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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [1]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [2]
The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [3]
Hello, CAPTAIN RAJU. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
A new tool to display Wikimedia Commons categories (and Wikipedia/Wikidata tags) with coordinates on the OSM map
The Association of Research Libraries published the draft of a Wikidata Task Force White Paper on how libraries and Wikidata/ Wikibase con join forces aroud linked open data for both library discovery systems and Wikipedia, and advancing a diversity and inclusion agenda in the cultures of both libraries and Wikimedia. The draft is open for public comment until 30 November.
Dear raju sir do not delete my page bcz i know that its fake but its my happiness and imagination world And after hard work this page desighn so please dont delete this. This can not publish its always my personal so please Shritha srinivas (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
re: Johnny Kay
The article has a reference now. This should solve the problem. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wyclif (talk • contribs) 03:22, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
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
On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [4]
Changes later this week
The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [5]
Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word__EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [6]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warningUse of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [7]
The Swedish National Heritage Board has started working on a project, related to Structured Data on Commons, that focuses on ways to feed back improved (crowdsourced) metadata to cultural institutions who contribute media files to Wikimedia Commons.
Hi, you tagged the draft as under review five days ago. Are you going to complete the review soon? If not please "release it so that another reviewer can have a go at it. BTW I see it has sources in Arabic so whoever rebiews it should be competent in Arabic (that excludes me). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect The Beguiled (upcoming film). Since you had some involvement with the The Beguiled (upcoming film) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 19:26, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Champ (upcoming film). Since you had some involvement with the Champ (upcoming film) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 20:53, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
GLAM ♥ data — what is a gallery, library, archive or museum without a catalogue? It follows that Wikidata must love librarians. Bibliography supports students and researchers in any topic, but open and machine-readable bibliographic data even more so, outside the silo. Cue the WikiCite initiative, which was meeting in conference this week, in the Bay Area of California.
Wikidata training for librarians at WikiCite 2018
In fact there is a broad scope: "Open Knowledge Maps via SPARQL" and the "Sum of All Welsh Literature", identification of research outputs, Library.Link Network and Bibframe 2.0, OSCAR and LUCINDA (who they?), OCLC and Scholia, all these co-exist on the agenda. Certainly more library science is coming Wikidata's way. That poses the question about the other direction: is more Wikimedia technology advancing on libraries? Good point.
Wikimedians generally are not aware of the tech background that can be assumed, unless they are close to current training for librarians. A baseline definition is useful here: "bash, git and OpenRefine". Compare and contrast with pywikibot, GitHub and mix'n'match. Translation: scripting for automation, version control, data set matching and wrangling in the large, are on the agenda also for contemporary library work. Certainly there is some possible common ground here. Time to understand rather more about the motivations that operate in the library sector.
Links
Wikidata and Libraries: Facilitating Open Knowledge, book chapter by Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, metadata librarian and Lydia Pintscher, Wikidata Product Manager, from Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge (2018)
LD4P and WikiCite: Opportunities for collaboration, WikiCite 2018 program abstract, Christine Fernsebner Eslao of Harvard Library Information and Technical Services and Michelle Futornick, Linked Data for Production Program Manager at Stanford University
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Home Again (upcoming film). Since you had some involvement with the Home Again (upcoming film) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 16:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Jack Rife Beirnes
Apparently it was felt that something needed editing on this page. Could you send me more specifics please. Gord Beirnes dbeirnes@hotmail.com
Thank you for being prompt and diligent in sorting out delete nominations etc. Cheers. —Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 21:19, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
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
Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [8]
You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [10]
When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [11][12]
Hello and welcome to the December 2018 GOCE newsletter. Here is what's been happening since the August edition.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the August blitz (results), which focused on Requests and the oldest backlog month. Of the twenty editors who signed up, eleven editors recorded 37 copy edits.
For the September drive (results), of the twenty-three people who signed up, nineteen editors completed 294 copy edits.
Our October blitz (results) focused on Requests, geography, and food and drink articles. Of the fourteen people who signed up, eleven recorded a total of 57 copy edits.
For the November drive (results), twenty-two people signed up, and eighteen editors recorded 273 copy edits. This helped to bring the backlog to a six-month low of 825 articles.
The December blitz will run for one week, from 16 to 22 December. Sign up now!
Elections: Nominations for the Guild's coordinators for the first half of 2019 will be open from 1 to 15 December. Voting will then take place and the election will close on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. Positions for Guild coordinators, who perform the important behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our project running smoothly, are open to all Wikipedians in good standing. We welcome self-nominations, so please consider nominating yourself if you've ever thought about helping out; it's your Guild and it doesn't run itself!
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators; Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Tdslk.
Upcoming: "Researcher meets Curator", with a subquestion: "What are the consequences of collecting born digital sources, working with digital network analysis and engaging with linked open data initiatives such as Wikidata", in Maastricht on 22 March 2019. Call for papers
We added a Page property for easier programmatic access to the number of Senses and Forms of a Lexeme (phabricator:T199611)
The code samples in the query service have been improved (phabricator:T207749, thanks abian!)
We're working on tracking how often the different Lua functions that Wikibase provides are used in the Wikimedia project to see how that changes over time (phabricator:T191416)
We worked on and fixed a security incident related to blocking (phabricator:T210953)
We are continuing to bring the termbox (showing labels, descriptions, aliases) to mobile viewers
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 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [13][14]
When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [15]
Sweden report: The Swedish Performing Arts Agency; Library data starts to take shape; Learning Wikipedia at the Archives; Wikimedia Commons Data Roundtripping
USA report: Wikidata Workshop at Pratt School of Information; Wikidata Presentation for the New York Technical Services Librarians; Wikipedia Asian Month; Cleveland Park Wikipedia Edit-a-thon; Historic Ivy Hill Cemetery Workshop
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan, near Columbus Circle. 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.
(note this month we will be meeting in Manhattan, near Columbus Circle, 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 03:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018
Hello CAPTAIN RAJU,
Reviewer of the Year
This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.
Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001reviews), Semmendinger (8,440reviews), PRehse (8,092reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016reviews), and Elmidae (3,615reviews). Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only sevenmonths, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.
The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.
Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019
At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.
Training video
Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minutevideo was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.
