User talk:SHB2000/Archive 2024

← 2023

Archives for 2024

(current) 2025 →

---

Currency conversion tables for Singapore

China and Japan are both major sources of tourism to Singapore, and there's also heavy business traffic to Singapore from China and Japan, so to me, it is not unreasonable to list their currencies in the Singapore article. In fact, I would argue that the Chinese yuan should be listed in the currency conversion tables for all Southeast Asian countries because China is the largest source of international tourists for most of them.

As for New Zealand, many New Zealanders change flights in Singapore on their way to Europe. Singapore Airlines in fact operates a direct flight to Christchurch (and Auckland too of course) to cater to this market. And by the way, the New Zealand dollar is not an obscure currency. It is a major world currency and one of the "big eight".

Hong Kong sees very heavy business traffic to Singapore, and there's more than 10 flights a day in each direction. So that's why I think it's not unreasonable to have the Hong Kong dollar in the currency table for Singapore.

I haven't added back the Thai baht and Vietnamese dong, but I think it's worth considering given that they're actually quite easy to exchange them in Singapore. Just go to any money changer and they will be readily accepted. And if you are heading to those countries, you can also obtain those currencies easily at any money changer.

I haven't added the Canadian dollar, but it is a major world currency. And Air Canada is starting a nonstop fight from Vancouver to Singapore in the spring, so I would presume there is substantial business traffic for Air Canada to start operating this route. The dog2 (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with adding more currencies is that it takes longer to update. Sincex2018, I've been updating more than 160 pages every January so that we don't have rates that are up to 7 years out of date anymore. That was just embarrassing. SHB2000 has been helping out thus year, which I very much appreciate. It's a big job.

The dog 2: adding more currencies to a page without updating the others, as you did on China, and perhaps other pages, leaves a mess -- some rates are from December 2022, and others from a year or more later. I will leave that for you to sort out. If I have to fix it, I'l just start fresh with a new table of the standard, internationally traded currencies. Ground Zero (talk) 17:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the "big eight" internationally traded currencies are the U.S. dollar, Euro, pound Sterling, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar. At least that's what people who invest in forex have told me. Of course, whether or not a currency is easy to exchange depends a lot on where you are. For instance, it is easier to exchange Singapore dollars than Thai baht in Japan, but the reverse is true in Canada. I think that it is warranted to include currencies that are regionally important in the exchange tables. Taking Singapore dollars for instance, including them in the exchange table for Malaysia would be warranted, but not in the one for Costa Rica. The dog2 (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Since you have a keen interest in East Asia, and in expanding the list of currencies displayed there, I'll leave that region for you to update. Ground Zero (talk) 19:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I was going to say what Ground Zero mentioned, but they beat me to it. Flights from CHC–SIN are still quite rare (I think only 1 per day) – I only remember seeing one for the entire day when I was at the airport last week. Far more travellers transit via SYD or AKL when getting to Europe from those who I talked to. AKL, sure, but how different is this from any other country? You could apply the same rationale for a lot of currencies and it becomes one giant chunky list. The reason we list AUD for SEA/Oceania articles, CAD for Caribbean articles, ZAR for Southern African articles, or SAR for Arabian/Gulf state articles, is because they are widely traded locally and have far, far, more visitors than people from NZ to Singapore. It does, however, make sense to add NZD to many Pacific countries for this very same reason – but not Singapore. The same goes for adding CAD in Singapore. A single flight isn't enough to justify it.

I'll leave you to the rest for East Asia and SEA articles, but it's worth considering this in mind – basically this and what GZ mentioned. Cheers, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:36, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, CHC-SIN is one flight a day. I think there are 3 flights a day for AKL-SIN, 2 on SQ and 1 on NZ. These flights are actually timed to connect to SQ's flights to Europe, but of course, both are premium airlines and charge accordingly. Even if you transit at SYD or AKL to connect on to Europe, you still need another stop somewhere in Asia, which would typically be in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok or the Middle East. And of course, there's quite heavy business and diplomatic traffic between Singapore and NZ too.

But anyway, NZD is easily traded in Singapore too. Any bank or money changer will accept it. I can bet you will get a better rate for NZD in Singapore than in Australia. CAD is certainly more niche than NZD in the Singaporean context given that Canada is much farther away, but it too is easy to exchange at any bank or money changer. In fact, I can get better rates for CAD in Singapore than in the U.S. Travelex in both the U.S. and Australia is a rip off. The dog2 (talk) 04:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I can definitely concur with Travelex in the US and Aus – when I asked how much US$500 they were going to give me at SYD, it was something like NZ$600 (I wasn't actually intending to convert there since I'd already exchanged prior but asked them out of curiosity). Normally if I'm transiting through Singapore, then it'd exchange there but otherwise I've mostly just exchanged my currency at Flight Centre. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Although the rates at Changi Airport are not very good. You'll get much better rates at a money changer in the city or in a neighbourhood shopping centre. Unlike in Western countries, in Singapore money changers usually give you better rates than banks. That's why for me, the idea of going to an ATM in a foreign country to withdraw the local currency was a completely foreign concept. I get a much better rate by exchanging cash at a money changer in Singapore before leaving on my trip. The dog2 (talk) 07:02, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Airport rates in general are less than ideal, though. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:34, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, do you know how to update the currency exchange table for Japan? I think there should be more currencies than what is listed. At the very least, we should also have Chinese yuan, South Korean won and Hong Kong dollar, and probably the Singapore dollar too since it appears to be the most widely accepted Asian currency at Japanese money changers. I'm a bit on the fence for Taiwan dollars though, because it is kind of obscure, but Japan is without a doubt the most popular holiday destination for the Taiwanese, and also the largest source of foreign tourists for Taiwan. But during my trips to Japan, I did not see any money changers displaying Taiwan dollars on their boards. The dog2 (talk) 15:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

For JP, you can edit it on Template:exchange rate JPY. I don't hold any strong opinions for JP so I'll leave you to update it :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:50, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02

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

• mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
• The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [1]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar). [2][3]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

• Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

• Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

• News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

• In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

• WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

• Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

• Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

• Comix: Conflict resolution

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 12:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: December 2023

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue XII, December 2023 Headlines Albania report: Wiki Loves EuroPride in Albania 2023 Bosnia & Herzegovina report: A year in review ... Croatia report: 2023 in review Czech Republic report: Wiki-residents establishing meeting took place in December Germany report: Go-ahead for Wikidata Project of GLAM institutions from Baden-Württemberg Italy report: WLM Local winners and funds for 2024 GLAM projects New Zealand report: Auckland Museum summer updates Poland report: Intense end to a year of GLAM-Wiki activities in Poland Sweden report: Photo memories project concludes; Sörmlands museum passes 1000 uploads to Wikimedia Commons; Wikimedian in Residence supports an upload of music content; Subject terms from Queerlit; Wikidata for authority control: 3 years of work Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Program UK report: 2023 in Review USA report: WikiConference North America 2023; TSU and USF; Philadelphia WikiSalon; Wikimedia DC Annual Membership Meeting; Wikipedia Editing 101 for All; NYC Hacking Night; Upstate NY workshop; Wikiquote She Said Project Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Thank you for making Wiki Loves Living Heritage happen! WMF GLAM report: Updates and invitation to test the Commons Impact Metrics prototype Calendar: January's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 05:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [4]
• Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [5]
• Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [6]
• You can now thank edits made by bots. [7]
• An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar). [8][9]
• Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [10]
• The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [11]

Future changes

• Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your help

with the New Jersey vandal. What a piece of work. Ground Zero (talk) 10:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey, not a problem at all! Glad that user is blocked for good. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Reverts

FYI, 168.8.214.228 is reverting your previously reverted edits. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:24, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I've put one-day blocks on the unregistered accounts. If it happens again, I think we should protect the articles for 7 days to start. That should be enough to get them to give up. Ground Zero (talk) 20:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Given they are block evading (I blocked them for a month due to incivility), we may as well start protecting the articles. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04

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

• A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [12]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [13][14]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Just excited to inform you

That Microsoft Translator added Meitei language in both Meitei script and Latin script today. I hope all the Microsoft software services will get its usage. :-) Haoreima (talk) 16:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, that's great to hear! Another milestone for the Meitei language today. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

How to word the Taiwan lede

I'm going to steer clear of the debate on whether or not Taiwan should be an independent country, but I don't think we should take a stand on this here on WV. I know that it is de facto a separate country, and we have in fact stated that in the disclaimer box, but I think we should try to use more politically neutral wording in the lede. The dog2 (talk) 00:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Same here; I just think we should write what's the reality on the ground for travellers whenever we can, though. We do this for Kosovo for similar reasons, too. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, I've made some minor changes, so see if it's fine. It's a bit different in the case of Taiwan because at it now stands, Taiwan has not declared independence, and the Taiwanese constitution considers Taiwan to be a province of China. Kinmen and Matsu are still legally part of Fujian, and the residents of those islands actually don't identify as Taiwanese. Someone from Kinmen will usually say "I am not from Taiwan. I am from Kinmen." if you ask. The dog2 (talk) 00:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, that's also true; thanks for bringing that (I completely forgot). I'll leave it to you and others. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:50, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

The first sentence of the current lede is problematic. We should say it's a set of islands that rules itself, I think, not a "de facto country." Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:53, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

What about a set of self-governing islands? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:54, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a better phrasing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:02, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that works for me. The dog2 (talk) 01:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Glad we were able to quickly resolve this one :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I think we should avoid legalistic terminology like "de facto" and "self-governing" in the first sentence of the article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:08, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

IMO self-governing isn't really a legalistic term given it's self-explanatory. I agree with you on de facto, though. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ (edit conflict) But if we say that Taiwan is a country, then we are effectively taking sides in the political dispute. KMT supporters in Taiwan will say that the Republic of China is a country, and Taiwan is not a country but a province of the ROC. Of course DPP supporters will say that Taiwan is a country, but as of now they haven't amended the Taiwanese constitution to declare an independent "Republic of Taiwan", so it's the ROC constitution that is still in force. For that reason, I think we should stick to deliberately ambiguous wording that covers the situation on the ground accurately. The dog2 (talk) 04:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

What was wrong with "Taiwan is an island off the coast of China"? (Yes, there are other islands, but this is a normal way to introduce an entity that consists of one main island plus a bunch of much smaller associated islands.) The current first sentence with its focus on self-governance reads like the beginning of a geopolitical briefing rather than a travel guide. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

If we just use the word "island" then I think it's probably fine. I'm just trying to avoid controversy here by steering clear of declaring Taiwan a country. The disclaimer box already says that it functions as a country in practice. The dog2 (talk) 04:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "self-governing" is purely and clearly descriptive, not legalistic. Taiwan is one island. How do you think the other islands ruled by the same government should be described in the article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe island chain? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Island chain isn't exactly accurate. Kinmen and Matsu are located quite some distance from the main island of Taiwan. And Kinmen is in fact close enough to Xiamen for you to be able to see the Xiamen skyline. The dog2 (talk) 21:20, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I always forget about Kinmen but in that case, I'd go with what Ikan mentioned. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:00, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

CEE Newsletter - January 2024 Issue Now Available!

Good evening,

We're excited to announce the release of the January 2024 issue of the CEE Newsletter! This edition is filled with captivating stories, community highlights, and collaborative achievements from across Central and Eastern Europe region in the Wikimedia movement.

In This Issue:

• CEE Hub and WMF Updates: Explore the latest from the Wikimedia Foundation with the Talking 2024 series and insights into the impacts on children participating in Wikimedia projects. Additionally, discover CEE Hub's plans for 2024 as outlined in the recently approved grant proposal named Stronger CEE Hub
• Highlights from CEE Communities: From the Georgian Wikipedia's 20th birthday celebration to the Wiki Loves EuroPride event in Albania, delve into the vibrant activities of our diverse communities. Journey through time with the celebration of Czech Wikipedia's founder and the resilience of Ukrainian Wikipedia editors. Explore the outcomes of Wiki Loves Earth 2023 and Wikimedia Czech Republic's presence at the Archives, Libraries, Museums in the Digital World 2023 conference.
• Community Initiatives and Beyond: Read about the unique efforts of the CEE Youth Group and the unification of GLAM Macedonia and Shared Knowledge into Wikimedia MKD.
• Looking Ahead: Anticipate the 2024 Wikimedia Hackathon in Tallinn, Estonia, and gain insights from Marija Mihajlova's report on the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023.

You can read the full newsletter here. We hope you enjoy the inspiring stories and achievements showcased by our vibrant CEE communities.

Happy reading and here's to another year of Wikimedia excellence in the CEE region!

Best regards,

Jan Beránek
Editor-in-chief
Wikimedia CEE Newsletter

15:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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

Recent changes

• Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [15]
• There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [16][17]
• On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [18]
• Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [19]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Bureaucrat

You're a bureaucrat now. Don't add too much red tape to the site. :-)

Seriously, thanks for volunteering to do these tasks.

Best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC) Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift response, Ikan Kekek! Glad I could help. One more thing: if I can't add too much red tape, can I add more sticky tape with a tint of red? You didn't say anything about that! /s --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:22, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Be my guest. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:58, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2024

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

• Opinion: Until it happens to you

• Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

• In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

• Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

• Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

• Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 15:17, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks

I had never heard of Cormac McCarthy, but today I learned a new word, w:Polysyndeton, and I wanted to thank you for expanding my vocabulary, and for introducing me to this author, and his unusual style of writing, which, to be frank, will probably give me nightmares because I am fond of punctuation, as I find it to be an effective way of letting the reader know where they are in the exposition, and therefore conveys the writer's meaning more effectively. Ground Zero (talk) 11:53, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad I was able to help as his style of writing is really something else which is rather unusual for today's age but it's really evident especially in The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel (okay, seriously, I suck at writing polysyndetons). But yeah, I fully agree with you. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:02, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Archive

Could you please archive the talk page on England? Thanks! 2A00:23C7:69B1:501:ACCD:5712:7C99:666F 00:37, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do so right in a moment. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:42, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Done. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much! 2A00:23C7:69B1:501:ACCD:5712:7C99:666F 00:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Glad I was able to help. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:46, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06

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

Recent changes

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
• On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [20][21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar). [22][23]
• Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [24]

Future changes

• 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [25][26]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: January 2024

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue I, January 2024 Headlines Albania report: Wikipedia Day in Albania 2024 Belgium report: First international public domain day celebration in Europe coming up on March 7 Brazil report: A legal infrastructure for sharing public collections in Brazil: the case of Midiateca Capixaba Czech Republic report: January '24: Institute of Physics photos and Free culture discussion Finland report: Photographing at the second half of 2023 India report: Documenting ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) Museums in Bihar Netherlands report: Public Domain Day & Monumental Moments New Zealand report: Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large, and Auckland Museum updates Poland report: An update on the Wikimatejko editing action and an invitation to the international community to join the action Portugal report: Unveiling Catrapilha: A ReacTive approach to GLAM content import Sweden report: Freedom of Panorama in Sweden UK report: Indonesian praise for an Ottoman photograph of Arabia USA report: Wikipedia Day 2024; edit-a-thon; meetups AvoinGLAM report: Events! Events! Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: New OpenRefine documentation for Wikimedia Commons WMF GLAM report: WiLMa Updates, OpenRefine training, Biodiversity, and Librarians Calendar: February's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 02:00, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

This Month in Education: January 2024

This Month in Education

Volume 13 • Issue 1 • January 2024

Contents • Headlines • Subscribe

In This Issue

• Cross-Continental Wikimedia Activities: A Dialogue between Malaysia and Estonia
• Czech programme SWW in 2023 – how have we managed to engage students
• Extending Updates on Wikipedia in Education – Elbasan, Albania
• Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom Teacher’s guide – now available in Bulgarian language
• Summer students at Auckland Museum
• WikiDunong: EduWiki Initiatives in the Philippines Project
• Wikimedia Armenia's Educational Workshops
• Wikimedia Foundation publishes its first Child Rights Impact Assessment

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony 10:02, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 February 2024

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers

• Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?

• Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to touch grass to dramatically improve images of flora and fauna

• In the media: Speaking in tongues, toeing the line, and dressing the part

• Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?

• Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football

• Crossword: Our crossword to bear

• Comix: Strongly

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 04:38, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07

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

Recent changes

• The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [27][28][29] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [30][31]

Problems

• There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [32][33]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[34] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [35]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Reverting of Brycehughes WarningBox removals

Apologies - I did not mean to edit war. Can you please clarify where the right place to discuss @Brycehughes edits would be? It seems a little unreasonable that they can casually revert WarningBoxes on dozens of pages without meaningfully explaining their decisions but I would have to start a discussion for each individual page. I feel that there is a need to revisit what the actual WV guidance should be moving forward on WarningBoxes. I have tried to bring this up in Travellers'_pub#Proliferation_of_Warning_boxes and I even requested comment - to no avail. Cyali (talk) 08:40, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey, you're all good. I think for a lot of these it should apply on a case-by-case basis since a one-size-fits-all policy rarely works – would be best to bring up the individual warningboxes on the relevant talk pages (e.g. Talk:Socotra, etc.). Hope that clarifies! (cc Brycehughes). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:52, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. Also just want to clarify that my original edit to Venezuela was a mistake - I tried to revert it back to add a reason but you beat me to it. (small addition) Is it reasonable to ask that the other user provide their justification as well - or is the onus entirely on me to prove that the WarningBox is necessary? A lot of these edit summaries are not constructive. Is there a policy or set of guidelines to determine if an edit is constructive or useful? I have been relying on the Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first and assume good faith but it ultimately is quite ambiguous in these circumstances.

It would be helpful to have these edits explained on a case-by-case basis rather than me just echoing travel advisories and saying "travel bad". There's no way I can meaningfully address the below concerns without them meaningfully engaging.

• 01:11, 14 February 2024 diff hist −731‎ Socotra ‎ this is way too dramatic / missing your flight is not a threat to your life / moving to get in thank

13 February 2024

• 02:17, 13 February 2024 diff hist −133‎ Venezuela ‎ ah yes, don't visit this country, it's poor and its government disagreeable thank Tag: Reverted
• 02:09, 13 February 2024 diff hist −719‎ Russia ‎ Russia is stable, perhaps unfortunately / not accessing money is not a threat to your life / Russia is not a warzone / you are not going to get blown up if you visit Russia thank
• 02:05, 13 February 2024 diff hist −219‎ Belarus ‎ belarus is not a warzone, you are not going to get hit with a projectile in belarus thank Tag: Reverted

Cyali (talk) 08:58, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I think they are reasonable reasons for removal which is why I mentioned they should be brought up on the talk page for further discussion. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:23, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I can appreciate that, and I'm aware that I'll have to write up reasons for disagreeing. I am not trying to put you on the spot (and thank you for responding - I know you certainly don't have to answer my questions), but it would be helpful to understand how you would suggest approaching this conversation constructively in your opinion, as I'm aware that you share a similar position to the user. What would it take to build a meaningful consensus? If there is not a one sized fits all policy, what points should I clearly address from the get-go - especially when the edit summaries appear very subjective? I guess I'm just finding it really difficult to understand how to build this consensus and try and find a neutral compromise when the issue is so charged and heavily influenced by one's experience traveling (I.e. my travel wisdom is contrary to a government travel advisory). I also am not really sure why the original travellers pub thread that led the user to remove these Warning boxes from many pages in WV in the first place isn't a relevant place to obtain consensus after the fact. Once I write up the issues on their respective talk pages, can I also ask you to provide input and to constructively contribute to the conversations as well? Cyali (talk) 09:41, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't have answers to all the questions since I was overseas when the discussion happened and wasn't following it, but I'll be happy to provide input to the discussions on their respective talk pages. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:48, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the consensus was that some cautionboxes are too alarmist and that many stay long after the situation has improved. The other user tried to get some policy changes to address the issues, but did not get support for those exact measures.

Mostly their edits make sense (such as in the Venezuela case, they kept most of the info in a cautionbox in Stay safe), but they are sometimes too radical. Tweaking the edit to reinsert some important issues can work, as can reinstating the warningbox but removing some lesser issues from it, perhaps adding to the running text instead. Among established users, plain reverts should be rare and plain reverts with no edit summary should not be used, other than in special cases.

–LPfi (talk) 12:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

To add, plain reverts in general should be rare, not just among established users. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:34, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

They can still be used on vandalism and graffiti, or repeated edits which were already reverted with an explanation, i.e. cases where it should be obvious to the other party why the edit was reverted (erring on the side of caution).

Established users should not do edits that obviously should be reverted, so admitting the possibility that the edit was actually good (and therefore explaining the revert) is good manners. The edit summary may be something like "mistake?" or "see talk". The cases should be rare enough that using some extra time on the summary is no burden.

–LPfi (talk) 12:50, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

But usually they are rollbacks which I consider different to a plain revert. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:52, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Kind of, but I don't see why you could rollback something that reverting without explanation would be wrong. I see the two as equivalent, only that rollback can be a convenient shorthand that more or less explicitly says that the revert isn't worth a comment. –LPfi (talk) 14:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it's nonsense to say that Russia is not at war. Targets in Russia have been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian drones or Special Forces or others. You should be careful if you plan on walking past military-related factories, power plants, military induction offices, cars belonging to Russian online war propagandists, etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:49, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to finding ways to reduce the alarmism and to keep them concise, factual and up to date. I just find it challenging to keep up when a user can casually revert my contributions with little explanation (a sarky edit summary), all with a similar goal in mind, without being held to the same standard of explaining their decisions individually. I have not opposed most of the other user's edits because they are so numerous and in some cases, I agreed with them. However, the inability to discuss a thematic grouping of edits, many of whom have limited context, puts other editors at a disadvantage in these conversations when trying to get to the root of an issue, and discourages newer editors like me to meaningfully engage and work towards consensus. I'm not saying that individual page discussions are out of the question - but it feels like there's a larger conversation to be had first.

I'd really either like to resolve this constructively with compromise or I'd like to see consensus that the community wants for it to be easier to remove WarningBox than it is to add them.

But I don't think it's ultimately reasonable to proclaim that traveling to Russia and Socotra is totally safe - everyone's just overblowing it, or to reject the assessments of national governments telling you not to go there as being hysterical. Cyali (talk) 16:34, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Any edits done en masse are problematic, for the reason you bring up, unless they are obviously good, with no urgent need for checking or tweaking.

For Russia: yes Russia is at war and the government is cracking down on any critics, the latter an issue for anybody interested in politics. Regarding the war, a warning is needed, for those who may be interested in affected installations – but an average tourist is very unlikely to be hit by a drone in Moscow, let alone in some random other city. The mobilisation issue is severe for dual citizens, but it affects a limited group. Thus I would be fine with confining the warning box to Stay safe.

–LPfi (talk) 16:54, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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

Recent changes

• If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [36]
• There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
• Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
• The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [37]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [38][39]

• Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
• The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [40]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 15:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Reversion

Why this reversion? Text looks good to me.

Is it Brendan? Pashley (talk) 09:22, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, sadly. Text resembles his, ISP is Telstra and IP geolocates to Brisbane. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09

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

Recent changes

• The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [41]
• The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [42]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [43][44]

Future changes

• The right to change edit tags (changetags) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

San Diego International Airport Page Banner

Hello, Its been about a week since there has been any progress on the talk page for the San Diego International Airport for a custom page banner. Do you think you can help achieve a consensus?

Hi, individual users hold no bearing over general consensus. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:29, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I know you dont just choose a conensus. But you think you can say which page banners you prefer? Someonehere12345 (talk) 17:02, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 March 2024

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"

• Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"

• In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record

• Obituary: Vami_IV

• Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday

• WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 11:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10

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

Recent changes

• The Special:Book page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [45]
• Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
• Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
• Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [46]
• A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [47]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [48][49]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [50]
• The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: February 2024

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue II, February 2024 Headlines Albania report: One village, One article in Albania and Kosovo Australia report: On tour Brazil report: News from Rio de Janeiro France report: Open Content Observatory letter Italy report: Antarctic Writing Month and GLAM call Kosovo report: One Village, One Article Campaign New Zealand report: WikiProject Te Papa Research Expeditions, wrapping up the Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau local histories project, and the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large Poland report: WikiMatejko editing action; The eighth European GLAM Wiki coordinators meet up Spain report: SMALL GLAM SLAM Pilot 1 Rapid Grant Sweden report: Working life museums UK report: National Trust, Leeds 2023, and Khalili Foundation USA report: Hacking Night; Seattle Meetups; Denver Huddle; Wikipedia Day LA; San Diego/February 2024; Supreme Court visit Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group February Monthly Highlights Wikidata report: Working with catalogues: a Wikidata volunteer’s perspective WMF GLAM report: Updates on OpenRefine training and Wikisource Loves manuscripts Calendar: March's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 13:50, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [51][52]
• After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [53]
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [54]
• Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [55]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [56][57]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi

Hello @SHB2000, Can I have autopatroller rights? :) Lionel Cristiano (talk) 19:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

not yet. You must familiarize yourself with our policies and our Manual of Style, and demonstrate the acquired familiarity on your edits. Thanks for contributing to Wikivoyage. Ibaman (talk) 20:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, autopatroller on this rights are only given after a few months of constructive editing. Do read the links linked by Ibaman, though! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I understand, thank you, can I write to you again in a few months? Lionel Cristiano (talk) 20:16, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Up to you. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

See you in a few months, I will miss you, have a nice day :-) Lionel Cristiano (talk) 20:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@Lionel Cristiano: Do note that it's also generally only given out to active editors too; taking a break and coming back after a few months with few to no edits won't change anything. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You are right, I will try to be active. Lionel Cristiano (talk) 08:23, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Cool and happy editing! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

User relations

Please leave Andrewssi2 alone. You can see that they don't appreciate your interaction, so anything you tell them won't help the situation. I don't know what's going on between you, but I sincerely hope you can get over it. Just try to let things calm down for now. –LPfi (talk) 11:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Not when there are six instances of them misusing their admin tools in the last 50 minutes (as of this message's timestamp). Asking to be "left alone" is a snarky tactic to dodge the problem at-hand. On the other hand, I will respect this request once the admin tool misuse issues have been resolved; not before. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:06, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

When somebody clearly shows that they have no intension to read or answer messages, adding more messages for them to read helps little. I am all for getting your complaints sorted out in due time, but them wanting a respite from this is reasonable (I don't know what reasons they have, but real-life troubles could be a good one, and overload with the issue here is quite enough). I might not think that rollbacks are a particularly elegant way of handling this, but in the situation where one doesn't want to handle the conflict, one might also not want to think hard about the best way to avoid it.

I left you this message before seeing the nomination page thread and hoped the situation would cool down enough to be handled amicably. There is no abuse that needs to be stopped now, so waiting a few days, several days if needed, would be no problem. I think you should ponder overnight about what is best for the project, and whether you personally need to walk the path to its end.

My impression is that you generally want rules to be followed. However, in most projects there are situations where it is better to ignore the rules in some situations. When a rule is broken, is the situation one that the rule on enforcement was written for, or one that could be better handled in some other way? If rules were broken, were they broken in unforgivable ways?

Enough here. If you still really feel treated badly, you have my compassion, but I hope you can get over it without this issue deteriorating.

–LPfi (talk) 12:42, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, LPfi, thank you for the detailed explanation. I'll consider this after a break tomorrow; I now agree with you about the urgentness given that Andrewssi2 / Asretired has retired (per their username). I'm sorry if my messages to you came out a bit hasty. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:47, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@LPfi: To minimise drama, I'll bring it up here and with you (since your stance mostly seems to be neutral), but we don't allow Special:Redirect/logid/3824876, right? I thought that user talk pages were to never be deleted (but maybe that is a Commons policy). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Could you also take a stab at "This individual is very unpleasant, unhinged and quite possibly a violent person in real life. This is now a safety issue." on their user page? Aren't attack statements on user pages explicitly banned? I'll leave it to you to interpret foundation:Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct#3.1 – Harassment: "Threats: Explicitly or implicitly suggesting the possibility of physical violence, unfair embarrassment, unfair and unjustified reputational harm, or intimidation by suggesting gratuitous legal action to win an argument or force someone to behave the way you want." (I italicised possibility). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:03, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I am neutral in the original conflict and the question on who is responsible for the drama, but I didn't see any reason for desysoping him. I think the rollbacks and the action you cite above are non-aggressive self-defence (as I have explained above and elsewhere), possibly excess in self-defence, but as no real harm has been caused (you shouldn't contact him in this situation, and those who need to can reach him anyway), there is no hurry discussing, reverting or taking measures about them. –LPfi (talk) 08:14, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@LPfi: That is fair; sorry for repeating this but users aren't allowed to delete their own talk pages, right (I thought user talk pages should never be deleted)? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we have such a policy here (we use common sense a lot more than en-wp). If deleting the talk page makes him feel more comfortable, I wouldn't interfere with it for a reasonable cool-down period. At some point it should be restored, probably as an archive, unless he does something along those lines himself. Also the talk page protection should be removed at the same time, if not before. –LPfi (talk) 08:49, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Understandable (3+3 days as you suggested?) – though doesn't the protection automatically get removed once a page is deleted? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't know, but as page creation can be disabled, I guess the protection entries aren't affected by page deletion (deletion can easily be implemented with a flag in the database, and any action on the page could check or ignore that flag). –LPfi (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

(Thankfully) Asretired has not enabled page protection on their talk page, so I think that is one fewer thing to worry about. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

To my understanding, people have the right to delete the contents of their user talk pages. I wouldn't support restoring content against his will. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

OK. If there are neither guidelines nor consensus on this, we should let the user decide, unless there are reasons not to. –LPfi (talk) 09:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Correct me if I'm wrong – I might be mixing this up with Commons policy – but I thought we let users blank content on their user talk pages because they can still be accessed via the page history. However, by deleting a user talk page, the page history will no longer be accessible hence why user talk pages aren't deleted. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

The other issue I see with the page deleted is that oppose voters cannot see what exactly I posted on their user talk page which has (unfortunately) led to some users automatically assuming it is harassment. I presume a screenshot will do, but it is more ideal if all users can see what I wrote instead of being thrown frivolous accusations by 5 different individuals (though not all of it had to do with the talk page messages). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:48, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

That could be a reason for undeleting, yes. However, the issue isn't really what you wrote, only that you wrote there after him having asked you to let him alone, and that he removed what you had written. I think that is well established, nobody has contested that part and nobody has suggested that you wrote something otherwise offensive. –LPfi (talk) 15:30, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I see the point about deleting the entire page, yes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Tomorrow will be 3 days (UTC+11) since the discussion was initiated, which I think is enough time for Asretired to cool down. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 19:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll mention it while I can, but I feel very uneasy about their userpage, but I trust that Ikan and LPfi are in a much better position to judge than I am, so apologies if I seem quite impatient with the userpage issue. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 19:53, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

The nature of Pashley's comment suggests that I did (keep in mind that this user is in denial of Asretired doing anything wrong, which tells a lot). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 19:36, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

So I think you're right that the userpage should eventually be undeleted, but we shouldn't restore the content we know he wanted deleted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree. It's fine for my messages to not be restored given that they can still be found using the page history. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:06, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

It can be restored as a blank page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:22, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek, LPfi: Given it has been 3 days since the dispute, could one of you undelete the page and blank it? (and I presume we're giving 3 more days for Asretired to edit out the personal safety issues?) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I am sorry you think we don't care about you. My intension was to eventually take care of that bit, but I believe it needed to wait and I didn't see much harm in letting this take the time it needs. Perhaps I was wrong, but if I cannot – or you cannot – trust my judgement, then the best I can do is probably to keep away. I am sorry for that too and sincerely hope somebody else can make the best out of this. –LPfi (talk) 21:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@LPfi: Don't feel the need to apologise; at this point Asretired has left Wikivoyage, so there's nothing much to be said. None of this was your fault, you're a separate individual and cannot control what Asretired/Andrewssi2 does. All I wanted is for all references about me, direct or indirect, to be removed from their page ASAP. None of this would have ever been a problem had they never written those statements in the first place (and the few users that enabled their behaviour). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12

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

Recent changes

• The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [58]
• IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [59]
• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [60][61][62]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [63]

Problems

• RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [64]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [65][66]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [67][68]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

This Month in Education: February 2024

This Month in Education

Volume 13 • Issue 2 • February 2024

Contents • Headlines • Subscribe

In This Issue

• 2 new courses in Students Write Wikipedia Starting this February
• More two wiki-education partnerships
• Open Education Week 2024 in Mexico
• Reading Wikipedia in Bolivia, the community grows
• Wiki Education Philippines promotes OERs utilization
• Wiki Loves Librarians, Kaduna
• Wiki Workshop 2024 CfP – Call for Papers Research track

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony 18:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13

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

Recent changes

• An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [69][70]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 March 2024

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

• Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year

• Interview: Interview on Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and finance strategy

• Special report: 19-page PDF accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel, suggests editors be forced to reveal their real names, and demands a new feature allowing people to view the history of Wikipedia articles

• Op-Ed: Wikipedia in the age of personality-driven knowledge

• Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors

• News and notes: Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter ratified

• In the media: "For me it’s the autism": AARoard editors on the fork more traveled

• Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune

• Humour: Letters from the editors

• Comix: Layout issue

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 22:43, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14

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

Recent changes

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [71]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [72][73]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Edits on WP that need removal

First of all, thanks for everything you do! You’re doing great work by creating new page banners, and I do not oppose your efforts in that area at all even if I have some slight differences of opinion regarding what constitutes a good banner.

I contribute on WP but don’t know any administrators over there. Today I was editing and stumbled into some borderline defamatory edits on the history of a page. I was wondering if you know any administrators of that website who could delete some old revisions? I can link to the revisions in an email if you like, with further explanation of the background and why they should not be publicly viewable. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 03:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Haha, no worries. Regarding enwiki admins, unfortunately I don't edit enwiki that frequently to interact with admins, but I do know that @Antandrus, Ground Zero, DaGizza: are also admins on enwiki. I'd give you a better answer if it were Commons, but I'm afraid I don't have a better answer. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Or you could get a response by contacting WP:OS. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Awesome! Thank you. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:42, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi @SelfieCity: - if you need help just let me know where and which revisions. Happy to help. Antandrus (talk) 14:36, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello Antandrus, I greatly appreciate that. Another administrator covered most of the edits, but there are still four revisions by Rupertlover123 to the w:Jeff Rupert article that should probably be deleted. Three of these edits by that account in particular need to be deleted as they are identifying someone who was a minor at the time of the edit (and the statements made in the vandalism are false).

Let me know if you need more information or clarification, and I can email and also explain why I raised this in particular. Thanks again! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Ok - I got rid of two more (there are no more un-revdelled edits by "Rupertlover123" now as far as I can see). Antandrus (talk) 21:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Antandrus: Hello, thanks! However there are still https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeff_Rupert&oldid=1063582809 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeff_Rupert&oldid=1063586679 which are viewable to me. Those are the main ones that were of concern to me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 22:00, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Hm, sorry about that. I have no idea why those didn't appear when I scrolled through. Anyway done now. :) (SHB2000, sorry about all the pings!) Antandrus (talk) 22:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Haha, don't worry – I don't mind the pings the slightest. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

User from IP #107.9.140.157

I noticed that this user at IP 107.9.140.157 had changed the I-90 article to indicate it begins/ends in Portland, Oregon in the west coast going through Pocatello, Idaho. Which is not true. It begins in Seattle and goes through Spokane and Missoula, towards Boston. At the same time he/she created an Interstate 33 article.That Interstate does NOT exist. I believe he/she may of created the I-90 article initially and I made multiple edits to get the information correct. You can always look it up to see who's right and who's wrong. My concern is what other additional articles has he/she created of places or roads that don't exist or which other existing articles may of been changed/edited with misinformation aka vandalism by this user? And to what extent? I am telling you this because based on your interaction with this user regarding the I-33 article, I presumed you are one of the moderators for the board. Anyone150 (talk) 16:56, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I have blocked them for 3 days; will delete the I-33 article accordingly. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Summer of WikiVoyage 2024, Albania and Kosovo

Greetings SHB2000. I am Vyolltsa from the Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group. Just wanted to give you heads-up about our Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in 2024. This year, we are focusing on the North-Central Albania to write about different travel destinations of Albania and Kosovo in English.This is happening from May 3-rd to May 5-th. And, we are inviting everyone to join us online here Saturday from 10:00-17:00 (GMT+2) Time Zone. Could you please update the Albania and Kosovo Expedition pages for 2024? Thank you in advance. --Vyolltsa (talk) 12:13, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

@Vyolltsa: Done. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @SHB2000! Vyolltsa (talk) 06:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Glad I could help! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:User_ban_nominations#70.68.168.129

(redacted)

Hey, thanks for your AI-generated complements. Have a lovely day! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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

Recent changes

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [74][75]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [76]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [77][78]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [79]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Taking liberties

I've taken liberties with your draft of a Jökulsárgljúfur article. Ground Zero (talk) 12:35, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ground Zero: Hey, thanks for that! I was away on a camping trip (we were very rained out, unfortunately) so sorry for the late response. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:21, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Not to worry. I was very slow in responding to your request for comments on your draft.

While you were being rained out, I drove 2½ hours to get to the path of the eclipse totality so I could gaze up at the clouds. We saw the beginning of the eclipse, and the sudden darkening of the sky followed by an equally rapid brightening was really cool. And the temperature dropped about 5°C in a mater of minutes.

Also, I started writing a response to CW's ignorant comment, but decided against it as it would just inflame the culture war that I think we should avoid. The anti-non-binary mantra that they know better about non-binary people than non-binary people do is an obviously ridiculous claim. Ground Zero (talk) 11:57, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, agreed about the culture war – honestly, I've given up on enforcing civility on this wiki (same goes for the comment claiming "anyone who announces 'My pronouns are ...' should be laughed at", which is ignorant of the many who suffer from gender dysphoria). The eclipse must've been cool to see! I've yet to see a full eclipse (only seen a partial before), but it's interesting (but not surprising) to hear about the temperature drop. If you don't mind me asking, where'd you to see the eclipse? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:06, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

This is the closest point I can find to where we were standing. I did want to go to the beach, but even in this small town, there were hordes of people. Ground Zero (talk) 12:25, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• 1 Wellingon, Prince Edward County. 

Yeah, I'm not surprised by the large swathes of people. After all, it's not a common occurrence that you see. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:28, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: March 2024

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue III, March 2024 Headlines Albania report: WikiGap Tirana 2024 Australia report: Art+Feminism in Australia Belgium report: Belgian Public domain day and Wiki Loves Heritage awards on March 7 Brazil report: A GLAM focus on Rio de Janeiro; Archivos en vigília Colombia report: Making the public domain visible on Wikidata; In Colombia Women are historical Italy report: GLAM call winner projects Netherlands report: GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category New Zealand report: Update on Wikidata:WikiProject Te Papa research expeditions and the Wikipedian at Large Poland report: What's up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland in March Sweden report: More photo memories – and the community is helping out; Yearly student project Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme UK report: A small problem with the Ottoman Empire USA report: GLAM CSI and WikiPortraits launch and more meetups Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group March monthly highlights Content Partnerships Hub report: GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: WikiLearn course for OpenRefine on Wikimedia Commons WMF GLAM report: Learn to upload to Commons with OpenRefine and get up to date on the International Museum Day, GLAM CSI, WiLMa Network, and WikiWorkshop Calendar: April's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 01:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)