23, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I would strongly avoid using AWB on user talk pages. Just report it next month. --Izno (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: Okay. Never mind then --DannyS712 (talk) 21:49, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes I agree this isn't a pressing issue that needs a mass fix. Though, technically we are reporting on the previous month (February), and Mr. Stradivarius's int-admin flag wasn't removed until 00:05, 1 March :) — MusikAnimal talk 21:58, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Oh, thanks. Also, on a very tangentially related note, do you think you can take a look at this BRFA? Obviously I wouldn't use it in this case. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 22:00, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
IntAdmin activity, like sysops and bureaucrats, are assessed via bot and processed at the start of each month (typically by Xaosflux), so would be treated the same in the newsletter. I had meant to add Strad there, but made a bunch of dumb, distracted typos at the time so stopped editing for a bit; it's added now. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:55, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Slow filter

Hello, MusikAnimal. I understand you have access to the Sooper Seekrit True Filter Performance Data(TM). Is it possible to find out which filter(s) caused this to happen? 169 seconds is scary. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:24, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow: Looks like it was Special:AbuseFilter/642. It must be the global_user_groups variable. — MusikAnimal talk 22:34, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Not what I would have expected. I'm not seeing any way to avoid that check, since there's nothing special for OTRS members in user_rights. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:05, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: Yeah, seems unavoidable to me as well. I recall seeing this filter popup as being especially slow, occasionally, but never to this degree. It was probably some sort of fluke. Most edits going through that filter are fast enough, even if the global_user_groups clause is executed. — MusikAnimal talk 00:19, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 11, 2019)

Zippers with common teeth variations: metal teeth (top), coil teeth and plastic teeth
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Zipper

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Wanted poster • Cheeseburger

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 March 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

MusikBot ECP monitor

Hi. At User:MusikBot/ECPMonitor/Report, I noticed that the summaries of protection log entries aren't being added. For example, when Dooney Boys (gang) was creation-protected here, the summary was Repeatedly recreated: See Dooney Boys, which is indefinitely salted and at the same level due to repeated recreation but the Bot reported a blank summary. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 05:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! This has been fixed. I must have overlooked this task when updating everything for phab:T166733 — MusikAnimal talk 17:46, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

  • Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
  • Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [12]
  • Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [13][14]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

A message from AlkhatamInsyallah

Pal, the Christchurch mosque shootings page is being constantly edited even after being given a semi-protection on the page. Shouldn't it be given a higher security since I think it's a pretty sensitive issue. Cheers. AlkhatamInsyallah (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello MusikAnimal,

News
Discussions of interest
  • Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
  • {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
  • A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.
Reminders
  • NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
NPP Tools Report
  • Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
  • copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
  • The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 12, 2019)

Many of the internal organs of the human body
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Organ (anatomy)

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Zipper • Wanted poster

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 March 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

RFPP

Hey Musik, can you see if would consider actioning this request. Thanx. - FlightTime (open channel) 04:21, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Nvrmnd  Done by Ronhjones. Thanx anyway :) - FlightTime (open channel) 04:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

Changes later this week

  • When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [15][16]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [17]
  • Advanced item Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

March 20: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC + March 23: Asian Art Archive/New York Public Library

March 20, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! This month, optional post-meetup drinks afterward at 9pm!--Wikimedia New York City Team 18:47, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Saturday March 23: Asian Art Archive/New York Public Library Art+Feminism Editathon

Organized by Asia Art Archive in America]and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs of the New York Public Library and in collaboration with Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, the Art+Feminism: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Women in Art in Asia helps participants edit Wikipedia to create and improve articles about women artists and practitioners in and from Asia, including architects, designers, filmmakers, curators, and art historians. Books and research materials—as well as refreshments—will be provided.

Also check out other Art+Feminism and related edit-a-thons throughout the month!

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Proxy check

Hey there, proxy check is not working for me. I click on the link, and I'm asked to pick the wiki (usually it defaults to en.wiki), but the drop-down doesn't work and I am unable to select any wiki. I'll ping SQL just in case they're around somewhere, but they appear to be on break. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Bbb23, I'm not sure what the issue was - but I restarted the webservice, and it's working again. SQLQuery me! 04:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
@SQL: Thanks! --Bbb23 (talk) 12:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 13, 2019)

Lady Gaga playing a keytar, which is a type of keyboard instrument
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Keyboard instrument

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Organ (anatomy) • Zipper

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-13

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

Recent changes

  • The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [18]

Problems

  • There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [19]
  • The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [20]
  • Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [21]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Partial blocks RfC?

Hey, MusikAnimal. I was at an edit-a-thon recently, and while I was there, I ran into CLo (WMF) (talk · contribs), who told me that partial blocks have been implemented to a point where they can be deployed. This made me wonder whether the English Wikipedia had any interest in adopting this new feature. We'd probably need to hold some kind of community RfC to discuss this – I was thinking about modelling it off of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy. Do you have any thoughts on whether we should start moving forward? Mz7 (talk) 22:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mz7: Yes! Partial blocks is live on the Italian Wikipedia and from what I understand it is being used regularly to much appraise. I would love to see it here on enwiki. I was told the Anti-Harassment Tools team would start a community consultation sometime in the near future. But I was also told that if anyone volunteers here wanted to spearhead the discussion, they would be around to support it and respond to inquiries. So yes, let's do this :) Your point of contact for this effort I believe would be User:SPoore (WMF) (and Sydney, please correct me if anything I've said is incorrect!). I concur WP:ECP2016 is a good example for an RfC format.

I believe partial blocks was chiefly invented to help fight harassment (hence why the AHT team took it on :). However, to share my quick 2c: For me, I'd mostly use it to block users and IP ranges from editing specific pages, instead of having to protect them, should I see there are other unrelated constructive editors to those pages. This could be for edit wars, every day vandalism, discretionary sanctions, etc. There are/were some edit filters we used for this that will become obsolete thanks to partial blocks. Of course, admins would need to give thought to whether the user(s) are likely to extend disruption to other pages after being partially blocked, in which case a full site block might be warranted from the get-go. But the possibility of more granular, per-page blocks, in itself, is quite exciting :) — MusikAnimal talk 23:48, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Solid! With respect to using partial blocks to combat disruption from registered users, we should keep in mind that topic bans are also a remedy we can and have been using – the thought is that "if we cannot trust a user to respect a topic ban, why should we trust the user to edit Wikipedia at all?" I want to ping TonyBallioni because I know in the past he has spoken against partial blocks for certain use cases.
I think the primary use case is the one you mentioned: partially blocking IP ranges as an alternative to page protection to limit collateral damage. Another use case I would consider is when a user is edit warring on an article – a partial block on the article would force the user to either take the dispute to the talk page or disengage entirely.
To get the ball rolling, I'm seeing the following options that the community could !vote on in an RfC:
  • Option A: (most restrictive) Do not enable partial blocks on the English Wikipedia
  • Option B: Allow partial blocks for edit warring only
  • Option C: Allow partial blocks of IPs and IP ranges for any form of disruption
  • Option D: (least restrictive) Allow partial blocks of any user for any form of disruption
Options B and C aren't mutually exclusive, so they could both theoretically pass if they have consensus. I'm totally open to adding other options, or let me know if you think we should toss a few of these options, or maybe go with a different format entirely. Mz7 (talk) 03:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I think those are fair options. I'll be either for A or B (likely A, but I could be talked into B.) I'm not sure if I'd include the option for ranges: I get the argument for it, but I'm not entirely sure enough people know how range blocks work so as to be able have a discussion about it. I'm unsure if that's just generally my opposition to the idea talking (which I wouldn't want to influence an RfC design), or if it actually could create problems for the discussion itself. Anyway, thanks for working on this (and for the ping). TonyBallioni (talk) 03:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
@Mz7: That seems like a good start! In regards to editing restrictions, one interesting idea is to use partial blocks as a means to reference the restriction. Say a user is topic banned from anything related to the India–Pakistan conflict, you could partial block them from Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts with a link to the ArbCom case or diff at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions in the block summary. Similarly for interaction bans, where you'd block a user from editing the other's user talk page. Maybe that's unnecessarily shaming the user, since blocks are more visible than Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. Just an idea. I personally am not that involved with imposing/enforcing editing restrictions, anyway.

In general, I see partial blocks as a means to prevent general disruption under the philosophy of using the least inflicting but effective administrative action, including the preventive, not punitive mentality. I'm somewhat disagree with TonyBallioni; If enabled and limited to B, I see a lot of IAR uses, because it doesn't make sense to cause collateral damage when you don't have to. We do basically the same thing with AbuseFilter now, and none of have complained -- and why would they? We block the bad, not the good :) If I can't use partial blocks for general vandalism / long-term abuse, when say there are a LOT of good edits in range, except to a few articles, I'd just create a filter. This is very much sub-par because it'd unnecessarily be slowing down editing for everyone. The partial blocks double as the better solution because you'd get the record-keeping via the block log, which in this scenario I think would be more acceptable than using it to record editing restrictions on established editors. Anyway, we can save the debate for the actual RfC :) — MusikAnimal talk 04:15, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, this is all interesting. I think the idea of recording editing restrictions is a little problematic because we would have to deal with the hundreds of editing restrictions that are still currently active, and the shaming angle is also valid (relevant is Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Recording in the block log). Not sure whether we should include it. In the meantime, I've put up a draft RfC at User:Mz7/Partial blocks RfC. The structure is kind of messy right now as I'm trying to think about how to organize this, but in the draft I consolidated Options B and C into one "only allow partial blocks in specific cases" subsection where editors can add new specific cases. Mz7 (talk) 11:26, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Mz7, is the intent for B.3 record editing restrictions to exclude enforcing editing restrictions? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, it's important to note that using partial blocks as a means to enforce the editing restriction wasn't an option until now. Some editing restrictions are for just a single page. It's not necessarily about shaming. Before you got blocked from the whole site, or we trust you to abide by your topic ban. Also, to be clear what I meant was to only partially block while the editing restriction is active, so this isn't quite the same as Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Recording in the block log. The partial block would still be preventive in this case, not punitive. I don't think adding the partial blocks for all the existing editing restrictions is a requirement, but I'm sure someone would be willing to do the busy work. — MusikAnimal talk 20:29, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Hi Mz7, thank you for asking about an on wiki discussion about partial blocks. The timing is perfect. By the end of March, the first round of development of partial blocks should be close to completion. And by then Partial block will be deployed and tested on about 6 or 7 wikis, maybe more. If no one else had started a discussion I was planning to post a question asking ENWP community how that they wanted to proceed. Personally, I like the idea of structuring it as a RFC that is similar to WP:ECP2016. Before you settle on the options to present, you might be interested in learning about the manner that it most frequently being used on Italian Wikipedia (the wiki that has used for the longest.) Let me know what other type of information might be useful for making the decision. SPoore (WMF), Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 15:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
@SPoore (WMF): Apologies for the delay in my response. I am certainly interested in how the Italians have been using the new feature! If it's been working out, adding it as an option to the English Wikipedia RfC may not be such a bad idea. Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 22:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
@Mz7:, I'll put together some information and post it to the talk page of the Draft RFC. SPoore (WMF), Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

A message from Jc3s5h

Your one day page protection of "Equinox" has turned out to be insufficient and the article is now being discussed at WP:ANI#Pushing outdated or irrelevant sources at "Equinox" Jc3s5h (talk) 12:16, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

A message from Popcornduff

Popcornduff (talk) 14:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC) Hey, about your Rollback confirmation script... you might be interested in this bug report. Cheers! Popcornduff (talk) 14:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 4

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (March 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the fourth issue of the new Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Miscellaneous


Enjoy your April Fool's, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

FYI

Hello MA. Today I've been finding all sorts of articles in Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates so your bot may be down. I know you might already be aware of this but I wanted to let you know just in case. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 03:56, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping! From what I see in the logs, it's been running properly without any errors. Indeed it hasn't made an edit in a few days, so I'm not sure what's going on :/ I will try to debug this more when I have time. — MusikAnimal talk 04:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Sounds good. I forgot to mention that I had cleaned out the normal ones (the four left are all transclusion items that I can't find) just before I posted here. It'll probably have new ones in it in a few hours. Best regards. MarnetteD|Talk 04:41, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious
Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:00, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 March 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:03, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 14, 2019)

The interior of a gym in The Netherlands, around 1900
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Gym

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Keyboard instrument • Organ (anatomy)

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 April 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

April 2019

You have been given a bock because your account is not being used for any vandalism. Once you have finished your bock, you are welcome to do something silly. Should you wish to appeal for another bock, then add the following text below the bock notice on your talk page: {{moarbocks|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} However, you should read the guide to appealing for bocks first. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 02:51, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

WP:AFD

An article you created or have contributed to has been nominated for deletion
Hello!
Click the image for an important message.
Like, it's April Fools' Day today, you know? North America1000 09:50, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
So...
 

Keep

 

on

Tech News: 2019-14

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

Changes later this week

  • Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [22]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

April 17: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC + April 4 and 5: LaGuardia Community College Translatathon 2019

April 17, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 21:07, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Thursday April 4 and Friday April 5: Translat-a-thon NYC 2019 @ LaGuardia Community College

Translat-a-thon NYC 2019 @ LaGuardia Community College is hosting the second annual Wikipedia Translatathon! At this event on Thursday evening and during the day Friday this week, anyone from the public is invited to LaGuardia to join students, professors, and CUNY faculty in translating Wikipedia articles among any languages which attendees understand. Themes for this event include public health and the history of New York City.

New York City has a large immigrant population and great diversity of speakers of various languages. Among all schools in New York City, LaGuardia has the highest percentage of immigrant students, the highest percentage of students who speak a language other than English as their first language, and the greatest representation of language diversity. It is a strength of LaGuardia that it can present "Wikipedia translatathons", which are Wikipedia translation events.

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • 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.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 15, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Story of the Negro

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Gym • Keyboard instrument

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 8 April 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-15

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

  • You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [25]
  • A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [26]
  • Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [27]

Changes later this week

  • When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [28]
  • The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [29]
  • Advanced item The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [30]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [31][32]
  • Advanced item The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.

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

18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 16, 2019)

Various dairy products: milk, feta cheese, yogurt and parmesan cheese (clockwise from upper-left)
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Dairy product

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Story of the Negro • Gym

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 15 April 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

PermClerk is down

User:MusikBot/PermClerk/Report refers to User:MusikBot/PermClerk/Error log, which hasn't been edited in over a month. It says that you should be contacted if the issue can't be resolved, so I wanted to let you know that the task wasn't working. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 20:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply! I assume you are referring to Special:PermaLink/892047899. I don't know what that was about, but it apparently fixed itself so I will not investigate further. Let me know if anything seems off. Thanks and regards, — MusikAnimal talk 00:11, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-16

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Userpage Barnstar
I was stunned upon looking at this user page for the first time. Thank you. InvalidOStalk 19:26, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
Thank you! It was adapted from User:Worm That Turned, so they get most of the credit :) — MusikAnimal talk 18:01, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Removal of Template:Pp-vandalism

It appears that your bot is frequently removing {{pp-vandalism}} from articles quoting the justification that the article is no longer protected. My reading of the documentation of {{pp-vandalism}} is that the template automatically picks up the relevant protection level and reacts accordingly, and that it doesn't display the icon if the article is not currently protected. Many pages go though frequent cycles of protection, expiry of protection, renewed vandalism, and reimposition of protection, so wouldn't it be sensible to disable the bot from removing the template? I assume that the design to remove the template dates back to when the template didn't auto-detect the protection status? --David Biddulph (talk) 18:50, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Hello David Biddulph. I work with the Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates. I can tell you that the template does display the icon after the protection has expired. I've seen it in the last few days in fact though I can't remember one at the moment but as soon as I see it again I'll leave an example. In my experience it would be misleading to leave the template since it will give the false impression to people who go into edit the article think that it is protected. This is especially true since the need to note expiry times for the protection was removed sometime in the last couple years. Now these are just my thoughts. MusikAnimal will be able to fill you in on details that I am not familiar with. MarnetteD|Talk 18:59, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Indeed sometimes (maybe often) {{pp}} and its variants will automatically show the padlock as appropriate. I think this functionality came well after the bot task was created. Even if it were to always show the padlock accordingly, the practice still seems to be removing the redundant code from the wikitext. Changing this may need broader discussion (for the record I'm indifferent). What we really need is a fully automated system that doesn't involve modifying wikitext at all. — MusikAnimal talk 03:20, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
This made me curious, so I did a quick search, revealing that T209256 is the relevant Phabricator ticket for Mediawiki-integrated padlock icons. eπi (talk | contribs) 02:34, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

A message from HLHJ: COpyvio image

You made this edit on behalf of an IP; unfortunately, the file in question seems to be copyvio (see Commons) and has already been removed from the article once (by me). It may be necessary to undo that edit. I'm sorry. HLHJ (talk) 03:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-17

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

  • The advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [35][36][37]
  • The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [38]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Wikipedia articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [39][40]

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

19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 18, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Gunilla Persson

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Biodegradable plastic • Dairy product

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 April 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-18

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

Recent changes

  • The Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [41][42]

Problems

  • Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [43]

Changes later this week

  • You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [44]
  • When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [45]
  • You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [46]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Advanced item The Wikidata wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
  • Advanced item Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [47]

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

22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 5

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (April 2019). Hello everyone and welcome to the 5th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Until next month, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:37, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

A bot has quietly gone

Hey Musik, looking for next steps. Over in the Discord server, a Croatian editor was concerned that the Wiki stats in the lead of Croatian Wikipedia were out of date. Once I dug in and understood where the data came from, I found Acebot has not edited since April 15. I left a message with Ace111 but no response and they don't seem to be editing. Since this is mainspace visible data, I'm not sure how big a concern it is to restore this bot functionality and get the template's data back up to date. I believe Acebot's code is in github. How long would be appropriate before looking into replacement? -- ferret (talk) 18:10, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ferret: I don't really understand what the bot does, but I see nothing stopping you from seeking a replacement if the operator is unresponsive, especially if you consider the task to be critical. I personally won't have the time to invest in adopting it, if that's what you were hinting at :) Best, — MusikAnimal talk 19:19, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the bot's job is to update the statistics behind {{NUMBEROF}}. Whether that's important or critical, I don't know, just seeking an experience bot operators opinion :) If there's any guidance on when a bot can be declared abandoned, etc. -- ferret (talk) 19:23, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
I emailed that operator. @Ferret: in general, you should never assume a bot will make a future edit, just like you should never assume an editor will. It would be nice if they could fix their bot and get it back up, but if not, the data for that page could be maintained by anyone or a future bot. — xaosflux Talk 19:51, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular

Icon of a white exclamation mark within a black triangle
 Administrators must secure their accounts

The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.

View additional information

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:59, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Wording issue with one of the Twinkle user warnings

Hi, MA! Are you the person to talk to about a possible change in wording in the Twinkle user warnings? It's about the "disruptive editing" tag: the wording that comes up under that tag would be more appropriately called "edit warring". That's usually not what we are looking for when we want to warn someone to stop their disruptive editing. Thanks for any advice - or a referral to whoever does maintain Twinkle! -- MelanieN (talk) 21:56, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN Twinkle warnings are just substituted templates. I think the one you are referring to is {{Uw-disruptive2}}. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:34, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I see - thanks. Uw-disruptive3 also. And no graduated warning templates for edit warring, just the one Uw-editwar which is the same as Uw-3RR. Where should I start a discussion about this? -- MelanieN (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
(talk page watcher)​ Wikipedia talk:Template messages/User talk namespace is a good place to start. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! -- MelanieN (talk) 21:39, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for chiming in Galobtter and JJMC89, I've been quite busy! @MelanieN: I concur WT:UTM is the right venue here (I see you've already posted), and for Twinkle in general, you'll get a speedier response at WT:TW. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 18:52, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Requesting unprotection of Vardan Poghosyan

Would it be possible to unprotect Vardan Poghosyan so the article can be redirected to Vardan Grigorievich Pogosyan? Thanks, S.A. Julio (talk) 12:40, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I have created the redirect. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 19:04, 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)

Fix

Wondering how long before this tool is fixed?

[48]

Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) —Preceding undated comment added 11:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

@Doc James: Poke Harej :) I'm probably going to retire Mediaviews for the time being. It seems the API Harej built isn't as simple to set up in the new Toolforge environment. There's also phab:T207208, once that's resolved we'll have a long-term solution. Feel free to award a token :) — MusikAnimal talk 19:02, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Views of videos are going to be key for showing the impact of the WP:VideoWiki efforts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • 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.

Arbitration

  • 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 so will 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.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

HealthyCeleb.com as a Source for Departed Hip Hop Artist

Bonjour MusikAnimal.

You may not know if this meets the reliable sourcing criteria but 12 months ago on June 18 a Floridian rapper had been assassinated at the tender age of 20. But on that website his ethnicity was made out of Jamaican Italian Egyptian German and Indian ancestries.

Main article said that his race was purely Jamaican but no he also had those four. Please reply back bout this as soon as possible.

In case if you get confused this is the person in question who I'm talking about: Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy better known as XXXTentacion.

Cheers,

67.81.163.178 (talk) 22:58, 4 May 2019 (UTC) 67.81.163.178 (talk) 22:58, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with this subject. I recommend bringing your concerns to Talk:XXXTentacion, assuming XXXTentacion is the article you're talking about. My impression is that healthyceleb.com is not a reliable source. You can learn more about identifying reliable sources at Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Hope this helps, — MusikAnimal talk 17:43, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 19, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Production logo

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Gunilla Persson • Biodegradable plastic

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 6 May 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-19

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

Problems

  • Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [49]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 20, 2019)

Sashimi at a restaurant
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Sashimi

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Production logo • Gunilla Persson

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 13 May 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-20

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

A message from ئارام بکر

Hello MusikAnimal, i am from ckbwiki. I founded this gadget from here and followed the instructions to create it on ckbwiki. But i have some problem now; first, i translated the terms to my language, but i didn't see the result on the dropdown menus! Second, when i hover to the any <li>, the second <ul> appeared on that <ul> instead of next to the <ul>. What should i do to fix them? Thanks! ئارام بکر (talk) 22:00, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@ئارام بکر: Hello! On line 568, just change left to right. That should fix the issue with the menus overlapping. However it appears the widths of the submenus still aren't right. It's not immediately obvious to me why this is. I'm not sure about the translations not showing up... that seemed to work in my testing. I can't look into it right now but I can revisit next week at the Hackathon. I'll get back to you! One day hopefully soon I will do a full rewrite of this gadget so that it is localizable and with native RTL support. When this happens your wiki will be notified :) Best, — MusikAnimal talk 19:55, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
I tried to change left to right at that line code, but changes will not happened! Please look here to see all ralated pages to the gadget. I followed the meta:MoreMenu instructions to install it. If you want, i tell you to active the gadget on ckbwiki to see the problems and results. However, i wait you to help me:) Thanks! --ئارام بکر (talk) 23:24, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello again, I fixed both problems by changing en to ckb from here. Thank you for this useful gadget! --ئارام بکر (talk) 16:08, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Request to protect Bepanah Pyaar article

I request you to have protected this article Bepanah Pyaar because this article is many IP user try to make unhelpful changes so I request you sir accept my request and protect this article at least 1 month, Thank you. Goodd-002 (chatme) 18:44, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

 Done by Lectonar. For future reference, you can get a speedier response by making protection requests at WP:RFPP. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 17:03, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

May 22: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

May 22, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

Featuring this month a presentation by Interference Archive guests, and a group discussion on the role of activist archives and building wiki content based on ephemeral publications and oral histories.

To close off the night, we'll also have Wikidojo - a group collaborative writing activity / vaudeville!

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 17:10, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Could you perform a RevDel on Talk:Aaron Young (artist)

An IP back in 2011 (!) added some most definitely BLP violating statements. Would you mind performing a revdel from the creation of the page to my reversion of the IP's comment. Thanks, Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 20:06, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Borderline worthy of revdel, in my opinion, but  Done. Sorry for the late reply, — MusikAnimal talk 11:28, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Sandbox Vandalizing Continues - QIDb602

Do you remember when someone vandalized my sandbox along with AJ1399's and Saritra's? The user has started vandalizing again after the protection for our sandboxes expired. Also, new accounts that impersonate us have been made. They include QlDb602, OIDb602, AJ1391, and Sarltra. Can you please block those accounts and protect our sandboxes again, perhaps indefinitely so the vandalizer cannot edit them anymore? Thanks!

QIDb602 (talk) 05:22, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

All set. — MusikAnimal talk 21:55, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello MusikAnimal,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

  • Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
  • Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News
Discussions of interest

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712: Niharika is on Community Tech, not the Growth team! :) Community Tech is solely responsible for the improvements that were requested in the survey.
Oops - @Barkeep49 should I do another run to fix it or should we just leave it? --DannyS712 (talk) 23:39, 17 May 2019 (UTC)— MusikAnimal talk 21:45, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
I think (most) everybody knows this is Community Tech's project, so it's perhaps not worth authoring a bot to fix all those talk pages. Up to you! Just make sure you get it right next time =P — MusikAnimal talk 00:12, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
No need to "author[] a bot" - I already have standing approval for using a bot to fix mass messages. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:14, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 21, 2019)

Ancient Greek letters painted on the body of an Attic black-figure cup
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Letter (alphabet)

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Sashimi • Production logo

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 20 May 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-21

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

  • File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [50][51]
  • Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [52][53]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [54]
  • Advanced item The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [55]


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

13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 22, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Josephine Bornebusch

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Letter (alphabet) • Sashimi

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-22

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

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [56][57]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 May 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:11, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 6

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (May 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 6th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Enjoy your summer, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 23, 2019)

The official logo of the latest HTML version, HTML5
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

HTML

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Josephine Bornebusch • Letter (alphabet)

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 3 June 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-23

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

Recent changes

  • You can now write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [58]
  • There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [59]
  • Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [60][61]

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [62]

Changes later this week

  • Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [63]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello MusikAnimal, I'm from ckbwiki. I have a problem with that gadget; when i go to any talk page, the View history tab was missing and not appeared in More or Page dropdown! (This problem at ckbwiki) Can you help me? Thanks! -- ئارام بکر (talk) 01:15, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@ئارام بکر: Hey! I was not able to reproduce this issue. Are other users having this problem? How big is your screen? In Vector, the tabs will collapse if your screen is small enough. MoreMenu (dropdown-menus) will then move the links to the Page menu, but you're saying the link isn't there either, so I'm not sure :/ — MusikAnimal talk 05:12, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
Hello again, yes, i asked an iPad user and he had the same problem. I use Samsung Galaxy A3 (2016) in Vector skin. Yes, all tabs (e.g. New section, Edit source, WikiLove, etc.) are moved to More dropdown, but View history tab not! Can you fix the problem? Thanks, --ئارام بکر (talk) 13:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
I will try to take a look soon but I am a bit swamped with other work, to be honest :/ It's difficult to support forks of the gadget. I really need to rewrite it from scratch, making it localizable, that way other wikis can source the same version. This would make maintenance and debugging a lot easier. — MusikAnimal talk 01:42, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
I know you are busy:) well, i will try to change widths, but when you updated any version, please notify me. Thank you! --ئارام بکر (talk) 10:19, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I forgot to ask ages ago...

So ya, all those IRC pings I never got around to speaking to you...is it possible to have your bot report all declined permission requests in the past 90 days, instead of just the ones for that permission? It would be extremely helpful for me, especially since I recognize users left right and center there who previously have applied and then have to dig. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 04:29, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

While I'm here, User:MusikBot/PermClerk/Report is loading up with errors regularly. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 04:33, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
@DeltaQuad: Sorry for the late reply. That sounds like a nice feature! I wouldn't mind getting input from others, though. At the least it might be good for the bot to specify how many declines were for the said permission. So maybe This user has had 1 request for rollback declined in the past 90 days ([1]), and 2 requests for other permissions ([2][3]). How does that sound?

I will look into the errors. I switched the bot to use the XTools API instead of running queries on its own, which should be safe, but apparently not :( Thanks for letting me know, — MusikAnimal talk 01:39, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Format looks good to me, I'll go spam WT:PERM -- Amanda (aka DQ) 08:33, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
This seems useful to me. I don't monitor all of the subpages, so it would be good to know if a user has been declined for one that I don't look at. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

removed Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

removed Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

  • 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.

Technical news

  • 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.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:48, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 24, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Karla Faye Tucker

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: HTML • Josephine Bornebusch

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-24

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

  • When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [64][65]
  • The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [66]
  • Advanced item Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [67]

Problems

  • Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [68]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 25, 2019)

Bookworm damage inside a book
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Bookworm (insect)

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Karla Faye Tucker • HTML

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 17 June 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-25

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

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [69]

Changes later this week

  • MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [70]
  • A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [71]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Advanced item Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [72]

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

20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

June 19: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC (stay tuned for Pride on weekend!)

June 19, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 05:38, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Stay tuned for details om next event!
Sunday Jun 23: Wiki Loves Pride @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Sunday June 23: Wiki Loves Pride @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

June 23, 12:30pm: Wiki Loves Pride @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for Wiki Loves Pride @ Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side. Togethe, we'll create new and expand existing Wikipedia articles on LGBT artists and artworks with LGBT themes in the Met collection!

With refreshments, and a special museum tour in the afternoon!

And there will be a wiki-cake!

Open to everyone at all levels of experience, wiki instructional workshop and one-on-one support will be provided.

See also the global Wiki Loves Pride photo contest, as well as the Met's online LGBT Art Writing Contest, and also the LGBT Health Writing Contest.

12:30pm - 4:30 pm at Uris Center for Education, Metropolitan Museum of Art (81st Street entrance) at 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(note this is just south of the main entrance)

This is the fifth annual Wiki Loves Pride edit-a-thon supported by Wikimedia NYC! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 16:32, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Stay tuned for details on next event!
Sunday July 14: Great American Wiknic @ Roosevelt Island

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

This week's article for improvement (week 26, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Legislator

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Bookworm (insect) • Karla Faye Tucker

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-26

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

Problems

  • The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [73]
  • Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [74]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).

Meetings

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

17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion for User:MusikAnimal/userRightsManager.js

Hi. I was looking through the code and notice that you evaluate !!templates[permission] 4 different times - can I suggest storing this boolean in a variable? Otherwise its a really elegant script. --DannyS712 (talk) 07:28, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello MusikAnimal,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 7

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (June 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 7th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Miscellaneous


Having published 6 issues of this newsletter, I decided it was time to move it out from my user space. It is now located at Wikipedia:Scripts++. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 11:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

The June 2019 Signpost is out!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:53, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 27, 2019)

A soil profile depicting bedrock
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Bedrock

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Legislator • Bookworm (insect)

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Possible vulnerability in Musikbot's geonotice_sync.rb

I was looking through your implementation of the GeonoticeSync task for MusikBot II. You appear to unescape the HTML of the parsed wikitext of the geonotice. This would allow any HTML tag to go through the processing unaltered, unless MediaWiki does something to it. This should logically apply to <script> tags, making this an XSS vector. Feel free to tell me if I am completely wrong, as I have no experience with Ruby. Danski454 (talk) 23:22, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

It intentionally goes through the MediaWiki parser to make the HTML safe, and to allow admins to use any valid wikitext in their geonotice. Thanks for investigating, though! — MusikAnimal talk 00:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Sent you an email about this subject. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:57, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Danski454: You might consider reviewing WP:BEANS and emailing users in the future who might have vulnerabilities in their code instead of talk page posting. --Izno (talk) 00:48, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I was more worried about unescaping the parsed wikitext, which would undo anything MediaWiki does to make the HTML safe. @Izno: In hindsight, yes sending an email would have been better. --Danski454 (talk) 00:57, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah right. We're actually given fully-escaped HTML because the API wrapper returns REXML. So once converted to a string, we unescape it a single time so the valid HTML can be parsed by Nokogiri. The script tag meanwhile was double-escaped, so it remains escaped. I see this is not obvious, and you even scared me there for a minute! I'm pretty sure there's no exploit here. In this case we'd need a compromised or rogue admin account to truly do damage, which of course can happen, but indeed security issues should generally be flagged privately if possible. Thank you again, — MusikAnimal talk 01:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

removed 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.

Guideline and policy news

  • In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

Technical news

  • 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.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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

Recent changes

  • The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [75]

Problems

  • Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [76]
  • Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [77]

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [78]
  • There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Removing protection

I would like you to remove protection on Kendrick Norton as it is not needed, thanks!! Scribbley (talk) 23:35, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The protection was just done today, and MusikAnimal wasn't the administrator who did it, so why come here?--Bbb23 (talk) 23:44, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Sunday July 14: Annual NYC Wiki-Picnic @ Roosevelt Island

July 14, 2-7pm: Annual NYC Wiki-Picnic @ Roosevelt Island

You are invited to join us at the "picnic anyone can edit" in the lovely Southpoint Park on Roosevelt Island, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck.

This year the Wiknic will double as a "Strategy Salon" (more information at Wiknic page), using open space technology to address major questions facing our social movement.

2–7pm - come by any time!
Our picnicking area is at Southpoint Park, south of the tram and subway, and also just south of the Cornell Tech campus.
Look for us by the Wikipedia / Wikimedia NYC banner!

Celebrate our 13th year of wiki-picnics! We hope to see you there! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 21:37, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

This week's article for improvement (week 28, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Sadomasochism

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Bedrock • Legislator

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 8 July 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-28

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

  • For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [79]
  • Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [80]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
  • The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [81]

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [82]
  • Advanced item There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [83]

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

20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Email

Hi MusikAnimal. I've got a suspicion that my email reply didn't send properly yesterday. Rather than repeat all of it, I'll just say: yes. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:31, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! :) — MusikAnimal talk 01:34, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 29, 2019)

Legal status of cannabis possession for non-medical use (2018)
  Legal
  Illegal but decriminalized
  Illegal but often unenforced
  Illegal
See also countries that have legalized medical use of cannabis.
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Decriminalization of marijuana

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Sadomasochism • Bedrock

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 15 July 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-29

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

Recent changes

  • The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [84]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [85]

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

15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

MicroWiki

Hello there! A user by this name recently created an account on MicroWiki. I just wanted to check if this is you, or somebody impersonating you. 86.185.143.224 (talk) 21:33, 12 July 2019 (UTC) 86.185.143.224 (talk) 21:33, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

That is not me. But I am impressed with the extent of impersonation, all the way down to my bot and its specific tasks! [86] vs [87] — MusikAnimal talk 15:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
For the record, this WAS me (my alt account here is MusikVarmint). I was reporting that the other Musik* accounts on microwiki were impersonations, but I was myself blocked as a sock. I don't have any plans to contribute to microwiki so this is not really a problem, so as long as my message got through to the admin. — MusikAnimal talk 19:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

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

Toolbar with menu opened

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:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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)

You've got mail

Hello, MusikAnimal. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Terra (talk) 23:11, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Reasonator tool for Wikidata pages

Hi MusikAnimal! At m:user:קיין ומוויסנדיק פּרעפֿערענצן/global.js I made some disperate attempts to add an additional link to the interface, first at Wikidata only. Feom Pythagoras I can get d:Q10261. At that Wikidata page I would like to add a clickable link reasonator: Q10261 to some skins. I have seen this working three years before. Now I could neither find the link in the Vector nor in the Monobook skin.
In a further step the script m:user:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js user:Yair rand could be modified to include the Reasonator link and making it available in the proper language at any wikipedia and other projects linked to Wikidata.
Thanks for your help in advance! Best regards and greetings from Munich, Germany
no bias — קיין אומוויסנדיק פּרעפֿערענצן — keyn umvisndik preferentsn talk contribs 18:39, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 30, 2019)

The Montsoreau Flea Market is the largest flea market in the Loire Valley, France
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Flea market

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Decriminalization of marijuana • Sadomasochism

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 22 July 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Question about MusikBot and AFC

Would you be willing to file a BRFA similar to this one for the AWB Check page for the AFC participant list? The main thing I've been struggling with in the last year or two has been keeping on top of inactives; the Dispenser activity tool died and it's a pain to quarry the list of users and then manually check those that haven't edited in months. Primefac (talk) 13:46, 21 July 2019 (UTC) (please do not ping on reply)

Sure! I'm not really looking to take on many new bot tasks right now, but this one should be easy. I'll be in touch soon. — MusikAnimal talk 00:27, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

  • The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [89]

Changes later this week

  • Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [90]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

afl_log_id column being dropped in production

Hey! Today I noticed this error reported by your bot. Even without further info, I guess it's because the abuse_filter_log.afl_log_id column is being dropped in production (refs T226851), since it's always been empty. I believe the bot has to be updated, and ideally also any other tool explicitly mentioning the field in a query. Do you know if there's a way to grep code on toolforge? Thanks, --Daimona Eaytoy (Talk) 16:27, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@Daimona Eaytoy: The bot does not use that column. It would appear the abuse_filter_log view on Toolforge is missing entirely:
MariaDB [enwiki_p]> DESCRIBE itwiki_p.abuse_filter_log;
ERROR 1356 (HY000): View 'itwiki_p.abuse_filter_log' references invalid table(s) or column(s) or function(s) or definer/invoker of view lack rights to use them
I'm guessing the view definitions for the replicas need to be updated.

I think only the Toolforge admins can do such global searches across all of Toolforge (at least because some files aren't world-readable). They've done this for me before, I just asked in #wikimedia-cloud connect. — MusikAnimal talk 21:12, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 31, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Butter churning in Nepal

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Flea market • Decriminalization of marijuana

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Pageviews Analysis is so cool

Yeah! Well done! And thank you :-) --atdt (talk) 02:24, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you :) — MusikAnimal talk 15:19, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Problems

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [95]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:18, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 8

Hope everyone is having a good winter (or summer, for those in the northern hemisphere). Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • 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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 32, 2019)

The human body has several organs.
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Organ (anatomy)

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Butter churning in Nepal • Flea market

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

A message from David Leonhard Bowman

Hi! Sorry, I'm very new to Wiki. just wanted to make some changes to those sentences that in my opinion don't cover the whole truth. Now, I just added under the previous lines some remarks backed up by many respected sources. Sorry again, David David Leonhard Bowman 20:08, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@David Leonhard Bowman: No worries! I merely wanted to let you know that when removing content, especially sourced content, you should use edit summary explaining why. This helps other editors understand the intention of your edit. Thanks for contributing, and allow me to give you a warm welcome to Wikipedia! I've left some links on your talk page that might assist you. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 16:02, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Remove

Hi, Can you please remove my Extand Confirmed flag? I do not need it anymore!الرشيد (talk) 10:53, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.
BAG

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

BOTPOL
  • Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
  • Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
  • Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

  • 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
  • 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
  • In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
  • Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
  • 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).
New things
Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Great Spirit

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Organ (anatomy) • Butter churning in Nepal

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-33

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

  • 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. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [98]
  • Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [99]

Changes later this week

  • Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [100]

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks for making this script, It's helping me to edit Wikipedia at night. Rashedulemon (talk) 18:00, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it :) — MusikAnimal talk 23:34, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Invitation to project revival

Dear user, I, with Willbb234, are a attempting to revive the Wikiproject Requested Articles, of which you are a member. If you wish to be a part of our effort, feel free to add your signature in it's talk page. Best regards, Eni vak (speak) 16:31, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 34, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Bianca Wahlgren Ingrosso

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Great Spirit • Organ (anatomy)

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 19 August 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

  • There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

  • Advanced item Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
  • Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [101]

Changes later this week

  • Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [102]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
  • Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [103]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

A message from STITCH+COFFEE

    • Hi MusikAnimal!

I saw your contributions on the abuse filter for images and was wondering if you could help me with my issue. I run a fairly large wiki software page and am struggling with image spam. Would you be able to help me create a filter that prevents certain images? ~~

Thank you, I will ask on there! — Preceding unsigned comment added by STITCH+COFFEE (talk • contribs) 20:36, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

STITCH+COFFEE (talk) 21:31, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't have much time to work on external wikis. You may be able to get help at mw:Extension talk:AbuseFilter. Best of luck, — MusikAnimal talk 01:52, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Your cool tool

Good morning, MA. I don't feel like posting to functionaries-l, but what cool tool and where is it? My local hardware store? As a friend of the inventor, do I get a discount?--Bbb23 (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Bbb23: Hehe! It's the Pageviews Analysis tool, which won the 2019 Coolest Tool Award in the "resuable" category. Not sure what "resuable" means, but I'll take it :) And sure, you are always entitled to discounts from me! — MusikAnimal talk 02:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
I think it was something along the lines "it can be used in all wikis". Congrats, BTW! --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:55, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. I know it's apparently cool, but (forgive me) what exactly is it useful for?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
@Bbb23: I can't tell if you're joking! You have used this tool before, I hope? Some documentation at meta:Pageviews Analysis and the broader concept at Wikipedia:Pageview statistics. — MusikAnimal talk 21:42, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Anything that MusikAnimal and Kadari have developed between them is excellent stuff. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:11, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

A message from Lmart64

I recently edited a page (about Louis Aguirre-news anchor, talk show host, etc.) but received a message saying it didn't stay on there because I didn't have a source. I said who Louis is the godfather of. My source is my dad, who is the godson to Louis Aguirre. I guess I don't have any proof unless you want to ask him personally. Thanks. Lmart64 (talk) 01:05, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

@Lmart64: Yes I'm afraid we do require a source. Additionally, we would only mention the godson/goddaughter if that person is notable (one of the people listed at Lawrence Martin). Hope this helps, — MusikAnimal talk 01:52, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Asian Month 2019

Hi, since you were the organizer of WAM, I would like to ask you to be the organizer this year. If you would like to be an organizer this year, please write you nickname on these pages: 1, 2. Thank you! Regards, Patriccck (talk) 14:07, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello! I believe you are mistaken. I have never organized WP:WAM. Best of luck on finding someone, and for another successful event! — MusikAnimal talk 16:11, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 35, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Pitchfork

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

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Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 26 August 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

AutoWikiBrowser Administrator instructions

Howdy! Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/AutoWikiBrowser/Administrator instructions is a bit confusing. It appears that the good old CheckPage is still in use, but the admin instructions send the admin off to Special:UserRights. I'm wondering if you started with a copy of instructions from elsewhere and then forgot to finish off your copyediting? If not - and a user right now has to be assigned - would you mind making it clear which right is required? --kingboyk (talk) 18:09, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Kingboyk: Fixed! Indeed I did some refactoring to the admin instructions for all the PERM pages, since they are pretty much the same. I did forget that some of those steps (such as using Special:UserRights) do not apply to AWB, as it is not a real permission. Adding the user to the CheckPage is all you need to do. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 22:28, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Ah, transclusion - hadn't noticed that! Thanks for sorting that out. --kingboyk (talk) 22:31, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Need help with my edit filter

Hi MusikAnimal! I have a potential issue going on with my edit filter (filter 51). I was patrolling the new user log earlier and blocked Ifuckpigs due to an obvious UPOL violation. I took a look at the edit filter logs and noticed that my filter didn't flag the username creation as a hit, even though "fuck" is definitely a condition to look for with "createaccount" actions. I went further and tested the filter (along with some possible changes while troubleshooting) to discover that it doesn't flag the action as a positive hit. What's even more disturbing is that I made a small change to the filter on August 8 that shouldn't have made any impact to the "createaccount" conditions. However, since then, only one "createaccount" action has been recorded as a positive hit... and absolutely nothing since then. I'm puzzled... I had plenty of hits between August 2 and August 8 (the time that I made changes to the log before the potential incidental change), then nothing ever since. What did I mess up? Did something change in the logs that I need to update my filter to look for? A link to the edit history of the filter is here. Can you take a look and see what might be going on? If you have questions about the filter, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them. Just ping me in your responses here so that I'm notified. :-) Thanks a million! :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 05:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Update: I found that removing the "user_editcount" condition from the entire outside of the code, along with removing the "!('override-antispoof' in user_rights)" condition in the "createaccount" part of the code resolves the issue with the "Ifuckpigs" account not flagging as a positive hit. This doesn't seem right, though... that account definitely does not have 20+ edits nor does the account have override-antispoof user rights. It seems to me that something either shifted how the code is interpreted... almost as if a [, ], (, or ) went missing. It also doesn't explain why no positive "createaccount" hits have been flagged since August 8... My changes were very small at that time... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 05:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Update: I changed all of the strings to just say "TEST", with the exception of the string that is used to look for positive matches with the username (I just changed that string to just say "Ifuckpigs")... testing the code with the "Ifuckpigs" account's logs showed no resolution. I even messed with the editcount condition to set it to a ridiculous value that I know would be true (> -5, != 190000, etc) and to no avail. Only after removing both of the conditions I described above does it resolve the issue and show the creation of that account as a positive hit. What the heck?!! :-/ ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 05:32, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
It looks like this might possibly be the cause? Is how I've nested the variables and condition statements what's causing the issue? ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 15:54, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@Oshwah: Sorry for the late reply, I was on wikibreak. phab:T230256 definitely sounds related, based on what you're saying. From what I can tell your filter still should have worked, though. It looks like the filter is working now, so I guess everything is fine? If you have a Phab account feel free to ask at T230256, Daimona and others will be able to help you for sure, or at least tell you your issue is unrelated. A side note (and I don't think I'm crossing into WP:BEANS territory, hopefully), you might could make use of irlike and ccnorm/norm, and that would greatly simplify your filter. Hope this helps, — MusikAnimal talk 03:01, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi MusikAnimal! No apologies are needed at all! Welcome back! :-) The portion of the filter that flags 'edit' actions works just fine; the portion of the filter that flags 'createaccount' actions is not. It hasn't flagged any 'createaccount' actions since August 8, which looks to be around the time that those changes discussed on phab went into effect. Dang it..... I really hope that I don't have to completely refactor the code and the conditions that it compares. Is there a possible reason as to why only the 'edit' action condition portion of the code is flagging positive hits? Is it because I have nested conditions in the 'createaccount' actions portion of the code? What's strange is that there are two conditions at the very start of the code, and I have to remove one of them for things to work properly, yet the 'edit' portion of the code (which is nested within those conditions at the beginning) logs actions just fine... It just seems like there are inconsistencies here and after those changes went through, and I'm trying to figure out what's causing this and why.... If you have any ideas, I would appreciate your input and thoughts. I will definitely share my findings and my edit filter code in the phab ticket as well. Good idea; thanks for sharing that. ;-) Cheers - ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 03:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Oshwah: I looked into it and it seems it's erroring out when encountering a variable that doesn't exist for that action, rather than short-circuiting to the next block as it was before. That is sensible, but in this case it seems user_rights isn't available either, which we definitely need. This sounds like a bug. I'm going to comment on the task, too. — MusikAnimal talk 03:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
I figured it out. See my most recent edit to the filter. Using Special:AbuseFilter/test I see that it now picks up Ifuckpigs. I'm going to go through and fix the other username-related filters, which I suspect are also broken. — MusikAnimal talk 03:47, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Interesting! The way in which I organized the conditions worked for a long time before up until recently... was it the filter changes in the phab ticket that caused it to do this? I had a suspicion when troubleshooting my filter that it was as if I had parentheses out of place or one missing on the left / right, but it seemed correct to me. Thank you so very much for taking the time to look into this and for finding a solution. I just really needed a second pair of eyes; I was dumbfounded as to what the hell I did wrong, but looking at the edit filter and my changes and comparing them to the filter logs, I couldn't put the pieces together..... :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:52, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

RequestHelper - UAA

Me again - I do apologise. I'm using your most excellent RequestHelper script. At WP:UAA, the investigation process can take a while, and more than once by the time I've finished another admin has acted. This kind of "race" is a bit of waste of admin time. At WP:AIV we have a "(Checking)" response - could we get the same at UAA? --kingboyk (talk) 22:37, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

No need to apologize! I've added a "Checking" link as suggested. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 02:32, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Awesome - thank you very much! --kingboyk (talk) 11:21, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

August 28: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC (+editathons before and after)

August 28, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

Featuring this month a review of the recent Wikimania 2019 conference in Sweden!

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan
(note this month we will be meeting in Midtown Manhattan, not at Babycastles)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 17:58, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Edit-a-thons at Interference Archive and The Met

Also check out these editing events, before and after our WikiWednesday Salon:

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Climate data

As I have no clue what's going on with regards to users posting "fantasy climate data", but apparently you do, I'm just leaving this here - User:RockoftheRazze33. Came up on WP:UAA/BOT earlier. --kingboyk (talk) 00:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

ResponseHelper feature request

Hi there. Would you consider adding WP:REFUND to the pages RequestHelper supports? The layout is pretty much similar to UAA and RFPP. Regards SoWhy 16:28, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

That would be very nice. I'm forever copying and pasting when working there. --kingboyk (talk) 11:48, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
@SoWhy and Kingboyk:  Done So many responses! I can see why it was a pain to do manually :) I tried to use my best judgement on the order of the responses and the names for the links. I didn't think the order at Template:UND/doc was ideal. Let me know if you have any suggestions or concerns. Also, I did not add a link to WP:REFUND like we do for the other venues. This is because it to me seems like a niche area to work in, so we don't need the link to be there for everyone who uses this script. You can add a link yourself however; just follow the instructions at User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper#Adding links to other venues. Cheers, — MusikAnimal talk 02:31, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! Now I just have to get Enterprisey to integrate ResponseHelper into reply-link and replies will be a breeze. Regards SoWhy 07:09, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Lovely - thank you.
Yes, there's quite a few different responses. It gets funnier - there's at least one fairly common scenario which isn't templated atm - "No action needed" e.g. when the content hasn't been deleted nor nominated for deletion! Those and similar scenarios I respond with "Done" and "Not done" depending on what mood I'm in :)
It's all quite a faff really. One has to remember to remove any speedy deletion template after restoring and/or if an AFC article make a micro-edit to reset the 6 month counter; it's also a good idea to check if the talk page was deleted too, which I daresay I often forget to do. It's worth the effort though.
Hopefully your script will make the process a touch easier. Thanks again, much appreciated! --kingboyk (talk) 11:51, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Not to worry, I have a script in the works that automates nearly everything at RFUD - User:SD0001/RFUD-helper.js, including userfications. It was a while back that I worked on it, if I remember right it just needs a final round of testing before it is ready to use. SD0001 (talk) 10:12, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
That sounds great SD0001 - I'd really appreciate a ping when it's ready. --kingboyk (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
@Kingboyk: I already used it successfully. I suggest you install it and help testing Regards SoWhy 15:30, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
@SoWhy: Will do - at least now I'll have an excuse if (when) I break something ;) --kingboyk (talk) 16:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 36, 2019)

Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Organ (anatomy)

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Pitchfork • Bianca Wahlgren Ingrosso

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

MusikBot TAFI approvals not actioned

Hey MusikAnimal. MusikBot isn't actioning my TAFI approvals. Any idea why? — JJMC89 (T·C) 08:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I will look into this. Thanks for letting me know, — MusikAnimal talk 21:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Another weird issue making me scratch my head...

Hi again, MusikAnimal! I hope you don't mind if I come to you with another weird finding that I'm seeing with edit filters... Bear with me here as I list the steps on how to reproduce exactly what I'm seeing:

  1. Go to this page to load the edit filter testing page. Open this page containing the code to my edit filter that was published before I found a fix to this problem. Copy and paste the code from that revision of my edit filter into the testing field.
  2. Add "NinjaRubberPilot" to the 'Changes by user:' field (we're going to run this filter against all edits by this LTA user's edits).
  3. Tick the box to show results that don't match the filter.
  4. Run the test.

You'll see that no edits by that user match the filter at all, yet the conditions in the "stringy" variable (which is a string of all content to look for in edits) should clearly match three of them.

Now do this:

  1. Go to this page to load the edit filter testing page, which will load the current revision of the code to my edit filter (#51) into the testing field.
  2. Add "NinjaRubberPilot" to the 'Changes by user:' field as before.
  3. Tick the box to show results that don't match the filter.
  4. Run the test.

You'll see the proper results that should be found - three edits by that LTA now show as matching the conditions in the filter.

It seems like "Checkuser" is now a reserved word that we can't use in edit filters now? That's the only conclusion that I could draw from what I found... It used to work just fine, but (again), it seems like those changes detailed on phab that went into effect earlier this month have modified things in this regard. If you reviewed the changes made to the edit filter while going through the steps I listed above, you'll see that adding an escape character anywhere within the word "checkuser" (Example: "Ch\eckuser") resolves the problem and that portion of the edit filter runs and flags matching edits as it should. What are your thoughts on this? What changed? What does that reserved word do now (Assuming that I'm correct with my thoughts here)? This took me some time to narrow down in my debugging and troubleshooting, but alas, this is what I've found to be the culprit, and there's no other logical explanation I can come up with....

I appreciate your time answering my messages here; it means a lot to me, and I can't thank you enough for your pair of eyes and your input. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:25, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Oshwah: Hey! I'm sorry I don't have time to debug this right now, but I can tell you with certainty that "checkuser" is not a reserved word in regular expressions. The kind people at WP:EFN likely could help. I again encourage you to make use of norm or ccnorm with this filter. I think it would make the regular expressions significantly less complex and easier to debug. There are also some free external tools to help with debugging regex; I especially like regex101, where I can create unit tests. Best of luck, — MusikAnimal talk 14:41, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi MusikAnimal - I know that 'checkuser' isn't a reserved word in regex; I'm wondering if maybe a developer reserved it? It's just weird... Okay, no problem - I understand that you're busy; I'll go and ask over at WP:EFN as you suggested. Thank you again for the help; I appreciate it a lot. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 01:40, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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

Recent changes

  • You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [104]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
  • The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [105]
  • The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [106]
  • The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [107]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
  • When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [108]

Meetings

Future changes

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

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Saturday Sept 7: Met Fashion Edit-a-thon @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sept 7, 12:30pm: Met Fashion Edit-a-thon @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for Met Fashion Edit-a-thon @ Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side. Together, we'll expand Wikipedia:WikiProject Fashion topics for basic clothing types that can be illustrated by the Met collection, and also past Costume Institute exhibitions!

It's the last weekend for Camp: Notes on Fashion, and we will have an intro talk to the exhibit by a guest from the Costume Institute, and participants will then be able to visit it on their own. Galleries will be open this evening until 9 pm.

With refreshments, and there will be a wiki-cake!

Open to everyone at all levels of experience, wiki instructional workshop and one-on-one support will be provided.

12:30pm - 4:30 pm at Uris Center for Education, Metropolitan Museum of Art (81st Street entrance) at 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(note this is just south of the main entrance)
Galleries will be open this evening until 9 pm, and some wiki-visitors may wish to take this opportunity to see Camp: Notes on Fashion together after the formal event.

Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends, colleagues and students! --Wikimedia New York City Team 19:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Dr Kay Removed 4 Year Article Without Consultation.

Hi MusikAnimal, Can you disallow or ban Dr Kay from intervening in my Nakorotubu district's article. I had included quotations and references but he still insists that the reason for wiping my article off is for lack of references and unintelligent work. Now, he is demanding that if I want to continue, I should start from scratch and manually type my article again as I cannot retrieve my previous work.

Saqiwa 5/09/19 (Saqiwa (talk) 11:29, 5 September 2019 (UTC))

Hi Saqiwa. You should use the article talk page to discuss matters like this. Or, less ideal, contact the user directly on their talk page. It seems to me their concerns are legitimate, but I understand your frustration. I hope you can come to a consensus on what content can be retained and what sources are acceptable. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 19:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

POTD protection

Hi

I'm just wondering why this bot sometimes comes and makes edits like this one, to apply semi-protection to the POTD template transcluded on the main page that day? Generally this has no effect, as the "POTD protected" template is cascade protected for the duration of its run on the main page, thus can't be vandalised at that time. And afterwards, when the POTD has finished on the main page, this template is no longer used anyway and is deleted within a month by a bot. Is there a reason why MusikAnimal bot is picking this up?  — Amakuru (talk) 21:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Amakuru: It goes by transclusion count. Documentation can be found at User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector. I've added Template:POTD protected/ to the exclusion list. That begs the question though: should Template:POTD and its subpages be subject to protection, since I assume they are the unprotected variant? They currently are also on the exclusion list. Anyway, the bot should probably check for cascade protection. I believe the thought was redundancy is okay in the interest of preventing disruption, should the cascade protection be removed. — MusikAnimal talk 22:28, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

added Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
readded Floquenbeam • Lectonar
removed DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

removed Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

removed Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

  • 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.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 37, 2019)

A vegetable soup prepared using udon noodles
Hello, MusikAnimal.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Vegetable soup

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Organ (anatomy) • Pitchfork

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

A message from 70.117.21.40

Good evening, MusikAnimal,

I apologize for making an edit so quickly on the Anti-Defamation League. I'm a huge fan of Pewdiepie, so naturally when is saw that ADL was apparently attacking his channel I had to act. Again, I apologize for jumping to quickly to a conclusion.

Have a good night Thanks 70.117.21.40 (talk) 23:43, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

No problem. The edit I reverted was because it lacked a reference, that's all. I did notice there has been a lot of other disruption on that page, so I have semi-protected it. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 00:14, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
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