This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
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
A oauth_consumer variable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [1]
Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [2]
Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [3]
Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS. [4]
Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [8]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I noticed you were creating articles for World Heritage Sites that lack them. https://www.worldheritagesite.org/ is in my opinion the best place to research these sites and has useful information that's aimed at tourists rather than conservationists, also the official UNESCO website's design is really bad in my opinion. Here's the pages on Ichkeul and TsodiloTai123.123 (talk) 06:41, 12 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Either is generally fine. We don't have a style on this. Ancient Egypt, Ned Kelly tourism (I wrote that one so I remember it well), or Indus Valley Civilisation seem to use listings while New South Wales national parks (it still sits a red link farm :-( although it looks much better than it was in August) uses markers. It's really up to you to pick which style you prefer.
Have you decided to create a banner? For that, have you found any suitable image for Ancient Kangleipak? If not, what will one of these look like in banner format?
Thank you a lot for your concern. Only a few people are kind like you. Oh, I am just searching for it. Presently, I don't. If not found appropriate, I will have to capture some photos myself. :) Haoreima (talk) 12:17, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I'm wondering if it makes sense to put off article mergers and deletions until after January 31. It's only a couple of weeks, and new article creation will probably settle down after then. I don't think were going to have much success in encouraging quality over quantity at this point. What do you think? Ground Zero (talk) 23:29, 18 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
I made a mention of the Sydney Fish Market, Central Market in Adelaide, and Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne in the section about markets. I wonder if the Fremantle Markets should get a mention too. I know locals from Fremantle do not like it when people refer to it as part of Perth, but in practice it really is part of the Perth metropolitan area. The dog2 (talk) 22:03, 20 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I know someone from Fremantle who now lives in my neighbourhood and they usually insist that they were not from Perth even though it's merely in the southwestern suburbs of Perth. I'd say mention it
I guess they could. Whenever I wanted to buy macadamia nuts to bring back to Singapore as souvenirs for friends and relatives, Central Market was where I would go. Speaking of which, are there any other food markets that you think are worth a mention? The dog2 (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
In that case, maybe you could expand the section somewhat to give more information about traditional food markets. I'm not sure if there are any in Brisbane given that I last visited Brisbane when I was 7 years old. The dog2 (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [10]
Events
You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I wonder if you want to start this topic. Camping is quite a nice way to experience nature in Australia, and, and if you're familiar, you can cover some of the legal considerations as well. The dog2 (talk) 01:03, 25 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I have recently been inactive here, but I have returned to work on the Cocos Malay phrasebook. Considering it is nearly finished (and I will complete it soon), could you please review it and change its status from "outline" to the appropriate status? Thanks. Basa Pulu Kokos (talk) 03:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (documentation). [11]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).
Future changes
A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
You and I can both see the telltale signs of a hotel publicist, but I don't think their listings were that bad, and I was going to either edit my post or add another one to the effect that I didn't actually revert their listing. Plus, we didn't warn that IP before a block. So I would lift the block, but I wasn't going to do so without contacting you. What do you think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:06, 1 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
A few years ago, loads of Ascott properties were listed throughout the world by folks who if I remember listed only them and one other chain. We should be on the lookout for that. I delisted one Ascott property this user added, as there were plenty of other hotels listed in that article and no real reason to play around with a touting paid publicist. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:30, 1 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
I don't know. It's always hard to know which listings were added legitimately on this site. For that reason, I never trust hotel or restaurant listings here and always cross-reference them with other sites. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
program vs programme
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
To answer your question, in Singapore "program" is used in the context of a computer program, but otherwise, it's always "programme". So essentially, the same as in the UK. The dog2 (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
You changed "Newly built in the last several years" to "Newly built" in Kabul, as "exact date not relevant in a travel guide". The exact date is not, but "newly built" needs at least a year.
In this case an IP editor had copied the listing from WT, and the venue was "newly built in the last several years" already back in 2013. Not that critical for a cricket stadium, but from another IP it was added that the airport is "fully open", also a WT copy, and also that wording was there in 2013.
Oops. It seems the IP editor added a redundant listing. Ours had been edited to remove the odd "in the last several years". I removed ours thinking it was the newly added one, and as it had "changed" from last I checked, I though it must have been edited in the only edit made since it was added. Sorry. –LPfi (talk) 10:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Just making sure you're aware than on the UNESCO tentative list just means that the government as submitted to unesco for review and unesco hasn't reviewed it yet. Your description of Qajartalik on Qikertaaluk Island made it seem like it was already a unesco site. Tai123.123 (talk) 02:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
walking the nullarbor for instance, which on some wikis is no longer a plain ? I'm back and intact, sorry for the delay in replies at various instances... JarrahTree (talk) 01:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [12]
Problems
A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I would like to request the semi-protection (only allow autoconfirmed and confirmed users to edit) for the page North Korea. It is clearly a vandalism target page and many instances of vandalism have occurred on the page. Thanks. Basa Pulu Kokos (talk) 09:46, 11 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [13]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [14]
I am also confused by the talk page messages. I have seen two of them in the last days, but that's just in articles that happen to be on my watchlist. They are very confusing and hard to decipher, and those two seemed to be obvious non-typos. –LPfi (talk) 20:04, 16 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
I checked the edits on sv-voy. Surprisingly good Swedish and no false information. Whether to use native or translated names is a difficult judgement, I'd need to check sources for best practises on each name. I think there is too little activity over there to spend energy on fighting blocked users doing harmless edits, and possibly explaining reverts. If unconstructive reverts – even well-justified ones – start to dominate, the project has a hard time attracting users. –LPfi (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@LPfi That's interesting to know. Is Swedish easier for machine translations to get accurate than Finnish? I once heard that Finnish isn't easy to learn and machine translations to get perfect, which explains the unusual previous edits by Luchy04. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)06:33, 17 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Swedish is a Germanic language like German and English, while Finnish isn't even an Indo-European one. Relations between words in Finnish are encoded in suffixes in a sometimes very intricate way, so getting it right requires semantic understanding. Translating word for word, with just a little tweaking, such as between Germanic languages, may give comprehensible results when translating into Finnish, but seldom anything resembling idiomatic language, and the other way round the result is often pure nonsense – which is the result also when trying to get idiomatic language without really understanding the semantics. –LPfi (talk) 10:12, 17 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
If Silicon Valley had been in Finland, we might have got good machine translations between, say, Finnish and Hungarian. Translating across language families is harder, and the language models developed for Indo-European languages don't work with Finnish. Now, Finland has quite some high-tech and linguistic know-how and high-level research, and the need for machine translation across language boundaries (such as to Swedish and English), so we will probably see reasonable machine translations at some point. –LPfi (talk) 10:22, 17 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek: No! I am reminding about the persistent vandalism that took place in the wikivoyage article India. Similar things happen in simple english wikipedia article "Loktak lake". As of now, idk what to do. So, I was asking SHB2000! Haoreima (talk) 02:35, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
You mean that obnoxious user is there? If you're an admin there, block, revert and if necessary, semi-protect the article for a relatively short time. If not, let others deal with it. I'm not sure what else to say. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
That IP hopping user has w:WP:CIR issues and was very brave to revert someone who's been active since the times of Wikitravel and such they were rightly blocked for vandalising pages. For this IP, I warned them on their talk. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)05:19, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yeah! Thanks for warning that ip. Meanwhile, I have added more and more references to the article about the very fact so that such arguments may not happen in future. :-) Haoreima (talk) 05:36, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
The first reason (though unreasonable) given by that ip was "not mentioned in Regular English Wikipedia article". Yes, "Loktak lake-World's only floating lake" isn't mentioned in Regular English article but it's not a reasonable argument. :-) Haoreima (talk) 05:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks the article Quetzaltenango is protected. Else, there might be further troubles. On the other hand, as you said, it came true. That ip returns with another ip. As of now, he only talks in the talk page and idk if he will do the same thing again. Haoreima (talk) 05:49, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [16]
You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [17]
There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).
Future changes
The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [18][19]
Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [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.
Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [22][23]
The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.
Problems
The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [24]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).
Future changes
Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.
Space Theme Park (SDSC) (the main launch site for ISRO)- Located in Sriharikota island. This place is not open to public at all times. Before any launch, registration opens on the website provided above, and tourists and enthusiasts can register themselves to get into the Launch gallery.
@2006nishan178713: Nice work. I was always curious as to why there was no sites in India and it was one of the reasons I opposed a feature nomination because it was so US-Euro centric with barely any sites in Asia, which has two of the four largest space agencies. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)06:30, 2 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I will do it after 9th of March, probably next Thursday, I will be busy from tomorrow. By the way, can you give me some idea about how to create a static map like the one below? It's not urgent. Cheers!! 2006nishan178713t@lk11:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Your comment "Pretty much so" of 08:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC) appears to be in the wrong place based on indentation and relevance to the text above. Should it refer to the previous comment of mine? diff
Map of the Whittle Rock main reef — switch to interactive map
Map of the Whittle Rock main reef — switch to static map
Map of the Whittle Rock main reef
Yes, I think I put it in the wrong place. For the togglable static map, all that needs to be added to the page is the following code:
{{Regionlist | regionmap=Dive sites of the Whittle Rock Reef high resolution.png | regionmaptext=Map of the Whittle Rock main reef | regionmapsize=<replace this with the size you want>px | regionInteractiveMap=map1 }}
The thing that's suspicious to me is that how can a brand new user with only two global edits have a username of "Tour Evil Alter Ego" (which I suspect the "your" refers to ShakespeareFan00) not be intimidating ShakespeareFan00. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)08:42, 6 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers. [25]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
In an edit summary on Helsinki you asked "can someone check this paragraph that it's not duplicated from somewhere else?"
I think all kick scooter entries in Finland are copied more or less verbatim by User:Vkem (often without logging in) from my wordings in Turku. As I changed my wording, it usually propagated to their edits, with a significant lag (I assume they added it to some bot script, which they didn't update regularly).
While the copying infringes on my copyright and I don't like them copying my text in this way (no attribution or reference whatsoever), I am not going to make a fuzz about it.
The correction of grammar should of course be done in all the articles where the phrase can be found :-(
Aside from copyright, the problem is the same as with mobile phones in Nigeria: such detailed text suggests that the facts are valid locally, and I don't trust Vkem to have checked more than some of the points made. Attribution would be no issue for me without that aspect. –LPfi (talk) 12:56, 9 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [26][27]
Problems
There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [28]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page. [30]
On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [31]
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The announcement can be read here.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.
Pretty cool draft :-). I'm curious as to where you had gotten the name Androostun. Can't relate it to any Australian place name, and the closest I can think of is Adelaide – was it a made up one? The New Woomera one is interesting, and couldn't help but laugh at the vegemite reference ;-) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)11:12, 4 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Androoostun is a contraction of 'Andrews Town' and was developed specifically for the article. I'd imagined the Hibern Isles, to essentially have a more Celtic and Gaelic character (ie. Scots/Irish influences) then Nova Australis.
Well the other 'ration' item on early survery ships I should probably might mention would be the Soychkio sausage, which is a soy/bean/cereal based processed sausage. If you combine it with Vegeimite in a roll, you get the Dan'under variant on the Hot dog. :lol:
@SHB2000: The draft is a little bit more mature. I'd really appreciate an Australian Wikivoyager leaving some comments on the talk page on whats missing or doesn't make sense. I've been wondering what I can have as "Ute" equivalent. My thinking was some sort of light-to cargo quadcopter or ultralight? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Generally Terrestrial Worlds, don't necessarily have more than 1 or 2 moons. I'll bear it in mind though.. Maybe one of the Moons is a Penal colony, or where they ship the people that bring in 'item zero' at the NQZ? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Suggested edits
As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.
Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.
Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.
"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.
Positive reinforcement
Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:
Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.
This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
News for mentors
The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!
Scaling
Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.
How to help
Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.
Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
We have latitude to give a briefer block first if we want to. Had that user come back and continued disrupting, they would have gotten a 3-day block quickly. Now, I arguably look a little silly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:50, 18 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
"a settlement needs to have 10k inhabitants to be called a 'city'"?
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
I thought that was an internationally agreed term. Doing some more research, there seems to be conflicting definitions on how many are needed for a city, but I've never heard a city of 1.5k as a city. However, Wikipedia seems to say that in the US, a city can have a minimum between 1,500 and 5,000. I'll revert my edit. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)05:35, 18 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I don't think Wikipedia is right. Different states have different definitions. In New York, the Village of Hempstead has over 55,000 inhabitants, the Hamlet of Riverhead has around 15,000, and the City of Sherill has just over 3,000. Look at w:List of cities in Alaska, too. The smallest one had 21 inhabitants as of the 2020 Census. See also w:Kupreanof, Alaska. It's an incorporated city. Someone needs to edit the conflicted statement on Wikipedia. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:02, 18 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I just looked at your link. You misread it: "Common population definitions for an urban area (city or town) range between 1,500 and 50,000 people, with most U.S. states using a minimum between 1,500 and 5,000 inhabitants.[13][14] Some jurisdictions set no such minima.[15]" You had to pay attention to the word "most" and/or read the next sentence. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:03, 18 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 5
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I'm sorry about the late delivery of this newsletter. Within the newsletter was material about an ongoing vote, which closes in under 20 hours.
Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics. This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.
Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 16th February 2022. (continue reading)
Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)
As you probably know, I'm very active here, and that's because I, just like most of you do, edit this travel guide in my leisure time. But these days, I've been endlessly obsessed with the one user from Queensland that we all know. And I can probably confidently say that 95 percent of my recent rollbacks used are reverting him, and it's become a bad habit – and it's just as unproductive, and we all know that there's better things to do than rollbacking copyvios and doing /64 blocks. And then there's the case of an LTA who I now feel like an absolute idiot into thinking they were a good faith user. And my rant could go on.
On top of that, real life issues mean that I can no longer edit as much as I used to, and so just a quick note to let you all know that I won't be much active in the near future – for at least the end of this year.
With that being said, you will still see me make an edit now and then, add some coordinates, and probably do a couple of rollbacks on edits by Brendan, and probably close vfd nominations. I'm not leaving forever, and I do hope I can come back and become more active when things have settled, but until then, I wish the best for the community :-)
Recharge your batteries, SHB. We all hope that you'll feel better soon and if you are up to freely giving your labor and expertise, we'd love to have it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯20:50, 14 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks from me too for what you've done. Good luck with your life, and I'll be glad to see you here, regardless of whether you are going to do much or little. –LPfi (talk) 10:49, 15 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New code release schedule for this week
There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.
The Jupyter notebooks tool PAWS has been updated to a new interface. [34]
Future changes
Interactive maps via Kartographer will soon work on wikis using the FlaggedRevisions extension. Please tell us which improvements you want to see in Kartographer. You can take this survey in simple English. [35]
Why though? Since we're featuring the derivative work, per the licensing requirements, we're supposed to use the derivative work – meaning attributing both the original copyright holder and the author of the derivative work. The original copyright holder has no control over the derivative work and so technically not giving attribution to the derivative would theoretically be a copyvio. However, most of us who cropped the photos won't really mind too much, but it's good to get into the habit of correct attribution. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)09:53, 22 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I don’t know enough about copyright to answer your question but if you look at previous revisions of the page it has featured uncropped images since 2013. If you want this changed go ask on a talk page or the pub. Tai123.123 (talk) 18:10, 22 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I am not aware of any discussion on this, and the instructions for updating say little. Cropping may not reach the threshold of originality needed for copyright, so the only copyright holder may be the author of the original photo (and possibly those of photographed works). That copyright holder needs to be attributed, but they may not like how we cropped their image – and anyway, as separate image, the original is often nicer – so showing their version makes sense. I don't know whether that's the reasoning behind the practice, just trying to come up with a plausible explanation. –LPfi (talk) 11:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
But we have no control over the license used here, and if the copyright holder doesn't like the way we cropped it, too bad. CC BY SA licenses are irrevocable. Cropping is still a derivative work and per the license, it does not matter whether it's a simple crop, or a large photoshop of the original, and as such, we have to attribute both the original copyright holder and the author of the derivative work. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)11:31, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
If the crop is below the threshold of originality it does not get a copyright and thus it can be used with no licence from the person who did the crop; the only relevant licence is then that of the underlying work. Out of courtesy we should still attribute the person who did the crop, but out of courtesy we should also give credit for the work the original author created, especially if the crop is odd in some way. At least some licences require you to tell about changes you made, so this is a reason to somehow notice that it wasn't the original that we used. But, anyway, I think this is enough reasoning from my part, unless we start a discussion on how we should attribute people regarding these images, and such a discussion should probably be had in the Pub. –LPfi (talk) 13:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I am also in doubt
Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
I am also in doubt about that matter. But I have no intention of touting or promotion. So, I used the links from the Google Maps (which are the primary source for their location and basic information). I am not sure if all these sacred sites have their own official websites or not. Haoreima (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yeah tbh since about a quarter of the active Wikivoyage community knows you, it's obvious it's no form of promotion but if the sites don't have their own websites, what you can do is just link the relevant city article and then add the link from that city article. For some article that resembles something like that, an article I've recently been working on is Tasmanian national parks, and in particular take a look at the national parks (though this section violates WV:IP) and the historic sites sections (which is currently a work in progress). It's not perfect, but the point is that they are not directly linked from the topic article, but rather mentioned in all the relevant destination articles. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)08:53, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Haoreima Also regarding the coordinates, it's actually pretty easy to do. I found it difficult in my early days of contributing to this site, but I quickly got the hang of it. Special:Diff/4414347 is my latest example of adding coordinates, in which I entered -43.73314 and 170.0952 into my lat and long parameters.
The first thing you'll need to note is that Google Maps won't allow you to pinpoint the exact coordinates at once. What I do is I pinpoint them a bit off to the side, in which this case, I pinpointed it on -43.73314, 170.094996 and then adjusted it to the right a bit. There is also a good guide at Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition. Let me know if you need any more help. I'd be happy to explain :-) Also while I'm at it, there's a good tool when using the listing editor too which all you need to do is pinpoint the spot and then you've got your coords. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)10:19, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the suggestion of getting latitudes and longitudes. I understand now. But about the first reply you told me, I still have a little confusion. Could you do one for me so that I may be able to understand properly? After that, I will handle the remaining. Haoreima (talk) 13:09, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for doing that! Since Imphal is a large place, it has many sacred sites of Panthoibi herself. Shall I add all in the list in the same way like you added? Haoreima (talk) 12:23, 29 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [36][37]
Latest comment: 2 years ago16 comments4 people in discussion
I think it'd be better to reserve "type=vicinity" to destinations that are in the vicinity. I don't know whether the designation used is visible anywhere at the moment, but you never know. Before the last rewrite of the template, hovering over a marker would say something like "show map for this vicinity marker"; something like that could be added somewhere by somebody. Instead, if you want a red marker, write "type=red" (choose among colours listed). Maybe that requires adding "red" to the show parameter of the dynamic map, but having to do that is not counter-intuitive, we just need to add it to the documentation. –LPfi (talk) 09:01, 30 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
Intuitive but also confusing, because the markers on the map have the same color as type=listing. So if you use both, you get 2x a green marker with nr 1 on the map. FredTC (talk) 11:07, 30 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
I've always thought that we were meant to use "city" for cities and "vicinity" for listings in "other destinations". iirc, in my early days at this site, I saw a mix of both no type (which defaults to listing) and vicinity. I've just been standardizing them since. -301501Using other could work, but the reason why I thought we used the dark red color was to distinguish them from the normal forestgreen color. A quick look on Special:PermaLink/4129235#Other destinations tells me we've been using it for quite some time. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)11:22, 30 March 2022 (UTC)Reply
@FredTC: I rarely or never specify "type=listing" (though I sometimes leave it in by default). When I list "other destinations", it's usually in a region or country article, so the main types are "type=other" and "type=city". —Granger (talk·contribs) 08:36, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Mx. Granger: I checked a few countries from Middle East and already nr 3 (Iran) would have double green marker numbers if "vicinity" would be changed into "other". Something strange happened when I was trying to check, after making the change, using "Show preview" the markers in the text turned green, but the markers on the map were unchanged. After using "Publish changes" the markers on the map turned green, causing a situation with 2x a green "1" an 2x a green "2". I also checked the other countries of Middle East and they would not have that problem, so you are not at all the only one "rarely or never" creating the situation. But still I think that someone not knowing about this, could create situations with double numbers on the map. The {{listing|...}} always had green markers and that should stay that way. But I think a {{marker|type=other|...}} and also a {{listing|type=other|...}} should not create green markers. --FredTC (talk) 12:13, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
The problem in the Iran article is the embassies, which should not be listed there. Embassy listings should be in city articles, not country articles. It's also worth noting that Iran currently has double red markers (for "type=go" and "type=vicinity") – slightly different shades of red, but that's not obvious unless you're paying close attention. So it seems to me the Iran article is an argument for using green rather than red for "other destinations". But maybe choosing some other color would be best. —Granger (talk·contribs) 12:56, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
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The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (calendar).
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