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.
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no
file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at
Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (
discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (
discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the
Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are
now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new
password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors,
et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available
on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators
may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A
request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the
RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled
two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider
doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate
account security by ensuring your password is
secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Insertcleverphrasehere, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable
New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
PATH SLOPU (Talk) 08:46, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
On
4 January 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Falcon 9 booster B1050, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Falcon 9 booster B1050 malfunctioned during re-entry and missed its landing target at
LZ-1, but still managed a soft landing in the ocean just offshore? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at
Template:Did you know nominations/Falcon 9 booster B1050. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (
here's how,
Falcon 9 booster B1050), and it may be added to
the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the
Did you know talk page.
Hello, Insertcleverphrasehere. 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.JC7V (
talk) 18:48, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
@
JC7V7DC5768: Thanks for the message, happy new year to you and look forward to working with you in the future. No hard feelings whatsoever. Cheers, — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 20:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
NPR School
Hi, I would like to be enrolled in the
NPR school and become your student. Just for info I'm a
WP:CVUA graduate , a rollbacker and a former NPR, my rights were revoked due to inexperience and I would love to get enrolled, get the required experience , understand the process and hopefully, help out as an NPR again. Thanks in advance.
Bingobro(Chat) 08:22, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Please be sure, if you can, to have added yourself to all the Phab tasks concerned with the Curation improvements list, particularly T157051 for example, and that you get the email notifications, because Phab is also used by MediaWiki devs who are not staff and who have all sorts of other reasons and personal priorities for development. History has shown that volunteer devs sometimes relegate tasks to a back burner without realizing thier importance.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (
talk) 01:32, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
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)
Chandan Guha, Click the link on the left in the tool box that says "Open Page Curation". You probably closed page curation at some point and it remembers this and won't open automatically in future until you re-open it. — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 08:28, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. It is working now. -
Chandan Guha (
talk) 09:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
The reply-link newsletter, issue 1
Hi! Welcome to the new reply-link newsletter, which I made because the ol'
list on the reply-link talk page was unwieldy. In case you haven't been following development recently, I've sent out some new updates that should let it reply basically anywhere, even in transcluded pages or under hatted discussions (two locations people have been wanting for a while). Reliability has also gone way up, as I've implemented a couple of sanity checks that help prevent the script from responding to the wrong message. Unfortunately, that means the script fails a bit more often. Anyway, try it out if you haven't done so in a while, and let me know what you think! I always appreciate feature requests or bug reports on
the talk page. Happy replying! (
Signup list/Unsubscribe)
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk) 02:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
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.
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.
Welcome to the fifth newsletter for the new
Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in
mid-size Wikimedia projects.
New projects for discussion
We began the "
Personalized first day" project with the
welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts
in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".
Engagement emails: this project was first discussed positively by community members
here back in September 2018, and the team how has bandwidth to pursue it. The idea is that newcomers who leave the wiki don't get encouraged to return to the wiki and edit. We can engage them through emails that send them the specific information they need to be successful – such as contact from a mentor, the impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over
the project page, and comment on
its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
Newcomer homepage: we developed the idea for this project after analyzing the data from the welcome survey and
EditorJourney datasets. We saw that many newcomers seem to be looking for a place to get started – a place that collects their past work, options for future work, and ways to learn more. We can build this place, and it can connect to the engagement emails. The content of both could be guided by what newcomers say they need during their welcome survey, and contain things like contact from a mentor, impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over
the project page, and comment on
its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
Initial reports on newcomer activity
We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.
Large numbers of users view help or policy pages on their first day: 42% in Czech and 28% in Korean.
Large numbers of users view their own User or User Talk page on their first day: 34% in Czech and 39% in Korean.
A majority of new users open an editor on their first day – but about a quarter of them do not go on to save an edit during that time.
Help panel deployment
The
help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:
About 400 newcomers in each wiki have seen the help panel button.
About 20% of them open up the help panel.
About 50% of those who open it up click on one of the links.
About 5% of Czech users ask questions, and about 1% of Korean users ask questions.
We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
How to create a good feedback page?
What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page?
Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.
Hi Intertcleverphrasehere, Greetings. Copyright violation as Earwig's Copyvio Detector tool is not working for the last 2 days - see
here. Notification have been raised in NPP and AfC talk pages -
see Here 2 and
Here 2. A ticket has been raised - see
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216312 and message
HERE 3. Pages need to check for copyvio can be logged here - see
User:DannyS712/cvcheck. Not sure this should be notified all reviewers by mass mailing. Cheers.
CASSIOPEIA(
talk) 10:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi Intertcleverphrasehere,, Just to let you know, Earwig's Copyvio Detector is up and running now. - see
[1] and
[2]. Thank you.
CASSIOPEIA(
talk) 00:52, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
CASSIOPEIA, That is good to know. After getting your last message I checked out the thread over on the Reviewer's noticeboard and that it had already been followed up, thanks for being the squeaky wheel and bringing it to higher attention to be fixed quickly. Cheers, — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 21:28, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for uploading File:Over 9000!.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a
claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see
our policy for non-free media).
Since you and I are the only active trainers at the moment and since the talk discussion goes to WT:NPP/R thought I would give you a heads up that I rewrote the syllabus section to reflect what I have/will be doing. If you don't like it feel free to revert as the official guide and I'll just use it personally. Best wishes,
Barkeep49 (
talk) 00:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Sounds solid... please do whatever you want with the school as I'm pretty sure no one has really ever taken ownership of it. (the original syllabus as written by Kudpung but not sure if it was really used much). — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 01:29, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
NPP Flowchart
Hi, I've recently started doing new page patrol, and have been using your flowchart regularly to help me keep on the straight and narrow. First of all, I should say thanks for making it - it's really useful, I rely on it heavily. I was speaking with
Barkeep49, who's been giving me training in this area, about ways that it could be made even better - I wondered if you'd be interested in discussing this?
Briefly, I wonder whether it would be possible to embed hyperlinks into it, so that at each decision-making stage you could go straight to the relevant guideline to help make the decision. I'm thinking of CSD criteria,
SIGNIF and the like; perhaps we could even have a list/table of notability guidelines and the like to one side of the flowchart as well.
I see from the metadata that you made it using a free web app. I used to use Visio for making flowcharts like this, and I seem to recall that it was possible to produce images with embedded links. Having said that, that was a few years ago, and I can't remember off the top of my head what file types it had these in, or whether they would have wide compatibility with current web browsers. I'd be happy to do some research around this and see whether I'd be able to put something together, but wanted to speak to you first to see whether you'd already explored this, and whether there were any hurdles and pitfalls that would prevent it from working. If you'd be interested in working together, I could do a bit of digging? Cheers
GirthSummit (blether) 17:12, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
Girth Summit, I think you can do it with SVG files. It is a bit of a pain but I did intend to do it eventually, but given the work involved I wanted to make sure that the Flowchart wasn't going to change much after putting in all that effort. I'll look into it though, as the flowchart has been stable for a pretty long time now. Having links would be great, especially if I could get them to show up in the flowchart side panel of the
Superlinks script. — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 22:31, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Sounds like you're on top of it already; if you'd like me to help at all, I've got a bit of time at the moment and could do some work on it, just let me know if that would be useful. Cheers
GirthSummit (blether) 09:38, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Girth Summit, It's done. I made a .svg file with clickable links on all stuff that should be linked. Only issue is that you have to navigate to the actual svg image in a new tab before the links become clickable (
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/NPP_flowchart.svg). I put some pale blue boxes around the clickable links to help indicate what is tooltiped and what isn't. Have a look and let me know if I missed anything that should be linked. — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 05:57, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
That looks great. I personally don't think it's too much of an issue to have to open it in a new tab to use the links - that's normally what I do anyway, so I can zoom in a bit to read it more easily. The links appear to work fine, but I've got a couple of suggestions for additional links:
The box 'Does the article contain a credible claim of importance or significance?' could have a link to
WP:SIGNIF
The box that starts 'Does the topic qualify for any subject-specific notability criteria?' could have a link to
WP:SNG
Other than that, it looks to me like it's ready to roll out. Thanks!
GirthSummit (blether) 09:33, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be a new tab. You also don't need a full URL, try this link:
Media:NPP flowchart.svg.
Wikipedia pages never display SVGs directly - SVGs are converted to PNGs server-side (see
c:Help:SVG#librsvg), and PNGs are merely grids of coloured dots with no interactive capability. This is the reason that in order to use the links you need to view the original SVG file, and not
its file description page or the same image in any other Wikipedia page (like this talk page).
I suggest that you make the links more obvious by colouring them blue instead of black (see
MOS:COLOR, "Links should clearly be identifiable as a link to our readers."). --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 20:17, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
Girth Summit, I'll add those couple links and an A7 that I missed over on the right as well.
Redrose64, Should be pretty easy to change the colour of the text to wiki-link blue. Thanks both of you guys for the feedback. — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 20:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
Good job! In essence, it's an algorithm for humans. 🤖 Atsme✍🏻📧 21:06, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
Finished the blue-link update and I managed to sneak in a few other links to various pages as well (it might not look like it in the png thumb preview at right unless you clear your cache, but if you navigate to the svg it will be). — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 22:14, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
Looks excellent - good job, thanks.
GirthSummit (blether) 09:11, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
On a sadder note, just this morning we said goodbye to
Abelmoschus Esculentus, a prolific script writer.
We are three months in to this newsletter and everything is going great–keep on creating amazing new scripts! Who knows–maybe the scripts will take over one day... --
DannyS712 (
talk) 17:59, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Pending requestsWikiProject Portals is looking for some help making scripts...
Following discussions at
the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and
Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the
restoration of adminship policy was
reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
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-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive
paid editing.
checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.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.
Hello, Insertcleverphrasehere. It has been over six months since you last edited the
Articles for Creation submission or
Draft page you started, "
Baebies".
In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia
mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.
If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at
this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.
Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing.
Dolotta (
talk) 16:28, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
That is definitely strange. Certainly could be. Twinkle has been known to be a fickle friend on occasion. --
Dolotta (
talk) 17:37, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As a Teahouse host, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for people that can report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to
participate in the consultation, and invite new users to join too.
We thank you in advance for your participation and your help.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Trizek (WMF), 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Superlinks / NPP flowchart
This is done. Please test it out and let me know if everything works. Bradv🍁 05:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.17
Hello Insertcleverphrasehere,
News
The WMF
has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the
content translation tool. This may result in an increase in
machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per
WP:TFOLWP.
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).
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.
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.
Upon your recommendations, I have linked a few pages. Let me know if you think it requires more. Thanks
ChrisGFA (
talk) 21:11, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #6
Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the
Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in
mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Plans for the next three months
The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the
help panel and the
newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the
engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:
Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
Continued iteration on help panel
Make the help panel available to more wikis
Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers
Newcomer homepage
Mockup of potential design for newcomer homepageThe
newcomer homepage is our current major project. We hope that community members can read over
the project page, and comment on
its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. You can see in the accompanying mockup how we are thinking about the homepage.
We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
Shown in the User space
Desktop only (mobile comes next)
Four modules
Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
Layout not yet personalized for each user
We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.
Help panel
Screenshot from Vietnamese Wikipedia showing the help panel open on the Community Portal, including the "search" bar.
During the last month, the
help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
422 of them have opened it
175 have clicked links
27 have run searches
40 have asked questions
We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on
our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.
Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.
We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.
We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.
Dear all. Recently,
FR30799386 (
talk) was blocked for sock puppetry. Among their projects were a number of user scripts that they left behind. I (DannyS712) have copied the scripts, and have taken over maintaining them. You currently import one or more of FR30799386's scripts, and I thought that you might want to import a maintained version. Links to each script are provided below.
If you have any questions, please reach out and
talk to me. --
DannyS712 (
talk) 03:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
DannyS712, Thanks very much for this. I've replaced the reference to User:FR30799386/copyvio-check on the NPP tutorial page with the script in your userspace as well. — Insertcleverphrasehere(
or here)(
click me!) 10:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC)