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)Reply
@Mx. Granger: Yes, I agree that the embassies should not be in the country article. But then there still is a color problem. The colors come from Module:TypeToColor, so, if we want a different color for "other" because it is equal to "listing" and also a different color for "vicinity" because there is too little difference with the color of "go", a change to that module must be made. I have put all colors that are used for existing "type=" values in the regionlist below and made suggestions for "other" and "vicinity". To change the module is simple, I see no edit restrictions. But I think it should be discussed somewhere first, because the module is heavily used. What do you think? --FredTC (talk) 13:35, 2 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
drink 000000
sleep 000080
city 0000FF
buy 008080
listing 228B22
other (now) 228B22
other (possible alternative) C08080
view 4169E1
see 4682B4
vicinity (now) 800000
vicinity (possible alternative) 80C0C0
around 800080
do 808080
go A52A2A
eat D2691E
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Your suggestions seem fine to me, but I agree that it merits wider discussion. Probably at the pub? —Granger (talk·contribs) 18:12, 2 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yes. One thing to keep in mind is accessibility. Are these colours "web safe" (no real problem any more, I think, but one might want to check) and distinguishable for those with colour sight issues? –LPfi (talk) 19:01, 2 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
The site is currently inconsistent: currently, some articles use "vicinity" markers for other destinations, while other articles use "other" markers for other destinations. I don't think we have consensus about which way to resolve this inconsistency, so I ask that you hold off on making mass changes until we get consensus. —Granger (talk·contribs) 13:37, 7 April 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
For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [38]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [39]
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 new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [40][41]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.
This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)
India report: Wikimedian-in-Residence program initiated at the Research Institute of World's Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage in Arunachal Pradesh
Italy report: The growth of sharing on Wikimedia projects
Netherlands report: Letters from Sierra Leone: the Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection in a new light
New Zealand report: Forming Wikimedia Aotearoa and the Aotearoa New Zealand Theses Project
Serbia report: News in Wikipedian in residence projects
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
Hi, SHB2000. Great work as always, but I don't agree with your reasoning here. It's completely reasonable to mention an airport in another country if it's the closest and it's not that hard to get across the border. My issue with that listing is solely that a lat number is given, as I don't want it to have geo and distort the focus of the article's map. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:19, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yeah I should've been more clearer in diff 4430951. The problem with this one was that this editor has been adding airports kilometres away from a destination, completely unrelated and it seems to me they only added that because it appeared close on a map. Of course, there isn't an issue with listing an airport if it's the primary way of entering the destination. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)02:46, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Sorry to butt in, but in the case of Malabo airport, it's not just that it isn't in Nigeria, it's that it is not even on the African continent. One would have to fly from Malabo to the city in question. Also, Equatorial Guinea is a notoriously difficult country to get into, and its airline is not permitted to fly into many countries because if its safety record. This is not like flying to Buffalo to get to the Niagara Peninsula, which would make a lot of sense.Ground Zero (talk) 02:57, 17 April 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 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [42]
Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.
No apology necessary. I understand your frustration, and it was careless of me not to check the location on the map, so I deserved to be called out for it. Ground Zero (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
This Month in Education: April 2022
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [47][48]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [49]
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 all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [50][51]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).
Future changes
The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning, #mw-undelete-revision and 3 others.
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Hey,
you removed the headline "in the city center" from the Budget eats in the Bucharest article.
For the reader it's helpful to see that all the following entries are in the city center so that the tourist does not need to go to the outskirts to have a budget dish. Flightnavigator (talk) 14:07, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
That is only useful if there are listings mentioned all over a city, but if there are no listings mentioned outside the city centre, then you do not need a double section header IMO. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)14:12, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
I think this was a good way to handle it – if all budget places really are in the centre. Flightnavigator, is that so, or is it just the mentioned ones that are there? In that case perhaps "all these" instead of "all of them". –LPfi (talk) 08:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
the advantage of this subheadline is, that somebody else could simply add the subheadline ====near the city center:==== for a restaurant that is near the city center. Or for restaurants which are in another interesting area. Flightnavigator (talk) 08:51, 5 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
The Mediawiki heading styles make little difference between H3 and H4 headings, which makes them confusing. I think the non-heading text is better for these specifications, at least in many cases. As long as the lists are short (4–5 items?) it is enough that you can click Budget in the menu, and you see the rest when looking at that section. –LPfi (talk) 09:14, 5 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Tech News: 2022-19
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [56]
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [57]
The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.
Sweden report: Training at the National Archives of Sweden; Training at the Stockholm City Museum; Training at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology; Improved images from Swedish Performing Arts Agency
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It's not true that country articles don't have a 'Go next' section. It's only not included in the country template...
As in the Israel article you indeed removed useful information for the reader and traveller.
Still an island can have ferries and low-priced flights to other countries, that is good to know to plan the further travel route. Just think about the growing number of digital nomads.
I am @Vyolltsa from the Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group. This year, we are hosting the Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in the South-East area of Albania to write about different travel destinations of Albania and Kosovo in English, May 20-22. Also, we are inviting everyone to join us online here, Saturday and Sunday, at 09:30-17:00 (GMT+2) Time Zone.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).
Future changes
You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [60]
Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion
Prompted by this edit I wonder what people in general would recognize as a city. If Kópavogur with 35,966 inhabitants is "far from" being recognised as a city, then many Finnish province capitals, such as Kajaani, Kotka, Mikkeli and Vaasa might not be recognised as such either (Kajaani has 36,500). When starting editing Wikivoyage, I thought it was odd to call Finnish towns "cities", but I have been thinking the usage just differs around the world. My original thought was that Helsinki would be the only one qualifying, and this seems to confirm that interpretation, that towns with 50,000–150,000 inhabitants should just be called towns (except for the article class – the 100-inhabitants Kilpisjärvi has a "city" article). –LPfi (talk) 12:22, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
It really depends on what the classification is. I usually call a settlement that has fewer than 10k a town, a settlement between 10k-50k a small city, 50k-200k a regional city, while anything over 200k as a major city. But when "city" is used alone, I'd tend to think of a settlement over 50k. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)12:27, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
If you don't mind my interjecting a comment: We've discussed this before. I think Australia may have some clearer definitions of "city" by population than other countries. I agree with LPfi's point of view on this. Whether it's a small city or not is somewhat contextual. In the Northeastern U.S., it would be. In Iceland, I bet it wouldn't be. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:47, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
"Iceland's oldest settlement and by far the only thing most (Europeans) would recognize as a "city" in Iceland."
and SHB2000 commented:
"it's not just Europeans – the next most populous city in Iceland is Kópavogur which only has a population of 35,966, which is tiny compared to Reykjavík"
So we now say that Kópavogur with 36,000 inhabitants by far wouldn't be recognised as a city. If 10–50k would make it a small city, how is it by far not recognised as a city at all? In US it would also be a small city, but in Iceland it wouldn't be a small city, but would it still be a city? Or aren't small cities cities? I am really confused now.
(There might be issues about Icelandic cities not looking like cities, but if that's the case, SHB2000's comment still doesn't make sense to me.)
Perspectives on this really vary by country (and maybe by region). A settlement of 30,000 in Uruguay is considered a city, but put the same settlement in southeastern China and it would be considered a small town. For this reason, I disagree with the linked edit – there is no universal standard of what constitutes a city. —Granger (talk·contribs) 09:36, 5 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
In the United Kingdom, various settlements are officially classified as being a "town" or a "city". Historically towns with a cathedral were cities, but that classification has long since dissappeared. As an example, as part of Queen Elizabeth's plainum jubilee celebrations, six British towns and two towns in Britihs overseas territories were upgraded to cities. See here. Martinvl (talk) 21:42, 20 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Fascinating, thanks! Wow, Stanley, Falkland Islands as a city! And this:
The new cities can expect a boost to local communities and the opening up of new opportunities for people who live there, the Cabinet Office said. It cited research that suggested previous winner Perth, in Scotland, saw the local economy expand by 12% in the decade it was granted city status, after it put them on the international map as a place to do business.Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:54, 21 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Grouping eat or sleep listings into price range is entirely optional, and when there are empty optional section headers, it does not give a good look on Wikivoyage. If someone does find a splurge restaurant, then they can add it back, but until then, it sits of no use. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)07:02, 18 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
I am not sure about that. In a place with few restaurants, we need no subheadings, but I am sure there are splurge restaurants in Luxembourg, and I am sure some travellers want to eat at them. Thus there is a deficiency, which we should want to make obvious to readers and editors alike. Passer-by editors won't know that there should be a splurge heading, so they won't add it. –LPfi (talk) 11:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
If editors are adding it just so "someone else" to add content, that unfortunately will not happen, based on an experiment I did at the end of last year with MoS tags, with an active contributor. In this case, an empty splurge section doesn't help travellers, and hoping for passer-by editors or someone else to do it is even worse in my opinion. Either leave the section and add a restaurant, or don't include it – it's as simple as that. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)12:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
If it "does not give a good look" so be it. If I write a stub, I don't want it to look like a guide. Let's have that ugly empty section there to warn readers the article hasn't been written properly (yet). It is an easy way to warn readers – and for a place like Luxembourg, I am sure somebody will fill it in in not too many years. –LPfi (talk) 11:49, 19 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Amusment Parks...
Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
A long time ago I started the Amusement parks topic..
However, outside of the UK .. I didn't know that much about smaller but notable parks.
Would you be able to consider adding some for your region, or at least add some listings to the relevant city pages with a cross reference?
Hmm not seeing any on the scale of the 'resort' parks on the Gold Coast though.. hmmm.. Thanks for the updates. I would also possibly suggest adding an explainer about Luna Park in the relevant pages. It's older than the modern resorts IIRC? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:49, 19 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for overlooking deleting the templates from articles
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It didn't occur to me at all, which is kind of crazy. Thank you for taking care of it. I'm on the road now, and don't have much time for Wikivoyage. I will not forget next time. Ground Zero (talk) 03:44, 22 May 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
Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [61]
The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [63]
Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [64]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).
Future changes
Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [65]
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 AbuseFilter extension, an ip_in_ranges() function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple ip_in_range() expressions joined by | into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [66]
The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [67][68]
The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the uciprange parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [69]
A new parser function will be introduced: {{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [70]
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 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
@Ikan Kekek: In Special:Diff/4465327, I removed "The colorful street art, which can be seen on one of the islands". That's the typical kind of content he adds to country/region articles. If we let this one go, then you could argue in leaving all his trivial edits that we usually rollback. You were right to restore the capitalization error he fixed, but if we let the trivial content stay, you could argue in keeping all of his articles for every farming town in the midst of nowhere. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)04:59, 11 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
No, only trivial improvements stay, not useless articles that may contain copyvio or racist remarks to boot. But I hadn't noticed I had restored "The colorful street art, which can be seen on one of the islands". That needs to go, but the capitalization should be corrected. Sorry for not paying enough attention. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:24, 11 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Kosovo report: Cooperation with the National Gallery of Kosova and Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
Malaysia report: WikiGap Malaysia 2022 @ Kuala Lumpur Library
New Zealand report: Pacific Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject, Auckland Museum's Exploratory Study and Report back on #1Lib1Ref
Poland report: Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; Training at the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection; How can we make GLAM’s digital resources more reusable in education?; The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
Sweden report: Rembrandt and others – drawings from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm; Stockholm Museum of Women’s History; The map book of Heinrich Thome; Sörmland Museum; Wikidata competition – International Museum Day 2022
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [74]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [75]
The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [76][77]
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.
Future changes
By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [78]
Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for site_stats at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more.
A new user_global_editcount variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [79]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [80]
Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different typeof attribute values, and instead use mw:File for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects: mw:Image, mw:Audio, or mw:Video. [81]
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello SHB2000, ArticCynda is accusing you (via Kaspiysk, and also via Murmansk Oblast) and Ibaman (via Murmansk Oblast) of Politically inspired vandalism (Dutch: Politiek geïnspireerd vandalisme). In both cases IP-edits were reverted by you and Ibaman. AC is mentioning this at the Dutch and French Travellers pub with wording that doen not describe the edits involved very accurately. Could you take a look at these actions? FredTC (talk) 01:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Where do you find them. Even people from Mount Gambier, Port Lincoln or Alice Springs that I have met had a pretty much general Australian accent. The dog2 (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
According to w:Rhoticity in English#Australia (where I even found out that some parts of South Australia have a rhotic South Australian accent), along the coastline (outside Adelaide, Mt Gambier or major cities). I suppose it's similar when you go to Otago or Southland in South Island where in major cities like Invercargill or Dunedin where you'll hear the standard NZ accent by most. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)23:58, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Tech News: 2022-26
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [82]
Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [83]
Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [84]
Future meetings
The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.
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 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage. [85]
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.
The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
"Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
"Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [86]
Suggested edits
Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [87]
Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.
Italy report: Opening and closing projects in June
Kosovo report: Edit-a-thon with Kino Lumbardhi; DokuTech; CEE Spring 2022 in Albania and Kosovo
New Zealand report: West Coast Wikipedian at Large and Auckland Museum updates
Poland report: Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; The next online meeting within the cycle of monthly editing GLAM meetings; Steps to communicate GLAM partnerships better and involve the Wikimedian community
Sweden report: 100 000 memories from the Nordic Museum; Report from the Swedish National Archives
USA report: Fifty Women Sculptors; Juneteenth Edit-a-thon; Juneteenth Photobooths 2022; Wiknic June 2022; New York Botanical Garden June 2022; LGBT Pride Month
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 Vector 2022 skin, the page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More. Learn more. [90]
The Anti-Harassment Tools team recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)
Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [92]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Do with this what you wish, but I just want to tell you: the non-standard green text you use for quotes is more or less unreadable for me, with my normal settings. I can read it by highlighting it (getting the colours in reverse) or doing some other tricks, but I might not bother to every time, and when I encounter it in a few posts after each other at Commons (where it seems to have gotten common), I often leave that thread unread. I don't know from where it comes, it seems to be marked just as "<span style="font-family:Georgia; color:green">", which I doubt you are typing in each time. –LPfi (talk) 14:05, 20 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
@LPfi: I'm typing that each time. If there was something that I could substitute, I'd have used <span style="color:#006400; font-family:Georgia">text</span>, but there is no template for that so I use the slightly simpler code soon to be depreciated. But if it's a bit unreadable, I'll try and not to use it. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)08:08, 21 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Nothing personal
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I had a rough night and I'm still having a rough time, so I'm probably more irritable than usual. Nothing personal; I just don't like that redirect and would like for you to understand that I've been on this site and its predecessor since probably 2004 (I'd have to look at my pre-registered history of IPs), and trying to hold me to some protocol you think is set in stone and arguing on the basis of rules you take to be inflexible is not a good way to go. Asking whether you'd agree to a deletion is not a violation of protocol and posting to the pub about most anything you'd like to call attention to are not violations of protocol. Those are both common things that have been done for as long as I can remember. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:35, 20 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek: I do apologize if I went overly hasty with nitpicking policy and also apologies for the late response – don't know how I missed this (I think it conflicted with Ibaman's). I guess we have different opinions but that's why votes for deletion (aka Articles for deletion / Requests for deletion / Deletion requests etc.) exists. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)09:28, 22 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
OK, if you're sure, I'll defer to you. To an American, anything that old that's at least somewhat pretty seems worth a mention, but I've been to India and know how old continuous civilization has been there. Varanasi, for example, I believe I remember is a very old city. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:27, 24 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Before I went to India, anything that was over 150 years really fascinated me as there are few structures older than 200 years and whilst there were many Indigenous sites, a lot of them were destroyed during colonial times. Until I went to India where I visited temples that were built in the early 12th or 13th century – completely changed how I thought of "historic". Sometimes "historic" in the Australian or American sense does make me laugh (and I'm sure you'd have heard of the Windsor Castle joke). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)09:32, 24 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Well, an American tourist was outside Windsor Castle and admired the classic structure. But they were so bothered by the noise of the nearby Heathrow Airport that they exclaimed "Why did they build the castle so close to the airport?". But yeah, Europe has a lot of nice historic places. I've only really gotten the opportunity to visit France and England's historic sites, but I've yet to visit Italy's, Spain's, Hungary's – and a lot of other European countries' historic sites. I do plan to visit Italy and Spain sometime within the next few years though, hopefully when airfares aren't ridiculously high and travelling 16,000 km across the globe isn't easy ;-). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)10:06, 24 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
No, it isn't. I laughed out loud at the joke. Ancient Roman ruins are all over the place in Italy, and there are also a lot of Etruscan sites and relics and Greek ruins in parts of Italy where those civilizations used to be. I'll tell you a story about my first visit to Arezzo another day. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Australian HSR
Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I just want to say, I hope they built it at some point. When I was living in Adelaide, I always thought it would be nice to have a HSR to Melbourne. And in fact, Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne is actually the right distance to have HSR. It would have made the journey possible in 3 hours. Unfortunately, I don't think there is the political will to make it happen, so for now, Australians will just have to watch from the distance and marvel at the convenience of HSR travel in China, Japan and Europe. The dog2 (talk) 16:28, 25 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Until very recently, it was a dream but things have really taken a turn since Dominic Perrottet became the NSW premier. Whilst a Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne corridor is far-fetched at this stage, construction for the Sydney-Central Coast-Newcastle is likely to start soon. From a recent 320-page document highlighting the future of high-speed rail, at the moment, there are only plans to build high-speed rail between Sydney-Newcastle, Sydney-Canberra, Sydney-Wollongong and maybe Sydney-Bathurst but those were announced by the state government. I believe Albanese does have plans to eventually build this project, but I believe the Sydney-Newcastle route will be the main priority, at least for now. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)12:14, 26 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Hopefully it's more than just talk this time. I must say I found the high-speed trains in China, Japan and Taiwan quite pleasant to use when I visited those countries, it would certainly be nice for Australians to have that as an option. My hope is that one day you will have a line from Cairns all the way down to Melbourne along the east coast, and perhaps from Melbourne to Adelaide. The dog2 (talk) 20:18, 26 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Cairns or Townsville seem unlikely (not even by 2050), but it might as well be built by the Queensland government instead of the federal govt. But I do hope they eventually convert the entire Bruce Highway into a motorway (I believe it's one of the Queensland Government's long-term projects). Regarding a Melbourne-Adelaide HSR, I personally think a full freeway is more viable in the short- and mid-term (currently only 271 km of ≈800 km is a freeway), but who knows whether Adelaide will eventually be connected by HSR? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)08:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Tech News: 2022-30
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [94]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [95]
Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [96]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Just a note: bus is buss in Swedish (buses: bussar), so it is easy to get the double s there when one is a bit absent-minded. Should still be corrected, of course, thanks for that. –LPfi (talk) 13:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Just to confuse matters, the form busses is a conjugation of the verb to bus (also bussing, bussed, presumably because by eye busing/bused ought to be pronounced "byoozing/byoozed").--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:48, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
They are more logical though... I mean, look how ugly manoeuvre, south west, or musick is spelled compared to maneuver, southwest or music ;-) – or maybe I'm just salty that I screwed up pieces of code because I accidentally spelled "center" as "centre" a few times (wasn't too hard of a fix though). Thankfully the world got together and dropped the k in the last one. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)12:17, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
I am really thankful to automatic indentation of code, or syntax highlighters (which serve the same purpose not only as side effect). They prevent misspelling keywords. –LPfi (talk) 13:24, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
I won't deny Webster spellings are (marginally) more phonetic, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. British spelling usually retains the etymology of a word better, making the rich and global origins of our vocabulary more obvious.
And regarding language diversity, I love how the French word [auto]bus (plural: [auto]bus) has been borrowed by most European languages, but each language has used its own grammar and spelling rules to impart a unique twist: English bus (pl. buses), Swedish buss (pl. bussar), German Bus (pl. Busse), Welsh bws (pl. bysiau), Spanish autobús (pl. autobuses), Romanian autobuz (pl. autobuze), Turkish otobüs (otobüsler)... Same for so many words relating to modern technology.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:23, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
But the British also did make some changes during the 19th century, like changing all -ize words to -ise or program to programme just to make English slightly closer to French. Mais j'aime le français pour la même raison ;-). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia)23:36, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Mogollon Rim edit conflict
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi there... we had a minor edit collision on article Mogollon Rim. I was doing a sizeable content addition while you were adding a banner.
Being someone what, not sure of the procedure here or if it would otherwise alert you, so thought I'd reach out. Didn't mean to stomp on your edit; I put your picture in as a comment in case you/someone wants to revert to it. Regarding my banner selection, not sure if it meets the size specs (tho it did seem to crop it nicely), however the scene with the trees imho reflects the area better (typing as an Arizona resident). thanks , and appreciate the guidance you've given BrianM0000 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Hi BrianM0000, feel free to replace the banner if you want – just make sure the banner is in a 7:1 ratio (I'll crop it to a 7:1 ratio if needed). While I have visited Petrified Forest NP before, I don't know whole lot about Eastern Arizona and you obviously know better than I do. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)08:46, 13 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Chinese on Christmas Island
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
"As a territory of Australia, English is the most common language spoken on Christmas Island, but is not universal. Many older residents speak Malay as a first language. However, unlike Cocos Island, all signs are in English."
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hey SHB2000, I merged Concord and Lincoln (Massachusetts), but can't figure out how to get mapshape to include both towns. Could you lend a hand here? Thank you. Ground Zero (talk) 12:44, 21 August 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
Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [101][102]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [103]
Excuse me? I don't know why I need to "watch myself", when I did not flout any bright-line policies. Maybe I should say your conduct is unbecoming of a bureaucrat, but I won't because this has absolutely nothing to do with user rights. It would've been no different if I had promoted this weren't I an admin, but that is not the point. Great that you stand by all your remarks, including your false accusations. Apart from claiming I promoted it because you were on vacation, now you claim I was edit warring. How many times did I revert you? Two. Were they on different pages? Yes, so that makes it one each. A single revert on two pages is NOT edit warring and certainly not per w:WP:WAR, m:Edit war, or Wikivoyage:Edit war. It's a real pity how you continued to spew false accusations after I told you about it. Again, please rethink what you type before you hit the reply button – because your conduct was clearly unacceptable and has made Wikivoyage a more hostile and unwelcoming place. You are the one that needs to watch their conduct. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)07:26, 25 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
You honestly thought you had a consensus to promote that article to star? If you really did, you need to rethink what consensus means and what it means for an article to be made a star, which should really require unanimity except in very unusual cases of really clear unreasonableness. It's hard for me to accept that you didn't mean to pull a fast one on me and the site, but if you didn't, you have some thinking to do. And yes, for you to revert my reversion of an absolutely irregular promotion to star status constitutes edit warring. Instead, you should have accepted that you were in the wrong. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:46, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
And yes, for you to revert my reversion of an absolutely irregular promotion to star status constitutes edit warring.
You completely missed the point about what is edit warring. Edit warring simply means continually hitting the undo button multiple times or as defined by Wikipedia, "when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions". Hitting it once on two different pages doesn't constitute as "edit warring". Had I reverted ThunderingTyphoons! and LPfi's reverts, then it would have, but I did not. I advise you read w:WP:EDITWAR, m:Edit war, and Wikivoyage:Edit war before making accusations of edit warring. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)06:33, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
I understand you are frustrated, but this is a storm in a water glass that shouldn't be allowed to escalate. If what is needed to prevent that is stepping back for a few days, then please do that. I think what needs to be said has been said, and if there is something more to be said it should be said after sleeping on it. –LPfi (talk) 06:46, 26 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Rockingham WA
Latest comment: 2 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion
Hello. I just went through the Stay safe section of this article removing a great excess of Captain Obvious advice that isn't specific to Rockingham. Of course, info about specific neighbourhoods and the curious problem of grannies with a death wish is all useful and should be kept!
I left all the wildlife information alone, but again it strikes me as probably being pretty generic to Australia. Would you mind checking this section, and removing info that could just as easily go in the Stay safe sections of the state or country articles? Thanks, ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
@ThunderingTyphoons!: I took a quick look at it. I don't know a whole lot about WA, I've never been there before (I know a lot more about Norway than I do about WA (factoring out the fact that I did a great road trip from Oslo to Tromsø back in 2018...)), and I don't have any intentions of going there within the near future but I can confirm that a whole lot of it is pretty generic and not very specific to that specific area – that sort of content would better fit go in Western Australia or Australia. I'll remove all Captain Obvious content just in a moment. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)09:21, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Done I removed everything that I felt was generic and not specific to Rockingham but I left the jellyfish and octopus advice because I have no idea what the situation is like in WA. If it's similar to the situation in 13°S Qld, then there's merit leaving it but otherwise I think that should also go. @Graham87:, given you know the area much better than I do, is there anything else in "Stay safe" that sounds obvious and not very specific to Rockingham? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)09:27, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I figured that you wouldn't have to know a lot about Western Australia for this. You're Australian, and if the advice also applies to your neck of the woods, or at least to places a lot closer to you than Rockingham, it doesn't belong in any particular city article. Cheers. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:30, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Just wow ... I've removed all but the last bit of the "Stay safe" section. I've also fixed its location ... it's a southern suburb of Perth; it officially marks Perth's southern boundary but Mandurah is almost coterminous with Perth these days. Graham87 (talk) 11:33, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
I thought the same too. When I first looked at Rockingham on OSM, it looked more like an outer suburb / satellite city kind of like how Campbelltown or Sydney/Brooklyn (both are around 60 km from Sydney CBD) but still a part of Sydney. Anyway, thanks for the cleanup :-). Who knew that online scams were only a thing in Rockingham, WA? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)11:42, 29 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
@ThunderingTyphoons!: Somewhat absent-minded elderly people are certainly not unique to Rockingham ... I haven't been to that part of Perth very often but I follow Perth news fairly closely and I've never heard of this problem being particularly acute in that area. Fair point about some of the crime info though; I've put some back. Graham87 (talk) 15:24, 29 August 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.
In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [105]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please emailMadalina Ana.
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. I continue to favor static maps in Manhattan, partly because we can use uptown/downtown as up and down. I don't oppose your adding dynamic maps, but please make them togglable with the static maps.
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 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [106][107]
@Billinghurst: It seems your user talk is already indef semi-protected – am I looking at the correct page? I guess that doesn't stop that occasional sleeper account like the one that just vandalised your talk; do you want me to fully protect your talk page? Cheerios, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
If the documentation on Wikivoyage:Autoconfirmed users is correct, the requirements do not stop vandals. They probably do stop most touts and random graffiti painters. To stop vandals much stricter limits are needed. At sv-wp we introduced a protection level between semi-protection and full protection, meant to allow specifically established users (I don't remember for what, perhaps for editing most templates). –LPfi (talk) 09:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
This Month in Education: August 2022
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A question regarding the downtown → city centre change
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
While I'm quite neutral on your change from "Downtown Mumbai" to "Mumbai City Centre", I still have some doubts regarding the commonality of the term "downtown" in India. While you argue that "downtown" is not a common term in India, in my perspective "Downtown Mumbai" is more common than "Mumbai City Centre" and the reason might be that "Downtown Mumbai" is literally a downtown (like Downtown Manhattan). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:13, 8 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Apologies for the late response – don't know how I missed this. Regarding the change, it was partially influenced by a friend from Mumbai, but I do get what you mean. That said, a Google search for "Downtown Mumbai" yields 14m results while "Mumbai City Centre" yields 215m results. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)13:07, 10 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Cape
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
"In geography, a cape is a headland or a promontory of large size extending into a body of water, usually the sea." Delaware Bay is pretty big; see w:Delaware Bay. The picture of Delaware Bay in that article shows some obvious capes on the New Jersey side of that bay. Dunno why you insist on subtracting information, though I'd reduce it to "the Atlantic Coast." Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:21, 10 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Poland report: The summary of GLAM editing contest and the end of residency at the National Museum in Cracow; Cooperation with Wawel Royal Castle; Hack(art)hon for Zachęta
Serbia report: Contemporary Art Edit-a-thon and Wikipedian in residence at the Historical Archive of Negotin
Sweden report: 100 000 Bildminnen; Uniforms, images from New Sweden, colonial officers, the map book of Fryderyk Getkant, and more!; Swedish general election 2022
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [108]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [110][111]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [112][113]
Future changes
In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.
Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.
We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.
If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.
Ongoing projects and explorations
The new impact module is part of the Positive Reinforcement project. The image displays the mockup for mobile we used for user testing.
We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.
We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.
Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).
Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.
News for mentors
A new system for the mentors list
The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.
At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.
The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [114][115]
Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.
Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.
And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.
Other improvements
Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:
While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [116]
Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [117]
Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [118]
Recent changes and fixed bugs
We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [119]
Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [120]
Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [121]
In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [122]
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [123]
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [124][125]
In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [126]
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [127][128]
The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [129][130]
The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Hey bro! The quickbar isn't working. Besides, the map isn't looking good. Whenever I refresh the page and see the mapframe, the position of the Kangla isn't in the center of the frame but bending over sides. Please help me to fix the 2 issues. :-) --Haoreima (talk) 11:39, 5 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Hi Haoreima, by "quickbar", I presume you're referring to the banner? {{Quickbar}} is only used on country articles or dependent/external territories (like the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Niue, or the British Indian Ocean Territory), and the article doesn't use that template. I'm not sure how to fix that because it's fine on my end. Could you perhaps upload a screenshot?
Responding to your second point, changing the mapframe centre should generally be easy. I'll take a stab at fixing it, though please adjust it as necessary. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)11:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I meant the original quickbar. But it's ok as you explained it to me. Regarding Banner, can it be crafted out from this File:Kangla Manipur Palace.jpg? If it's ok, then the dragons will be covered by the name of the article as it's in the left side. To avoid it from being covered, can we do lateral inversion of the banner?
Yes, it's what I wished. The rectangular area of the Kangla to be in the center of the map. The present version is much better than the previous one. Thank you for doing that. Haoreima (talk) 12:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for crafting it. In fact, I have a mindset that things done by myself isn't nice and if it's done by a well experienced person, it's satisfactory. :-) --Haoreima (talk) 12:53, 5 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
This Month in GLAM: September 2022
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Australia report: Behind the scenes with Australia's Wiki Loves Earth 2022 winner
Austria report: A Börthday present for Wikidata - the DACH Culture Contest
Brazil report: Reopening of Museu Paulista and other news
France report: Meeting with Prime minister cultural adviser; Residence at the Brittany Museum
India report: Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
Indonesia report: GLAM Socialization; Wikistories for GLAM Competition
Italy report: September month of results and planning
Netherlands report: Wiki Loves Monuments Suriname first edition: 554 photos
New Zealand report: New Zealand Thesis Project and Te Papa Forget-me-nots
Poland report: The results of GLAM editing contest; GLAM Coordinators Meeting
Serbia report: External projects, great results and high level of independence
Sweden report: Bookfair back on site; Cultural history in High Schools; More identifiers from National Historical Museums of Sweden on Wikidata; Swedish general election 2022
USA report: Advocacy and Invention; New Smithsonian WiR; Called to Create; DC Statehood and Home Rule; Annual meeting; Wikipedian in Residence Opportunity at the Pérez Art Museum Miami
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 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [131][132]
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi,
May I ask why you have reversed my edit to this page: It is simply untrue to say that the 'UK has used revocation of citizenship as a political weapon against those travelling to the conflict in Syria.' a number of British citizens have visited Syria this year and the UK government does not have the power to prevent them. Revocation of citizenship is only used against those who go to participate in the conflict and that was the nature of my edit,
@Deano1960: Okay, if that is the case, then by all means go add that, but please use an edit summary because otherwise we don't know if your edit was a test edit or an addition. In fact, I thought your first edit to that page was a test edit for that same reason. Also, please don't reinsert that typo. Best, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)11:57, 17 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Tech News: 2022-42
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.
Problems
Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [137]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [138]
Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
I think you made a good call at the Pub, but let me address that here anyway, by comparing these:
"I have had my edits rolled back by admins in content or style disputes. I felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges"
"I have had my edits undone by admins in content or style disputes. I felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges"
"I have had my edits reverted by admins in content or style disputes. I felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges"
It's easy to imagine people making all of these statements, right? But it's difficult to imagine someone saying:
"I have had my edits reverted without explanation by admins in content or style disputes, which doesn't bother me at all, but, wow, if they had rolled back those edits instead, I definitely would have felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges"
"I have had my edits undone without explanation by admins in content or style disputes, which doesn't bother me at all, but, wow, if they had rolled back those edits instead, I definitely would have felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges"
Rollback itself isn't the problem. We could remove the rollback button from the software entirely (which is easy, and can be done both per-user and per-wiki), and we would still have the real problem. Your proposed rules focus on a button. If we are going to have rules, they should focus on the "failure to explain reverts" part, not on "one way, among many, that results in a failure to explain reverts". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Good point. I don't know the clear answer for what most Wikimedians would do, but I (and I assume most other Wikimedians) would usually include an edit summary while clicking the "undo" button, unless it's a self-revert. This is in contrary to rollback, where you simply can't add one. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)06:19, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
My impression is that reversions are explained only occasionally in edit summaries, mostly in the cases of obviously good faith edits. For touting, at least some admins add the {{tout}} template more or less consistently, but also then might not comment in the edit summary (in which case what button was pressed is irrelevant). –LPfi (talk) 07:45, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I think we should focus on our values in this issue. Specifically, the relevant value is that we are a welcoming community that is willing to invest effort into encouraging newcomers and explaining why their edits were removed. It's not about the button; it's about getting an explanation to people.
Given what we know about the kind of people who make basic mistakes, putting the explanation in an edit summary is less effective at demonstrating our values than putting the explanation on the newbie's User_talk: page. The process LPfi describes of reverting and templating is a good one. That gets the explanation directly to the editor, which is a very good, very desirable, very community-building action. For this group, Rollback+template is better than Undo+edit summary. (Undo+edit summary still wins for communicating with RecentChanges patrollers, but not for communicating with the newbie.)
Then there's the intermediate stage, when we think that the person has figured out the history page and edit summaries. The newcomer who has found the edit summaries could benefit from an explanation in an edit summary, which is more convenient for us than leaving notes on their User_talk: pages. I've seen no research on this, but let's guess it's after the person has made 10 edits, and maybe somewhere around 100 edits. A newbie who uses the Undo button has found the edit summaries; a newbie who repeated the same edit from scratch probably hasn't. (That suggests that if you have to revert the same thing twice, it should be explained on the User_talk: page, unless they did a straight Undo to restore it.)
Among advanced editors, edit summaries begin to have less practical value and more social meaning. I don't usually need an edit summary to figure out what you did. I'll be able to figure out what you did from the diff and make a guess about your purpose based on the diff and other interactions we have. In the rare instance that I can't figure it out, I know how to find you and ask for an explanation. This means that edit summaries are normally unnecessary for any immediate, practical purpose. They are, at most, convenient for both of us (and also the RecentChanges patrollers).
But:
Although the immediate practical benefit is low, among long-time folks, the content of your edit summary is also one part of how I decide whether you are a nice person who is treating me well, or a mean person who is being rude to me, or an angry person who is losing patience with me. Although edit summaries aren't necessary to explain what you're doing, they are used by other editors to guess how you feel about me and my contributions. The key point is still getting an explanation to me somehow, and even though many options are available and acceptable, I'll normally expect to find it in the edit summary. And this is why an experienced editor may be equally upset about a Rollback and a default-message Undo, but won't be upset about an Undo that says something like "Wait until the discussion ends" or "No consensus". An experienced editor might interpret the lack of explanation as meaning that you thought me and my efforts were worthless.
I don't think we should focus on the rollback button. I think we should focus on getting an explanation to people, not on the method. The primary way we achieve that is probably encouraging experienced people when they do the right thing (e.g., hit the thanks button whenever you see someone leaving a custom message on a newbie's User_talk: page) rather than calling them out when they don't. (w:en:Negative reinforcement requires discipline, but it works.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 21 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
A rollbacker rolled back an edit of mine at enwiki yesterday. I undid it and added a single ? to the default "Undid revision..." edit summary. It turned out it was just an accident. No big deal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Okay I was being sarcastic, but located also doesn't add any meaning, does it? I usually prefer clear concise writing, and my usually journalistic writing tells me not to use it (I read journalism for the entirety of my 30–60-minute train commute). FWIW, I have seldom seen the word "located" being used (this is the only article I've read this month that has the word "located" in its title). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)10:23, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I have no problem with deleting unnecessary uses of "located" and have done so myself, but maybe we can be a little restrained in our edit summaries when people haven't really done anything wrong. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:19, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I may be overthinking this, but I'm concerned about the possibility of offending someone whose only shortcoming was to use the word "located." I've previously talked to Ibaman about similar edit summaries. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:50, 30 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
It was not my intention of offending someone, but I have to ask: who will it offend? Using Toronto as an example, surely those "located"s would have been included by multiple users and not just one, so I'm confused as to who it'll offend. I will curve down my usage such edit summaries, but no guarantee as I may forget about it one day, though. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)05:59, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
The Signpost: 31 October 2022
News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [143]
In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [144]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
@JML1148: FWIW, Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps is fairly outdated and I haven't really been following those instructions; I mostly learned how to draw static maps using trial and error and you can probably see that my earlier static maps look pretty terrible (at least compared to File:Leeds map.png), reflecting this long later.
Though in bottom-level city or park articles dynamic maps are usually favoured, static maps can have massive advantages, especially for a ski resort where roads can be at best, unclear. I haven't drawn many static maps for cities/districts before (perhaps see Canberra/South Canberra#Parliamentary Triangle for one that I have drawn). Are you looking for File:Template for districts.svg? That has all the markers the key plus a few other symbols such as a parking or metro symbol.
I could tell it was somewhat outdated and I had to just make up some things. I wanted to make just the centre of the Village on the map, as it is a bit messy on the dynamic map. I know about the file, however my question was about how to take items from the template and place them on the map. JML1148 (talk) 10:33, 24 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
@JML1148: I just had a look at the static map and I must say, it looks very good (especially for your first). Are you also planning to make a static map for Mt Buller as a whole (with all the chairlifts and everything outside the village centre)? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)09:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thank you! I am not planning to do so, as I wanted a map just for the centre of the village because it was difficult to see on the dynamic map due to the amount of markers. Now that you say so, it may be a good idea to have a map of the lifts and runs on the article itself. JML1148 (talk) 09:48, 3 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Makes sense. It's a pity that Wikimedia maps automatically filter out the chairlifts (see [149] for reference), but I've essentially lost my modus operandi in Wikimedia maps.
If you don't mind my giving my 2 cents: categories are important on various other Wikis, but we don't manually add categories to any article on this site, nor do we basically ever create new ones. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:25, 29 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Because you've been relentlessly going on a template-creating spree (with copyvios) and defying the site's norms and policies since Oct 29 and we've already given you more than enough latitude per our one-strike policy. You're not really new to Wikimedia, though, aren't you? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)11:06, 3 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I love the class that's suggesting all the new banners for Korea. One of the students even found a banner that isn't from the city it's being used it.
I added a bunch of comments to Wikivoyage:Banner suggestions, mostly to link to discussions or to link to talk pages where discussions ought to be. AlasdairW or SHB2000, could one of you make some banners for the discussions that already exist?
The section is so big/busy right now that I'd like to get a few more archived when we can. I think there are more than 30 items listed right now. I figure that once the alternative banner has been made and posted to the discussion, and a note left at Wikivoyage:Requests for comment#Banner discussions, it should be okay to archive the original suggestion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 3 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Sure – it's getting late here so I likely won't edit the article until tomorrow (UTC). I've fixed the wiki formatting, but great work on improving the 822-byte article into a 10.5k-byte article. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:51, 5 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Just dropping by...
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, SHB2000! I just decided to stop by to see what Wikivoyage is all about. You have quite the impressive user page! Hope you're doing well. Cheers, Hockeycatcat (talk) 12:32, 7 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [150]
Problems
Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.
Did you have any that you have done? Or it never took off the ground? It'll be nice to have some instead of none. Cause I can see its use in the upcoming proposed edit-a-thon and award extra points for focusing a certain country. OhanaUnitedTalk page03:51, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Hockeycatcat: NPOV is indeed not a policy on Wikivoyage – instead, we have Wikivoyage:Be fair. They're similar, but not quite the same thing. If a certain city has streets polluted with garbage, of it it looks filthy, per Wikivoyage:Be fair, it can be listed. Likewise, if a restaurant is a Michelin star restaurant, then by all means it can be mentioned. We also have Wikivoyage:Don't tout, which I'll get to.
[edit conflict] It's a judgement call. This isn't a place for touting. If you believe a restaurant owner calls out their restaurant as the best one, then revert (and explain at their talk page), but saying that the best cafés are in a certain area is something we do. Cf Turku:
"The biggest concentration of top restaurants is along the river, at the right bank downstream from [...]"
Also wordings such as "the best beefs in town" are somewhat common – for smaller towns, where there isn't real competition for that status, otherwise they would need to be outstanding.
Poland report: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 selection process in progress; GLAM online meeting on evaluation of ten editions Wiki Loves Monuments in Poland
Serbia report: GLAMorous October; Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade; CEE Meeting
Latest comment: 2 years ago22 comments6 people in discussion
Regarding this, would you mind restoring this? I was trying hard to find a place where students can report their articles for peer review by the WV community. If it exists, it is very well hidden. I didn't want them to spam Traveller's Pub, so I directed them there. If this is the wrong place, please move it to where it should be - or the Pub if no better place exists. TIA, Piotrus (talk) 06:03, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
You see, RFC exists for requesting comment on a particular page. By simply linking a page in namespace 0 (i.e. mainspace), there's nothing to request comment on. Perhaps could you tell your students to start a discussion on the relevant talk page and then link the discussion in RFC. Hope that helps, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)07:15, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek: Although I just ranted about overgeneralised articles 7 minutes ago, perhaps something like "East Asia cafe" (even though it's a bit broad)? This way, if anyone has queries or questions about an article about Japan or Taiwan per se, there is also a place to request that. We do have a fair number of new contributors who edit Japan-related articles and often have questions. Tai123.123, if you're still active on Wikimedia, what would you say of this suggestion? In other words, if such a cafe existed when you were a new user on Wikivoyage, would this have impacted your editing experience? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:34, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek Doesn't help if we want to have a standardized peer review activity. As my students are finishing the projects, the final step I have for them is "ask for your article to be reviewed by the experienced Wikivoyage volunteers". Now I am struggling to tell them how, exactly, the can do so :( Piotrus (talk) 02:49, 9 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek Can you restore their requests for comments or maybe move them to the Pub? I'd like to ask the rest of the students to sent in their requests for review to the same centralized location in the near future, so there may be ~20 requests in total. Piotrus (talk) 03:04, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I would have let the RFC entries stay, or added a link to an appropriate page and answered there (I would have done it, but didn't have the time to check the articles before the entries were removed). The standard procedure, which SHB maintains, would be to start a discussion on the article talk page and link it from the RFC page. This involves two steps (the talk page entry and the link at RFC), is it too difficult? I think we should be kind to newcomers and accommodate their mistakes, but of course, with all the group following the example of the first ones, it is a bit more disruptive than with single editors.
Would it be OK to reinstate the entries, with an answer including a link to the appropriate talk page? Would that be enough of a model for the rest of the group?
@Ikan Kekek @SHB2000 @LPfi I appreciate RfC is not for linking pages with no discussion, but as I noted earlier, this is unclear. In particular, the Pub suggests this is the place to ask for feedback. It has been my experience (with banners as well) that there is a lot of unrwritten or semi-hiden rules and/or pratices that Wikivoyagers developed, and experienced ones like you all know about them. But relatively new editors, like me, not to mention complete newbies as my students, don't know this, and again, if the Pub says "ask for feedback there", this is where we go.
Second, with all due respect, rules should bend to accomodate the needs of travellers and editors. As I said, it's ok if RfC is not the right place to ask for this, but no alternative venue was suggested ("maybe there, maybe not"). From where I stand, this is not very friendly to my students, who are now asking me "what happened to our requests for revews/where can I posted them" and I am not sure what to tell them. Well, yes, I can tell them it's a two-step process, "ask on the talk page first and then ask at RfC", but what I find a bit disheartening is that instead of copying their requests there (to the relevant talk pages) their requests were simply blanked. This is not a very friendly way to handle new editors, most of whom don't even know how to check history of a page and read edit summaries. (And yes, LPfi, I think that would be totally acceptable; this worked for the banner discussion, where a lot of suggestions where met with comments "please propose this change at the talk page first"). Telling them in a visible way how to do it better is fine, what I am slightly upset about is that right now, most students cannot be expected to figure out what happened and they have to rely on me to tell them this (because, again, most newbies don't understand stuff like "go to edit history and see if there is an explanation in an edit summary").
I recommend, for best practices, to write clear instructions on how to request a peer review or such, and that when a newbie makes a mistake, the experienced editors finish the process for them, leaving them an explanation on their talk page, instead of blanking their edits. That will be more helpful in converting some newbies into regulars. Piotrus (talk) 09:27, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Piotrus, I understand your frustration. I too have had many issues with these unspoken "policies" that are in practice. It can sometimes feel like "this is the way of how we do things and you need to meticulously observe us; if you do, then you are more than welcome, if you don't, then you can back off and make sure your name never comes in Special:RecentChanges" (obviously exaggerated, but this is how I sometimes felt), and this is something I hope to change.
However, in this case, this is not an unspoken rule, but something that is clearly outlined at the top of the pub. If you somehow missed it, it's right above the point RfC point, it says "If you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, use the article's talk page to keep the discussion associated with that article.". It's up to the user if they want to link the discussion on RfC or not. Quoting the top of Wikivoyage:Requests for comment, for reference:
This page allows you to ask other Wikivoyagers to contribute to a discussion, including policy/style pages, and article content. You may want some feedback, more opinions, or just some help in reaching a consensus.
Don't start conversations here. Direct Wikivoyagers' attention to a discussion going on elsewhere.
I am not disputing that RfC isn't a place to request feedback; it indeed is. What RfC is not, is a place to start a discussion – that includes linking a plain link with no discussion. It has been made very clear that the procedure for requesting feedback is to start a discussion on the relevant talk page and then link it in RfC. If that simple process is too hard, then I don't know what is. It's unreasonable to expect me to start five different talk page requests and let each and every individual user know when it was very clear what the processes are.
Thanks, I understand. I missed that line at first, as I came there from the Pub which says "If you'd like to draw attention to a comment to get feedback from other Wikivoyagers, try Requests for comment." I didn't consider that RfC will say in turn "start a discussion on a talk page and report it here, but don't start one directly here", I just followed instruction from the Pub. Piotrus (talk) 11:03, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
And, yes, it is my bad, I ddn't notice until now the Pub is saying "draw attention to a comment to get feedback from other Wikivoyagers", I somehow undestood this as "draw attention to an issue to get feedback from other Wikivoyagers". It maybe worthwile to add information to the Pub that if one wants to draw attention to an issue, they should first start a discussion on the respective article's talk, THEN report the discussion to RfC. Piotrus (talk) 11:05, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I will, but for now, I started talk page discussions for all the pages that were reported for RfC. Now that the talk page discussions are properly in existence, would you be so kind and restore the edits by my student? (I noticed one of the removed requests was not by my student, I also started a discussion for it). Piotrus (talk) 04:58, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I found myself telling multiple students "this is not the right place". I'll have to think about how to word this assignment more clearly, but well, it had a live url. Dealing with ESLs is... always and adventure. (Most of my students use machine translation for everything, from translating my slides and my speech to translating English Wikivoyage pages, their text, and replies... I love technology but I am worried about recent developments here. There are lots and lots of communicaiton issues, some of which you can observe. Sorry for the trouble, Piotrus (talk) 07:14, 14 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
One of the issues I've found with the vast majority of Wikivoyage's pages is that the vast majority of them were designed for the MediaWiki of 2005 and either look old, are needlessly complicated, or are caused by the general templatophobia (I made that wording up, but I flout that policy per my interpretation of m:IAR) found within Wikivoyage. RfC is no exception to this.
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [151]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [153]
Future changes
Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [154]
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
I didn't mean to and was confused into thinking it was still on the vfd page. But would you please edit out your slam against the consensus? That is an inappropriate and inflammatory thing to put into a closing message. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:54, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Okay, thanks for agreeing with that, but is there a policy stating that I cannot include my personal opinions in an outcome statement? I think we should discuss this somewhere – as far as I'm aware, there isn't a policy or a guideline stating that I cannot. I understand your rationale, though – I think it should still be discussed somewhere (perhaps in the pub?). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)07:57, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
We will discuss it if we have to, but the entire point of closing a vfd discussion is to stop arguing! I can't believe you would have to be told that closing is merely a matter of record-keeping, simply reporting on the decision a consensus took. Why would you insult the consensus instead of just stating what was decided? If you can't close decisions you disagree with without trying to get in a last shot, please stop closing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:18, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
(edit conflict) Well, that's the exact reason why I waited for 10 extra days, even though the consensus was to keep the article. If you were complaining about my closure, then why didn't you close the article yourself 10 days ago?
Also, I stand by my actions. If there's no policy stating that something isn't allowed (whether it's local, global, or mandated by the ToU), that means you cannot cite common sense as a reason for me not to do something. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)10:26, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I agree with IK. An admin is expected not only to follow policies, but also to use their best judgement. We cannot (and don't want to) have a rule for everything, and there is always room for interpretation. We have seen the analogue in the US as well as in Finland, where the public has been chocked when a cabinet member, chairman or other official has used their nominal powers to act against the spirit of a decision when formally acting according to it. There was no rule forbidding them, but they were expected not to do that. At a wiki, the closure should be a technical act, not one where you express opinions. If you hadn't stated your opinion clearly enough before, then do that and wait with the closure so that people can answer. –LPfi (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Missed the point. Tell me what policy I didn't follow, and I'll be convinced; until then, this is an attempt to enforce and shove an unspoken rule down my throat. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:50, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
OK. I'll add it. Until now you didn't break any rules, but IK and I think that your judgement wasn't sound in adding the closing comment. Closures are things done according to practice and sound judgement as well as rules. –LPfi (talk) 14:05, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Minor suggestion
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks, that needs doing & is often rather a tedious chore.
However, I'd find it helpful if you'd say "archive as keep" or "archive as delete" instead of just "archive". That makes it easier for an admin who has not followed the discussion to see what happened. Pashley (talk) 09:08, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [155]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [156][157][158]
Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.
Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test
The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.
Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.
This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.
Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback
After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.
We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
Patroller fatigue:
By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [161]
The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
Recent changes
All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [162]
The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [163][164]
Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.
News for mentors
All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [165]
We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [167][168]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
New Zealand report: Integrating with the BHL, loading natural science specimens and data
Poland report: How Wiki helps to explore and enjoy art & culture; Wiki workshop for the National Museum in Krakow; GLAM online meeting on ideas for 2023; Wiki Loves Monuments 2022
Serbia report: Wikipedian in residence at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and National Museum of Zrenjanin
Sweden report: Wikipedian in Residence at Musikverket; Women and architecture; Gymnasiearbete; New uploads from the Swedish National Archives; WLM winners; Images of Äpplet
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [170]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Just so you know, User:Air fans has also been creating lots of new airport articles. I have posted a message on his/her talk page but I think we need to consider whether or not most of these new airport articles should be nominated for deletion. Salt Lake City International Airport is an example of one that I don't think should get its own article because it's not a major hub, and most of the time, you'll need to connect through a major international hub like New York or Los Angeles to get to Salt Lake City if you are travelling from overseas. The dog2 (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the notice. I too think a lot of the airport articles they've been creating don't merit their own articles (including Venice Airport), but we might also have to nominate these for deletion, too. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)02:55, 17 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2023.
Recent changes
On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [172]
A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [173]
One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [174]
Problems
Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [175]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [176][177]
Future changes
Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Abuse filter management system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [178]
The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Howdy!
Is the National Parks expedition still active?
I've been getting an urge to do more with parks, especially in Mexico and other Latin American countries, but just wondering if others are actively creating new parks articles in other parts of the world or if the expedition has petered out.
Mrkstvns (talk) 00:47, 21 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Hey Mrkstvns, I still routinely create park articles, though I haven't been creating that many articles recently (including park articles) as I haven't had that much time on my hands to do the research recently. https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikivoyage.org/SHB2000/0 should give you an idea regarding my article creations, but I haven't seen many other users (apart from you) routinely create park articles, but I'm glad we have you onboard. Regarding the expedition, I still do use those stats, but for some reason, I haven't been bothered to update the stats.
Either way, I'm looking forward to your future Latin American park articles. Cumbres de Monterrey National Park is looking great so far.
It's the normal Christmas weather here, around freezing, but indoors it's warm of course. I guess you have nice beach weather down there? :) Ypsilon (talk) 12:10, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
It's a bit colder than a usual summer (thank you, La Niña), but definitely nice weather to go to the beach (I was planning to go, but most Sydney beaches would be jam packed and I'm definitely not going thru this). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:15, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Happy Holidays
Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I think your response was a bit harsh: the normal practice on the web seems to be to ignore warnings, and awareness of copyright is very low. I wouldn't expect this to be better for contributors to the African projects than among people over all.
How many of your friends "carefully read" the terms of use of services on the net? A major Swedish newspaper asked my to read their privacy terms on registering, "as they were concerned about my privacy" – 40 pages, plus additional terms for special services (not specified) and third party content (not specified). I did read most of the terms, and they were confused, non-specific and contained unacceptable conditions. This is what end user agreements mostly look like, and I wouldn't be surprised by a lamp the warranty of which expires if you try to light it, "to the extent permitted by local law".
Schoolchildren are supposed to find images on the net to use in their works, and few would know how to distinguish those that would be covered by fair use or similar. Many teachers do the same. Do you know anybody who checks the copyright status of statues and architecture before sharing their holiday shots on social media?
In this reality, it is no surprise that people just ignore copyright, warnings and terms and just click whatever is needed for them to get their job done. We should educate them and require them to listen, but we cannot expect default warnings to do the job for us.
From a legal standpoint, it is the user's responsibility to follow the terms of use. Whether most people or not should have no prejudice on this. That's also not to mention that the WMF's ToU page is short (and can be read within 15 minutes at worst) and not a hundred pages long. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)23:13, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
For me just reading the ToU takes about 20 minutes. If I want to understand it, I need significantly more. If you aren't used to legalese and copyleft issues, I assume understanding it may be hard. But that's irrelevant. As people just aren't used to reading ToUs, they don't read it, and as that's the norm, you cannot be too amazed about it.
More importantly, showing anger about something people think is normal just alienates them. We need to find common ground, and that's where careful wording comes into play. Tell them what you want in a way that they'll understand, and do it as friendly as you can.
Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Hello,
please how do I avoid putting up articles that violate copyright?
when I browse the internet and get information on places that don’t yet have an article on wikivoyage and use those information to create an article, why does it violate copyright?
How do you advice I get Informations and also use it to create articles without violating copyright?
The short answer to this would be to write everything in your own words and to never copy text word-for-word. Also note that copying sentences and then changing one or two words would still be considered a copyright violation.
@Nelospecial: Copyright covers the written expression, not the facts, so you should try to extract the facts and tell them in another way. The more the format you use differs from the original, the easier it is. Try to mix facts from several parts of the web site (the lodging descriptions have some text about how amazing the reserve is, try to find titbits of facts there; and try to find other sources, certainly there must be some reports in blogs or travel magazines). If you know more than one language well, you could try to write down facts in the other language before writing you own version, based on that.
One way to loose the original wording is to collect the facts in a way that keeps as little of it as possible. Often writing a list of facts ("wildlife retreat; excellent ecological condition; waterbuck, kudu, giraffe, impala, Nyasaland; 233 bird species; ...") based on the original works. Then you have to fill in all the other words and form the sentences. While writing the new text, avoid the words from the original: could "excellent" be "very good" instead, do you need "wildlife retreat" or is the "game reserve" in the name self-explanatory?
Adjectives such as "delightful" or "stunning" carry very little information and are best left out. If you visit the place and feel it is stunning, perhaps you can come up with another word describing your feeling, ideally telling why you feel so. Even looking at pictures from there you might get a sense of what you want to describe that is not connected to the text you found.
A 
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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Done SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:59, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
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