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Wikidata weekly summary #82

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 20:41, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 October 2013

The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.
In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.
This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.
With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies

Help

please put Kim Bum page as protection and check the history by --Sunuraju (talk) 05:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Courcelles is on holiday, Sunuraju, so he's not likely to be able to help you with time-sensitive issues. If you think an article needs to be protected, the best place to ask is Requests for Page Protection. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:ACE

As one of six sitting arbitrators whose terms are expiring, have you decided whether you will be running for re-election? 50.45.158.239 (talk) 05:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #83

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #84

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #85

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

As part of the second major "outing" controversy to hit the English Wikipedia in less than a year, the Chelsea/Bradley Manning naming dispute was dragged into the spotlight yet again when the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee ruled by motion to remove the administrator tools from and ban long-time Wikipedia contributor Phil Sandifer.
It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.
HMS Hood, one of the most famous warships of the Second World War, was a battlecruiser and therefore part of what is now the largest featured topic on Wikipedia: "Battlecruisers of the world". The topic was promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week alongside eleven articles, three lists, four pictures, and two other topics.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Accessibility, a project that strives to make Wikipedia accessible for users with disabilities. The project improves Wikipedia's guidelines and Manual of Style, collects useful templates and scripts, and provides support to impaired Wikipedians.
The Ebionites 3 case has closed with an interaction ban for the two editors involved in the dispute.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

Template:In popular culture has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Trackinfo (talk) 07:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Flow Newsletter - November 14

Hi. This is a brief note to let you know about an update to the Main FAQ (the addition of a large table of Components of the discussion system), and also to specifically request your feedback on two items: our sandbox release plan, and a draft of the new contributors survey. We look forward to reading your input on these or other topics - Flow can only get better with your ideas! –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
Five articles, two lists, one topic, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.
The Italian-language Wikipedia community has overwhelmingly voted to request the Wikimedia Foundation's assistance in recovering wikipedia.it, a website that has been frequently confused with the Italian Wikipedia.
This week, we followed the intricate storylines of WikiProject Soap Operas.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

Tom Dalgliesh

Courcelles, I was able to do some work on User:BOZ/Tom Dalgliesh on Friday - how is it looking so far? BOZ (talk) 06:22, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

blocking

Hi, I noticed that you blocked User:Vegas Bound 2014 and G5'd his contributions. Great! Having put him up for SPI here [1], I was wondering which is the actual blocked/banned master? Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 23:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Sympathies regarding your upcoming surgery

Having lost a big chunk of the summer and fall to a surgery, I sympathize. I hope your eye surgeries go smoothly and your recovery swiftly. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC) &Thanks. Courcelles 05:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Even without being in a similar condition, I wish you both good recovery, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:04, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Get well soon. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Other blocking

Hi,

I notice you just blocked ScoringGoals14 and I was just wondering why. I posited that this user was a sock during a deletion discussion, but never really found any proof. is this why he/she was blocked? Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 12:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.
Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.
This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.
The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.
It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.

Radicalization Watch Project and Radicalisation Project

Hi, I am a French wiki user and I am not used to WP:EN. I saw that you deleted the article Radicalization Watch Project, and it seems that the article was later recreated as Radicalisation Project, what is the standard procedure in that case? I think the article Radicalisation Project should either be deleted, or renamed in Radicalization Watch Project. Regards -- Xavxav (talk) 10:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

  • The original deletion was a WP:PROD, which emans it would have been restored at any time if a user had asked for it to be. That said, a recreation qualifies, so I'm going to kick the new article over to AFD in hopes of getting a more sticky result. Courcelles 15:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Finnbay

Hello, Courcelles. I spoke to Gogo Dodo on recreating Finnbay due to new sources and info (cause they exposed Time magazine's buff on news item and nokia's f... you message on twitter) I think it should be archived on wikipedia.

Gogo Dodo suggested me to talk to you and create a deletion/review message which I did. It would be good to relist them. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2013_November_29 Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Campsite55 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #86

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Thanks

Thanks for helping clean up some of the Evlekis mess. Alas, when a sock pointedly makes a mix of good and bad edits, blanket reverts can cause fallout! bobrayner (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Articles for creation Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello, Courcelles:

WikiProject AFC is holding a two month long Backlog Elimination Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles. The drive is running from December 1st, 2013 – January 31st, 2014.

Awards will be given out for all reviewers participating in the drive in the form of barnstars at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 800 articles, so start reviewing articles! Visit the drive's page and help out!

A new version of our AfC helper script has been released! It includes many bug fixes, new improvements and features, code enhancements, and more. If you want to see a full list of changes, visit the changelog. Please report bugs and feature requests there, too! Thanks. EdwardsBot (talk) 09:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) at 09:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.
Wikipedia works on the efforts of unpaid volunteers who choose to donate their time to advance the cause of free knowledge. This phenomenon, as trivial as it may sound to those acquainted with Wikipedia inner workings, has always puzzled economists and social scientists alike, in that standard Economic theory would not predict that such enterprises would thrive without any form of remuneration.
Recent discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
The sister project Wikisource, the digital library that hosts free-content primary sources, is now a decade old. Wikisource, which now has versions in 63 languages, is the sixth type of project to reach ten-year milestone and will be the last until 2016. The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations to the Board of Trustees on 11 new applications for annual grants by 11 WMF-affiliated organisations. The maximum total budget for the current and upcoming March rounds is US$6M.
This week, we returned to WikiProject Apple Inc. for a peek at their newest articles about the latest in gadgets and software. The last time we took a bite out of WikiProject Apple, they had just finished merging WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS. Today, the project is hard at work rewriting their primary article, improving the subject's outline, and adding to the project's list of 25 Good Articles and 6 Featured Articles.
  • Featured content: F*&!
Seventeen articles, four lists, and twenty-eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status in the last two weeks.
The Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute case has opened. The second draft of the discretionary sanctions proposal is now open for review.

Blocked IPs

There is a serious backlog of about 20K individual IPs that are blocked without expiration. I have broken the IPs into groups of 5000: m:User:とある白い猫/English Wikipedia open proxy candidates. So they are effectively blocked until time ends. This creates considerable potential collateral damage as the owners of IPs tend to be not very consistent. Some of these IPs are on dynamic ranges which results in arbitrary blocks of good users. Vast majority of the blocks go back years all the way to 2004 - some were preemptively blocked. Nowadays even open proxies normally do not get indefinite blocks.

The problem is that no single admin wants to review this many IPs and very few have the technical capability to review. Such a technical review would be non-trivial for individual IPs which in my humble opinion would be a complete waste of time. I feel ArbCom could step in and provide criteria for bulk action. A bulk unblock of all indefinite blocks (with exceptions if the specific single IP unblocks are contested) before - say - 2010 would be a good start.

Open proxies tend to be better handled at meta as open proxies are a global problem for all wikis.

-- A Certain White Cat chi? 11:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

  • I don;t think anyone would do a wholesale unblock here, the odds are we would just swim in vandalism for months as various sockmasters used all the ancient OP's. To accurately check these would be an easy thousand man-hours of work, And the only result I see is that more people would have to do more work to clean up form the now-unblocked, nown problem IP's. That's the three reasons you're not getting any progress on this 1) few admins really care enough to do the work at all; 2) it is indiscriminate thousand-hour task list; and 3) many people don't see how we would be better off afterwards. We're well set up to review these blocks as they are challenged, not at all to do 20,000 at once. Courcelles

Wikimedia NYC Meetup- "Queens Open History Edit-a-Thon" at Queens Library! Friday December 6

Queens Library
 Please join Queens Open History Edit-a-Thon on December 6, 2013!
Everyone gather at Queens Library to further Wikipedia's local outreach
for borough articles on the history and the communities.
Drop-ins welcome 10am-7pm!--Pharos (talk) ~~~~~

01:09, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Article Creation named Ashok Sundari request

Hi, I want to create a article named "Ashok Sundari" , but before creating the page i got the information that a page with a similar name has been deleted and therefore i need to take request from you whether i can create the page again with same name. I cannot view the contents of the deleted page,the page which i am planning to create is related to hinduism. Please help me whether the page can be created again. I will be careful keeping in mind Wikipedia's guidelines while creating article. Thanking you for your co-operation. Work2win (talk) 21:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your speedy reply. Work2win (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I have edited the page. The page has very less supported citations and content in the internet. I have tried to edit it as best as i can. You can review it and see if it still can be created. Thanking for your co-operation. Work2win (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #87

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi t | c 15:07, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Far from Heaven accolades

Hey. I hope you're well. I just wanted to check if it was still okay to continue working on User:Courcelles/List of accolades received by Far from Heaven in your userspace? I've recently been trying to finish some of the (many) projects that I've started and I'd quite like the challenge of trying to track down sources and info for that list. - JuneGloom Talk 01:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't quite forgotten about it, but something else always seemed to come up before I had chance to get back to it. I did a little work on the list yesterday and then immediately got sidetracked when I realised that the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography didn't have an article. So, I'm working on one at the moment. - JuneGloom Talk 21:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Anushka Sen

Hello Courcelles, I'm just letting you know that I removed protection and recreated the article Anushka Sen, partly per request on my talk page and partly because now (after she appeared in several notable TV shows and in the Indian media) she looks like a notable and sought after actress. Please let me know if you have any objections. Thank you. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:41, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

  • My protecting was against socking, and, well, you're not a sock ;) Still would be worth monitoring for socking, even though we haven't heard from the particular sockmaster in a good while now. Courcelles 07:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
  • And I see you have a very quick AFD to deal with. That should be interesting, though I don't care one way or the other about the outcome. Courcelles 07:59, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm watching it so no worries. Yes, the AfD may be interesting as it is hard to say whether to keep or delete ... it depends on interpretation of our rules and on general view of what is suitable encyclopedic content and what is not. Reputable encyclopedias of actors in my country (I'm Czech) normally list people with achievements similar to Anushka's - that's why I recreated it and !voted to keep it. We will see. No hard feelings and ... thanks for your response. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:08, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar
For the lightning quick unprotection of Borderline (band). Hasteur (talk) 21:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #88

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 11 December 2013

When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales caught headlines last week when he referred to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden ... Loek Essers of the International Data Group, (IDG) News Service is reporting that a German court has held Wikipedia liable for its content, but still does not have to fact check the information in advance.
Amid great anticipation the international prize winners have just been announced for the fourth annual Wiki Loves Monuments, now the world's largest photographic competition and one of the biggest events on the Wikimedia movement's calendar. ... The first prize has gone to David Gubler's photograph of a Swiss train crossing a viaduct.
This week, the Signpost interviewed the Wine WikiProject.
On 7 December, Wikipedia editor Wehwalt reached the momentous milestone of 100 featured articles with History of Chincoteague, Virginia. Quite apart from the reading and research, that's around three-quarters of a million words of finalised text, not counting footnotes, image captions and the rest.
Three articles, one list, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March 2013 through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements.

Ping

ygm.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 18:49, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

This week, the Signpost interviewed the Tunisia WikiProject on the French Wikipedia.
An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.
Seven articles, three lists, and eight pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.

Help needed

Hi, I just logged in an incident on ANI. Check this [2]. I feel that the action by the admin in discussion was harsh, sudden and one sided. Whilst I wait for the discussion on ANI to progress, I am placing a request to you if you can review this independently and give me your feedback. Cheers AKS

  • My experience with ANI says you'll get plenty of opinions without spamming all the arbitrators, who tend to stay out of the ANI daily fray incase things end up at arbitration down the line. Courcelles 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #89

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Merry Christmas! :-)

Happy Yuletides!

Merry Yuletides to you! (And a happy new year!)


~TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hi Courcelles, Wishing you a very Happy and Wonderful Merry Christmas! Hope you are having a great time with family and friends :-) Best wishes. ~TheGeneralUser (talk) 22:58, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

The Barnstar of Integrity
Thank you for your tireless work at Articles for deletion and for your service on the Arbitration Committee. The project is in your debt. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Block review

Hi Courcelles. We are looking at indef IP blocks over at WT:OP. There is only one of yours to review at the moment: 68.70.27.96 (talk · contribs · block log) May I safely assume that, following review, your response will be to suggest leaving it blocked? Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:57, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #90

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

Analyzing edits to the-then 46 largest Wikipedias between July 9 and August 8, 2013, a study identified a set of about 8,000 contributors with a global user account who have edited more than one of these language versions in that time frame.
Five articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.
A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.
Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.

AfD "Mozart was a red"

This article was never listed on the Murray Rothbard talk page where there are several editors who would have beefed it up and/or supported keeping it. Since a couple editors there are busy deleting a lot of material under Austrian Economics General Sanctions, and most have been kept for lack of consensus, I think it's important they know they have to give proper notifications in situations like this. (And the nominating editor has given such notifications in the past.) Should I put it on Wikipedia:Deletion_review?? Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:35, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Will have to keep a better eye out if it's not necessary to announce AfD talk pages of related articles. Don't have energy to beef it up for full article anyway. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:00, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Fc

Template:Fc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.. QED237 (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Relisting AfD's

Hi, do you use a script by any chance? It's a rather tedious process and if you have one, I wouldn't mind installing it myself. Cheers, Daniel (talk) 00:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks muchly! Daniel (talk) 02:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Just pinched your AfD closing tool as well - so much more refined than the prehistoric one I was using! :) Daniel (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2014 WikiCup!

Hello Courcelles, and welcome to the 2014 WikiCup! Your submission page can be found here. The competition will begin at midnight tonight (UTC). There have been a few small changes from last year; the rules can be read in full at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring, and the page also includes a summary of changes. One important rule to remember is that only content on which you have completed significant work, and nominated, in 2014 is eligible for points in the competition- the judges will be checking! As ever, this year's competition includes some younger editors. If you are a younger editor, you are certainly welcome, but we have written an advice page at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Advice for younger editors for you. Please do take a look. Any questions should be directed to one of the judges, or left on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will make it to round 2. Good luck! J Milburn (talk · contribs), The ed17 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 17:32, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

For your work on the arbitration committee. NE Ent 00:14, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Welcome back :) --Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 00:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks guys. It was an honour to do that necessary task for two years. Well, still a little left to bring to a conclusion, I guess. Courcelles 06:07, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year Courcelles!

Happy New Year!
Hello Courcelles:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve the encyclopedia for Wikipedia's readers, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, BusterD (talk) 06:09, 1 January 2014 (UTC)



Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2014}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

A personalized New Year greeting

Hope you have a bright 2014! Acalamari 11:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Courcelles, Happy New Year. I saw the reasons why you had to withdraw from the recent ArbCom elections; I hope that you'll be okay and that 2014 won't be difficult for you. Best wishes to you. Acalamari 11:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #91

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Deletion review for SiteKiosk

An editor has asked for a deletion review of SiteKiosk. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. BroncoPfefferminz (talk) 08:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

In fact, the majority are relatively evenly split between three themes: people of interest, television, and websites.
In 2013, the arbitration committee closed 10 cases, 9 amendment requests, and 26 clarification requests.
On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.
Dariusz Jemielniak's book is the newest about Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014.
This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia and around the Wikimedia movement include...
The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.
Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).
2013 saw a lot of changes to MediaWiki software and Wikimedia infrastructure.

Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Hi, regarding the above, could you please unprotect (see brief discussion at WP:UNPROTECT. Thanks, 86.29.59.246 (talk) 22:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Why not? 86.29.59.246 (talk) 00:19, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Look at the talk page for the last GA review. Specifically, what SlimVirgin said, "Regarding protection, the article has been indefinitely semi-protected since November 2010 (with a brief break for full protection, then back to semi). The reason is that the McCanns have been attacked a lot on the Internet, and every so often someone arrives to imply that they were involved. I don't see that changing in the near future. <snipped> SlimVirgin (talk) 19:47, 22 December 2013 (UTC)" The protection is keeping that exact type of crap away. Courcelles 00:29, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
That "crap" as you describe it occurred back in 2010 when a single sock puppet started being stupid. If it's happened again since then, SP isn't working anyway. You could perhaps unprotect it as a trial. See what happens over a few days. The article is probably wtached by a large number of editors who would quickly fix any problem, and if vandalism does rear its ugly head again, then it's a simple matter to re-protect. The problem with protection on this article is that the subject can quickly come to the fore in the media, as it has done several times since 2007. At such times, when the subject is again a "current event", unregistered users typically provide many useful edits. 86.29.59.246 (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I will not consider unprotecting this article or downgrading to pending changes. Nothing good, absolutely nothing, would come of it. The talk page is available if you would like to make edits; as is the option of registering an account that can be confirmed to do so directly. Courcelles 01:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
It's actually important that people don't respond to all the media reports. Most of them are in the tabloid press only (which with rare exceptions aren't regarded as reliable sources for Wikipedia), and are often very repetitive, presenting old information as new. In addition, there is an ongoing libel trial in Lisbon, which the McCanns initiated against someone they say defamed them. The case is due to reach a conclusion soon, possibly this month; closing arguments are going to be heard next week, I believe. If that case goes against the McCanns, we'll see another wave of anti-McCann sentiment, so semi-protection is even more important now than usual. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:17, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Your choice of version to protect

Hi, Thanks for protecting List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming‎. I noticed you protected a gutted version instead of the stable pre-edit war version. Why?

Our policy at WP:BLPDEL says we first improve content, and only strip it if that proves to be impossible. Again, that is first-improve, and then delete. By protecting a gutted version of the article, it appears you've decided to ignore the "first improve" part of this policy. At the talk page and AFD, several people have said BLP, but no one has won a consensus that a problem even exists.

Several people posted to Black Kite's talk page, or in the AFD page, or in the article talk page, that they thought his choice of version was flawed and was rewarding editors for simply telling ARBCC to f* off, via the process. And just to be clear, what I most care about is good process. Seems your choice of version has inadvertently chosen sides and appears - at least to me - to ignore the "first improve" requirement in the policy and for that matter no consensus that there is even a problem.

Your thoughts? As they say, I'll take my answer "off the air". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

  • As I said above, we don't protect with alleged controversial BLP material out. Black Kite had this right; and I would consider the AFD close will decide whether this should be included or not on broad strokes -- the closing admin, if not deleting the page, should be lifting the protection. When BLP is involved, I just can't accept protecting in such a manner that content can't be removed; and the closure of that AFD (and unprotection) of the page should really be soon. Courcelles 00:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I can't say I see it exactly that way, but it does answer one of my questions above. I wouldn't want to see the padlock become the norm for this article though because of a small minority of editors. That's not how the project is supposed to work.- MrX 00:50, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

/e-c/

Sorry, I should have noticed the prior section. Thanks for the explanation, though I'm dismayed to learn that by way of unwritten rules one wishing to remove BLP content can simply initiate edit war to win a temporary protection in their favor. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
It actually isn't that unwritten, though. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Henri_Coanda#Consensus is relevant here. If consensus is that having a list like this is not a BLP violation, then, well, continuing to edit war over it would not be advisable. But that consensus doesn't exist at the moment, witht eh ongoing AFD. Courcelles 01:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Technically, I agree now that I know what you have told me. But lo, the poor regular editor! I added the link you gave in the prior thread to the BLP section on semi protection. That would have greatly helped in the situation we are pinging you about, had it been common knowledge. Thanks for your responsiveness, I think we're done here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:41, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

Could you kindly explain this? I'm having a hard time understanding why two admins have locked in a non-consensus, non-status-quo version of this article when not a single BLP argument has stood up to examination. How did you determine consensus for this unusual action? - MrX 00:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Whenever there is an edit war regarding BLP issues, the default is to protect on the version not containing the content. Given the AFD< this content shouldn't be here until that AFD closes; a close other than 'delete' would indicate a consensus to put the content back, but not while the discussion is still open. Courcelles 00:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • @Courcelles: Thanks for the clarification. Would you mind linking to the policy or guideline that supports default BLP content exclusion? Not that I doubt you; I have just never heard of such a thing. Also, you protected the article for additional ten days, but the AfD should conclude later today, if my math is correct.- MrX 00:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You have a new message

Hello, Courcelles. You have new messages at Maile66's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Courcelles, I am messaging you regarding the page you recently deleted titled, "Shodor Education Foundation." The claims raised by "TonyBallioni" regarding deletion were unfounded. The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. is in fact a registered 501(c) organization and fits the criteria defined by WP:NGO. Shodor's activities range nationally through participation in professional development workshops and locally through community outreach and educational workshops. Additionally, Shodor has a collaborative grant with "Pathways" in Europe, as well as auxiliary grants with Columbia and Thailand. Shodor's online curriculum, Interactivate, is used globally by numerous institutions generating millions of page views monthly. Shodor currently operates using multiple federal and state grants, whether through The Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, NSF, Durham County (NC), and more.

The Webby Award that "TonyBallioni" further uses as evidence against Shodor is but one of many awards won throughout the years. Also as a side note, in regards to "pay to enter" that was required of all entrants into the competition. A list of additional awards includes: Business Leader's Women's Extraordinaire Award, Michael C. Jackson Distinguished Service Award, 5-time winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Award, the Business Excellence Award in the Non-Profit Category by the Durham Chamber of Commerce, just to name a few. Also, our interns have gone on to win numerous awards such as taking 1st Place at the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Competition.

I believe his argument is unfounded because it is not clear to me where he gets his evidence from. Finally, in regards to not being found on Google news, he searched for us while we were not actively running any programs. However we can be found multiple times in Google Scholar, which in my opinion, as an Educational Non-profit organization is more important than idle news entries.

Regarding these facts, I propose that the Shodor Education Foundation page be re-instated. This year Shodor will be celebrating its 20th year anniversary.

Ldiala (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)ldiala

  • WP:NGO is a two pronged test, scope of activities and coverage by independent sources. If you could line up a good number of those sources, WP:DRV would be the venue to analyze them for independence and sufficiency. Courcelles 22:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Holy S**t! Did you just wheel-war?

[3] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:07, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

What is a "wheel-war"? .... (later) Wait, nevermind. See WP:WHEEL NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • How could that possibly be wheel warring? BK's protection expired, there was a resumption of the edit war, I re=protected it as the AFD was not yet done, and put it back on the version he had protected and intended to last through the AFD's run. I don't see how that series of events could even be interpreted as wheel-warring... Courcelles 14:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • AS a point of order, i intended my full-protection to last as long a the AFD did. Therefore, I have now restored the pre-AFD6 semi protection. Courcelles 15:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Userfication request

Hello, Courcelles. This deletion was performed in 2007. I have since written the article "Aardwolf (MUD)". Can you userfy the deleted page for me please? There may be some salvageable material. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I've sent you the last revision in an email; I don't really trust the history of that page much (it was written by a sockpuppet of a banned user), and would prefer not to resurrect it until you've determined there was something useful. Courcelles 14:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. (The text actually looks accurate from my knowledge of playing Aardwolf.) I shall ensure that any material used is appropriately referenced. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:10, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Happy to help. Courcelles 19:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.
The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.
On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Television.
Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

Wikidata weekly summary #92

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

False Accusation of Sockpuppetry

Hello, I'm User:Leoesb1032. I have been accused of sockpuppetry and I know that I am not. I was before though and when I was they ran my and my socks location to match it. Since you are a checkuser, could you please do this for me again and clear me of charges? It would really help me out. You can leave a response here Thank you. Leoesb1032 (talk) 21:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Data tables

Fair enough. If you say WP:DTAB, it's more specific that just the WP:ACCESS, just saying :) LADY LOTUS • TALK 18:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Aint that the truth, so many to remember! But thanks for the tip :) Happy editing! LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
P.S. - Question, is "align=center" required for WP:ACCESS or just the ! cols and ! rows ? LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:47, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
The screen-readers need the col and row scopes; the align commands are just for appearance, they don't matter to the screen-reading software. Courcelles 21:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Gotcha. So you wouldn't be opposed if I removed those yes? LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Not at all, though, as I'm sure you know, someone else might; but it would be on stylistic grounds, not accessibility for the blind that they would be objecting. Courcelles 22:04, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #93

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.
The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"
We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.
This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.

Talk:Alison Weir

Is there any chance of Talk:Alison Weir ever being unprotected? Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Nike Total 90 Tracer

I've nominated Nike Total 90 Tracer for deletion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 January 23#Nike Total 90 Tracer. Since you participated in the AfD for this page, you may be interested in commenting there. --BDD (talk) 22:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #94

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."
The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.
On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.

Thanks

Just wanted to say thank you for taking care of the redirect on Organisational change. I did intend to follow up on that but got distracted by overseas travels. I apologize if it seemed like I abandoned the issue having started it. Cheers Andrew (talk) 03:05, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Kafziel's case

Hi Courcelles:

Just a heads up that there are extra FOFs regarding Kafziel - here, here, and here - which have been posted while you've been travelling. Bon continued voyage,  Roger Davies talk 16:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Your vote would be appreciated on the Conduct unbecoming FOF to enable us to close the case.  Roger Davies talk 10:12, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #95

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

WikiCup 2014 January newsletter

The 2014 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with, at time of writing, 138 participants. The is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2010. If you are yet to join the competition, don't worry- the judges have agreed to keep the signups open for a few more days. By a wide margin, our current leader is newcomer Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose set of 14 featured pictures, the first FPs of the competition, was worth 490 points. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:

Featured articles, featured lists, featured topics and featured portals are yet to play a part in the competition. The judges have removed a number of submissions which were deemed ineligible. Typically, we aim to see work on a project, followed by a nomination, followed by promotion, this year. We apologise for any disappointment caused by our strict enforcement this year; we're aiming to keep the competition as fair as possible.

Wikipedians interested in friendly competition may be interested to take part in The Core Contest; unlike the WikiCup, The Core Contest is not about audited content, but, like the WikiCup, it is about article improvement; specifically, The Core Contest is about contribution to some of Wikipedia's most important article. Of course, any work done for The Core Contest, if it leads to a DYK, GA or FA, can earn WikiCup points.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 19:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

Reviewer rights

Hello Courcelles. I have an unimportant question to ask you. As I see you're currently out of town, please feel free to delay. :)

This may sound a little silly. I was pretty much inactive on Wikipedia between somewhere around 2009 and the end of 2013. However, on the 18th of June 2010, you have granted me reviewer rights. Now I'm not complaining, as a matter of fact I started putting the rights to use and I'm enjoying the work. However, I wonder how it came to be that you gave me the rights? Unless my memory is playing a trick on me, I've never made a request or asked to get them. Seeing as I've had rollbackers right since before then, I was wondering if that was some sort of action where all users meeting certain criteria were given reviewer right?

I realize this is more than 3 years ago, so if you can't remember, I understand of course. I was just curious. Cheers! ~ | twsx | talkcont | ~ 14:29, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't remember you specifically, I'm sorry to have to admit. Really, reviewer was given out incredibly freely back then, to pretty much everyone who had rollback rights, so your theory is likely the correct one. Courcelles 04:13, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics

I am trying to get some reviewers for Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics/archive2. It had an earlier nomination but failed for lack of reviewers. If you could take a few minutes to post even a short review, it would be much appreciated. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Need formatting advice

Re AM list up for FLC, I have been reading WP:DTT, and have concerns about the images and "alt text". Most of the images on that page were not inserted by me, so other than their being on Commons, I have no technical knowledge of them. And I've never uploaded anything to Commons. I've noticed some have the alt text, and many do not. I see nothing in the coding, either in the article or on Commons, to understand where that alt text is coming from. If alt text is required, how do I put it in? It also says "need to be unlinked and have an empty alt text" and I see nothing to unlink. Please advise how I should handle the issue of the images. — Maile (talk) 21:41, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Hope you haven't forgotten about this. Also, since you offered to keep an eye on the nomination, please let me know I overlook any suggestions on the nom template that would be a "pass or fail" issue.— Maile (talk) 12:51, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Advice about article.

Because I'm not a Wikipedia editor, I don't know which user should I contact. And because you was last person, which was editing article about Andrey Lavrow (handball goalkeeper), I writing to You. He was not the only one athlete, who won three olympic gold medals for three different countries. He was the only one handball player, who did this. Another athlete, who did this was Aleksandr Karelin (soviet/russian wrestler). I don't want to edit the article, because I have not any experience with that, so I can make unnecessarily mess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.117.224 (talk) 21:45, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #96

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Events/Blogs/Press
    • See the office hours logs at meta
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • See the FOSDEM slides
    • Thiemo joins the Wikidata development team
  • Development
    • More work on badges by Bene*
    • Lots of Lua improvements by hoo (separate announcement with details soon)
    • Created backend Time parsers (yet another necessary step towards doing more in the backend instead of in Java Script in the frontend)
    • Automatic builds created, tested and deployed to beta labs every day!
    • Investigate Elastic Search as possible backend for queries
    • Made Wikibase Query work with our new component structure
  • Monthly Tasks

Tech News: 2014-07

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
  • The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
  • You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [9]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [10] [11]
  • The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [12] [13] [14]

Problems

  • On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [15]
  • On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.

Future software changes

  • Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [16] [17]
  • You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [18]
  • You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [19] [20]
  • The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [21]
  • Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [22] [23]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [24]
  • You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [25]
  • You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [26] [27]
  • If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode. [28]
  • Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [29]
  • bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [30]
  • The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [31]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

constellation articles....

Still waiting on some wikiproject input to figure out what to do about the quadrant and RA/Dec fields - if we move to ranges for the latter then it will be a Good Thing I think....incidentally have been doing a bit of a run on constellations and have Tucana at FAC if you feel like taking a look and comparing with Musca etc. I appreciate detailed reviews as these listy-type articles are tricky to get into nice engaging prose....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:35, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks, Musca looks good. Not quite sure what to do, as I imagine if you got consensus for ranges you could cite them in two seconds. (I'm going to be gone 21 Jan to 31 Jan) Courcelles 05:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I am not fussed if it sits for ten days as I think discussion should be comprehensive on these topics and will likely take another week - have a good holiday Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:46, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, back, will look into these discussions tomorrow. Thanks for your patience. Courcelles 05:30, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Heck, just grateful to have any reviewers at this point! cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:49, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Getting consensus at the astronomy wikiproject is like herding cats...sigh actually one sorted other not yet.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:18, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

constellation stalemate nearly sorted...maybe?

Right, the last issue at Musca was the quadrant issue in the infobox - finally some voices have spoken at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomy#Hence_proposal_-_shall_we_remove_it_from_the_constellation_infobox.3F, so if someone wants to look at this and determine whether there is sufficient consensus I can remove from infobox and others as well maybe. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:30, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks again for the Oversight help. Antoshi ☏ ★ 16:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.
Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.
In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is
Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.
Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.
In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.

Wikidata weekly summary #97

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Reasonator
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Wrote performance tests so we can track performance improvements better
    • Did a code review of all gadgets that are enabled by default in Wikidata. Found and fixed a performance bottleneck.
    • Work on making the interface more responsive, e. g. live preview when editing labels and updating the watchlist star when saving.
    • Started refactoring and fixing issues with automatically created summaries that are, for example, created by bots via API calls.
    • Fixed an issue with OAuth on Wikidata because of permissions
    • Started code review of the code the student team is working on for suggestions
    • Discussed updates to the data model document to be able to update it to the actual implementation
    • Did a technical debt analysis and design review of Wikibase.git, with initial focus on WikibaseLib
    • Got (backend) EntityStore on the way, so we can test API modules without touching the database
    • Further work on TimeParsers move to the backend
  • Monthly Tasks

Deletion review for 53rd and 6th

An editor has asked for a deletion review of 53rd and 6th. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Valoem talk 15:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Can you also restore the talk page as well? Thanks! Valoem talk 18:36, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-08

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
  • You can now use the list of active users again. [32] [33]
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [34]
  • You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [35]
  • You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [36]

Problems

  • On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [37]
  • On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [38]
  • On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
  • There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
  • On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.

VisualEditor news

  • The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [39]
  • You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [40]
  • Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [41]
  • You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [42] [43] [44]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

José Eduardo dos Santos

You protected José Eduardo dos Santos three years ago. Could you consider unprotecting it? 129.79.34.11 (talk) 18:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.
Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.
WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.
Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.

Wikidata weekly summary #98

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Please comment on changes to the AfC mailing list

Hello Courcelles! There is a discussion that your input is requested on! I look forward to your comments, thoughts, opinions, criticisms, and questions!

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

This message was composed and sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 18:18, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-09

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

Recent software changes

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to add and edit __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__ in the page settings menu. [47] [48] [49]
  • You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [50] [51]
  • You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [52] [53]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.
Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.
Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.
Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.
The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.
The monthly roundup of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee.

Info about a CFD discussion

Hello C. I noticed that you added a Screen Actors Guild cat to various articles in Jan. I wanted to make you aware of this [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 September 19]] CFD from last year. As you will see it was decided that the cat only belongs on the article for the show. Sorry about this as I know you did quite a bit of work (re)adding it. Thanks for all you work here at wikip. MarnetteD | Talk 19:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 February newsletter

And so ends the most competitive first round we have ever seen, with 38 points required to qualify for round 2. Last year, 19 points secured a place; before that, 11 (2012) or 8 (2011) were enough. This is both a blessing and a curse. While it shows the vigourous good health of the competition, it also means that we have already lost many worthy competitors. Our top three scorers were:

  1. Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer whose high-quality scans of rare banknotes represent an unusual, interesting and valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Most of Godot's points this round have come from a large set of pictures used in Treasury Note (1890–91).
  2. Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions), a WikiCup veteran and a finalist last year, Adam is also a featured picture specialist, focusing on the restoration of historical images. This month's promotions have included a carefully restored set of artist William Russell Flint's work.
  3. United States WikiRedactor (submissions), another WikiCup newcomer. WikiRedactor has claimed points for good article reviews and good articles relating to pop music, many of which were awarded bonus points. Articles include Sky Ferreira, Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus and "Wrecking Ball" (Miley Cyrus song).

Other competitors of note include:

After such a competitive first round, expect the second round to also be fiercely fought. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2, but please do not update your submission page until March (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 00:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #99

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Tech News: 2014-10

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
  • When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [60]
  • You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [61] [62]
  • You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [63]
  • The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list. [64]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [65] [66] [67]
  • If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [68]
  • Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [69]
  • VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [70] [71] [72]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [80]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #100

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Bambifan?

Please see The Fox and the Hound's history. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:19, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Brought up at ANI. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:02, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014

There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
This week, the Signpost caught up with the Wikipedia Library (TWL), which aims to connect reference resources with Wikipedia editors who can use them to improve articles. Funded through the Wikimedia Foundation's Individual Engagement Grants program, TWL has a new "visiting scholars" initiative and a microgrants program in the works.
The WikiCup competition is ongoing, while six articles, three lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status of the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, the Signpost delved into the English Wikipedia's Article Rescue Squadron.

Tech News: 2014-11

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [81] [82]

VisualEditor news

  • It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [83] [84]
  • It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [85]
  • VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [86]
  • We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [87]
  • You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [88] [89] [90]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

File:Madonna - Like a Prayer.jpg

Back in 2012, you protected this file indefinitely by preventing new uploads by non-admins. Note that a user has uploaded File:Madonna, Like a Prayer album cover.png as a replacement of the old JPG file. I don't know why sockpuppets made it necessary to protect the file (but I see that there are lots of log messages for it, such as reuploads and revision deletions). You might wish to check the new file and optionally protect that one too.

The new PNG file has better quality, but also has extra text. It says "a digital recording" on the PNG file but not on the JPG file. I don't know whether this has anything to do with the dispute back in 2012. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:21, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #101

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

Wikimedians around the world gathered to celebrate Women's History Month and the associated International Women's Day by holding editathons. If you lived in the United Kingdom, you had the opportunity to attend Wikimedia UK's event at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of University College London and host to one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts in the world.
An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.
Five articles, two lists, and 52 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, we interviewed Anaxibia from the Russian-language Entomology WikiProject.

Discretionary sanctions 2013 review: Draft v3

Hi. You have commented on Draft v1 or v2 in the Arbitration Committee's 2013 review of the discretionary sanctions system. I thought you'd like to know Draft v3 has now been posted to the main review page. You are very welcome to comment on it on the review talk page. Regards, AGK [•] 00:23, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-12

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
  • You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [96]
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all small wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [97] [98]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014. [99]

VisualEditor news

  • Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [100] [101]
  • Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [102]
  • Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [103]

Future software changes

Problems

  • VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue. [107]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggested edit

Hello Courcelles,

I was going to add this to article Sally Ride but note that it was Locked for editing by you. Perhaps you want to add it, or something similar, as it's a tribute to the former astronaut.

Popular culture Her name appears in the No. 1 hit We didn't start the fire, released by Billy Joel in 1989. The song mentions over 100 milestones in popular culture between 1949 and 1989 and the lyrics relevant to Ride are "Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan, Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide". Simonjon (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 10:18, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #102

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Events/Blogs/Press
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Continued making the UI faster
    • Fixed Wikidata changes not showing up in the watchlist on the client (Wikipedia, etc.) (bugzilla:62149)
    • Decided to turn off the inoperable wikidata.org language subdomains for now to reduce confusion
    • Created initial version of Wikibase Internal Serialization component
    • wbEntity and wbUsedEntities JavaScript variables are now cached in the parser cache
    • Ongoing refactoring to get rid of the previously used numeric ID numbers in favor of prefixed IDs
    • Made wbsearchentities aware of previously unquoted percent characters
    • Put some time into fixing longstanding oddities that made the developers cry from time to time
    • Worked on reducing internal usage of EntityContent, in preparation for redirect support
    • Worked on performance issues with JSON dump generation (hopefully we can start generating dumps soon)
  • Monthly Tasks

The Signpost: 19 March 2014

Non-US editors and chapters have taken issue with a multitude of image deletions done on the Wikimedia Commons to comply with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a US law that brought the country into compliance with the Berne Convention.
This week, we visited WikiProject History, an ancient project with roots dating back to 2001. The project is home to 196 pieces of Featured material and 483 Good and A-class articles independent of the vast accomplishments of its various child projects. WikiProject History maintains a lengthy list of tasks, oversees the history portal, and continues to build Wikipedia's outline of history.
In a record-breaker, the English Wikipedia has a new largest good topic: the 71-article Light cruisers of Germany, which concerns the light cruisers used by Germany during the 20th century.
Twelve articles, fourteen lists, and six pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.
The utterly mystifying events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has not fallen from the sky so much as vanished from it entirely, has left an information-starved public scrambling for precedents, some logical, some... not.
The Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014 has been published. A summarized version is also available. Major news include

Tech News: 2014-13

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [108] [109]
  • Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [110]
  • You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [111]
  • You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [112]

Future software changes

  • Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
  • You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
  • You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages. [113] [114]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 March 2014

April Fools' Day is rapidly approaching. Every year, members of the community pull pranks and make (or attempt to make) humorous edits to pages across the project. Every year, the community follows April Fools' Day with a contentious debate about whether or not it is necessary to impose limits on April Fools' Day jokes for future years. It is a polarizing issue.
Topics like the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 eased down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.
Have you wondered about differences in the articles on Crimea in the Russian, Ukrainian, and English versions of Wikipedia? A newly published article entitled "Lost in Translation: Contexts, Computing, Disputing on Wikipedia" doesn't address Crimea, but nonetheless offers insight into the editing of contentious articles in multiple language editions through a heavy qualitative examination of Wikipedia articles about the Kosovo in the Serbian, Croatian, and English editions.
Results for the two-stage 2013 Commons Picture of the Year have been announced. This year's winning photograph (above) shows a lightbulb that has been cracked, allowing inert gas to escape—and oxygen to enter, so that the tungsten filament burns. From the flames rise elegant curls of blue smoke.
Four articles, two lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing, four major iterations, and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we’ve arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.
As you have probably read on this weeks op-ed, or via various other channels of announcement, 3 April will see the introduction of the Typography refresh (or update) for the Vector skin on all Wikipedias. Other projects like Commons will have this update rolled out a few days prior.
This week, the Signpost interviewed the English Wikipedia's Mountains WikiProject.

Wikidata weekly summary #103

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Tech News: 2014-14

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
  • Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
  • CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27. [115] [116]

VisualEditor news

  • Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [117] [118]
  • The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [119]
  • New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [120]
  • VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [121]

Future software changes

  • You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change. [122]
  • CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
  • You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files. [123]
  • Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [124]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Molluscs of South Africa

Hi Courcelles,

You deleted this category at some stage as an empty category. However there are a large number of mollusc species in South Africa, including a significant number of endemics. Would there be any problem with recreating the category?

Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:56, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

  • This is my first time looking at Wikipedia in a few weeks, and I'm still recovering from surgery, but a C1 can just be recreated at anytime as long as there are some articles to be added. This does seem a strange category to have been emptied and C1'ed, unless someone might have moved it to a different spelling? Courcelles 17:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 March newsletter

A quick update as we are half way through round two of this year's competition. WikiCup newcomer Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) (Pool E) leads, having produced a massive set of featured pictures for Silver certificate (United States), an article also brought to featured list status. Former finalist Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions) (Pool G) is in second, which he owes mostly to his work with historical images, including a number of images from Urania's Mirror, an article also brought to good status. 2010 champion (Pool C) is third overall, thanks to contributions relating to naval history, including the newly featured Japanese battleship Nagato. Rhodesia Cliftonian (submissions), who currently leads Pool A and is sixth overall, takes the title for the highest scoring individual article of the competition so far, with the top importance featured article Ian Smith.

With 26 people having already scored over 100 points, it is likely that well over 100 points will be needed to secure a place in round 3. Recent years have required 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) and 100 (2010). Remember that only 64 will progress to round 3 at the end of April. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page; if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 22:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Flag of Azerbaijan in 1918

Hi, Courcelles. You protected the Template:Country data Azerbaijan. But the flag of Azerbaijan in 1918 in this template is wrong. The crescent was small and on the middle red field of the flag, not so wide. Whole explanation, sources and images of the flag of 1918 are on the talk page. Could you please correct this mistake? --User:East718 (talk) 18:32, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Hi, Interfase sorry for the delay. Looks like I only tweaked the protection level (lowering it), the actual protection was done by User:East718. I really don't have the eyes right now (and may not for months) to try and sort out small differences in photos. I see you made an edit request that was declined based on "lack of consensus", I'd suggest no one watches template talk pages, and you might get a better result discussing it on the talk page for the article on the flag itself? Courcelles 16:59, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #104

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

April 2014 GA Thanks

On behalf of WP:CHICAGO, I would like to thank you for your editorial contributions to Megan Rapinoe.

This user helped promote Megan Rapinoe to good article status.

.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 April 2014

The run-up to the conference has seen the unfolding of two fractious threads on the Wikimedia public mailing list, both of which may serve as background for the last session at Berlin: "Future of the Wikimedia Conference".
This week, we visited with WikiProject Germany.
The annual Wikimedia Conference is about to start in Berlin, hosted by Wikimedia Germany, which won the bid to hold the event over three others. This will be the fifth time the chapter has hosted the Wikimedia Conference—it did so from 2009 to 2012, with attendance ranging from 100 to 180 Wikimedians. This year 160 people are expected at the four-day event, which is mainly for representatives of affiliated Wikimedia organisations. The conference has been built around two themes: Organisation, structures, and grants and Success and impact.
The Signpost's "Featured content" writers had a bit of fun this week.
The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.

Tech News: 2014-15

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
  • Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [125]

Future software changes

  • A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [126] [127]
  • All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8. [128]
  • The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [129] [130]
  • You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [131]
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
  • You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language. [132]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of tooth extraction

I personally would only call something contentious if someone raises objection. Bold revert discuss and all that. Lesion 23:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Get well soon.

Membrane-biologist

Hey, it's been a while. Hope you're well. Anyway, you indef'd Membrane-biologist with a {{checkuserblock-account}}; any chance you could post your findings at the SPI? Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:11, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #105

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 09 April 2014

Community review is open for the four applications in the second and final round of applications to the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013–14. Three eligible organisations have applied for funding under the newly named "annual program grants": Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Norway, and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which last November was recognised as eligible to apply for FDC funding purposes.
This week, we interviewed the Law WikiProject.
"I remember laughing and talking and laughing and talking at Wikimania 2012. I took this picture of her that she used for a long while as a profile pic. Someone on Facebook said it looked 'skepchickal', which she loved."
Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.
Five article, five lists, and ten pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

Tech News: 2014-16

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

We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
  • MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [133] [134] [135]
  • Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [136] [137]

VisualEditor news

  • You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [138]
  • The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
  • The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [139] [140]

Future software changes

  • The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [141] [142]
  • Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [143]
  • You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key. [144] [145] [146] [147]
  • Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [148]
  • You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [149] [150]
  • The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [151] [152]
  • An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [153]

Problems

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #106

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Apology note

Hi! I'm not sure if you saw this reply when you suppressed some of my edits to my userspace and left me a message about them. However, I understand that it was a rude response and I apologize for that. I sincerely know that it was certainly not the way to respond to a safety concern. Again, I apologise for that and highly appreciate your concern. Rest assured it won't happen again. :) EmilyREditor (talk) 04:23, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: Protection

Thanks for semiprotecting my page. Is there any reason it can't be indefinite? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

  • WP:PP really, we don't do indef semi's on userpages unless it turns out to be a really long-term problem. At this point, there's no reason to think this vandal will be here in a month, if he is, we can set the next one for longer. (Note that user pages ARE semi'ed indef on request, user talk pages are not, by policy.) Courcelles 05:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) @Roscelese: I just wanted to note that I have seen a users talk page protected long term, on occasion, as long as they create an alternate talk page like this one User talk:TheOldJacobite/Alternate. I hope that you will forgive me for intruding - I just wanted to mention this in case you were unaware of it and if it could help in this situation. Cheers to you both and have a great week on Wiki and off. MarnetteD | Talk 18:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
I was indeed unaware - thanks - but I also don't really see how that helps? If the purpose of not allowing protection of user talk pages is to allow good-faith messages from IPs, then an alternate page would need to be easily found, and thus it would also be easily found by harassers. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:48, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I have expressed my agreement with that position many, many times Roscelese.... the policy here makes no sense at all to me, it just moves the vandalism around. Courcelles 03:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I completely understand you positions. The benefit that I have seen is that readers of your main talk page don't have to see the nonsense including the nasty stuff. I have actually seen the attacks stop in a couple of incidences, The trolls seem to lose steam when they know there stuff will only be seen by one person. Those that do have this alternate page leave a clear message at the top of their talk page directing IPs and unconfirmed editors to the alternate page. But, as I say, it was only a suggestion and it doesn't always work. I hate seeing long time productive editors treated so poorly. I suspect that both of you have dealt with it enough to not let it get to you. best regards and apologies for taking up your time. MarnetteD | Talk 04:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you both once more. There is a point that I have forgotten to make in my prior posts and it speaks more to policy then the post I just made. The original question was "Is there any reason it can't be indefinite?" and Courcelles gave the reasons that the talk page cant be indeffed. My suggestion is the one exception to those rules. Right now Roscelese no IP or newbie can contact you for three months. Yes you have some relief from the trolls but, if they are legit editors, they can't ask you any questions or get any suggestions on how to edit properly. I know there are other outlets for questions to be answered but I wanted to make clear that the alternate talk page isn't so much to do with the vandals, rather it helps legit editors contact you when you talk page is protected. Ah well, again, I have taken up too much of your time so I will sign off and leave you both to your editing. MarnetteD | Talk 05:49, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-17

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

Tech News updates

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [156] [157]
  • Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [158] [159] [160] [161]
  • The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [162]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [163]

VisualEditor news

  • If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [164] [165]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [166] [167]
  • You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [168] [169] [170]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [171]
  • Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [172] [173]
  • The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [174] [175] [176] [177]
  • You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [178] [179]
  • You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [180] [181]
  • It is now proposed to replace Bugzilla, Gerrit and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org. [182]
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [183]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
  • There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [184]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 April 2014

The annual Wikimedia Conference wound up last Sunday, 13 April—a four-day meeting costing several hundred thousand dollars, hosted in Berlin by Wikimedia Germany and attended by more than 100 Wikimedians.
Hey you—yeah you, the Wikipedian! Do you want to help a museum, a library, a university, or other organization explore ways to engage with Wikipedia? Great—you should offer your expertise as a Wikipedian in residence!
Cynthia Ashley-Nelson, who edited as "Cindamuse" on the Wikimedia projects, passed away in her sleep at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin on 10 April.
This week, we visited WikiProject Catholicism.
After just over a month of deliberation, the Wikimania jury has selected Wikimedia Mexico's bid to host Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, with a proposed date of 15–19 July.
If I were the kind of person who made snap judgments based on flimsy evidence, I'd say our readership is in a funk.
Fourteen articles, four lists, seven pictures, and one topic attained "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.

Wikidata weekly summary #107

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Talk:Death Is the Only Answer/GA1

Courcelles, when you get a chance, it's probably time to decide what to do with this one way or the other. Apparently the WikiProject hasn't responded at all, so there won't be a consensus on their part as to whether this four-minute mini-episode is notable. (I do agree with you: the sourcing is weak for a GA, especially independent sourcing.) It's been over six weeks since your most recent post, and nothing has happened in the interim, so I thought it might have escaped you "to do" pile. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
  • You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [185]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [186]
  • VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [187]
  • VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [188]
  • The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [189]
  • CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [190] [191]
  • You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [192]

Problems

  • For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [193] [194]
  • On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [195] [196]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Quick q

Did you mean to restore talk page access here?--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 19:10, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

But it makes you so speedy and efficient!--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 19:24, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2014

Like hammering a square peg into a round hole, the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted a draft annual plan for 2014–15 to its own Funds Dissemination Committee. Unlike the WMF's submission to the FDC's inaugural round in October 2012, the "proposal" does not seek funding.
Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that its new executive director will be Lila Tretikov, until now a chief product officer in Silicon Valley.
This week, we unraveled the mysteries of WikiProject Genetics.
Ed Roley, Associate Director of Integrated Media at the Peabody Essex Museum, talks about GLAM engagement with Wikipedia.
Four articles and sixteen featured pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Can you predict the number of seasonal influenza-like illness in the U.S. using data from Wikipedia?

Wikidata weekly summary #108

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

WikiCup 2014 April newsletter

Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's United States ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included Rhodesia Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and Washington, D.C. Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from Canada Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from Minas Gerais Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to Nepal Czar (submissions) and Indiana Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.

192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 17:57, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-19

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
  • The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org. [197]
  • It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool. [198]

VisualEditor news

  • External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [199]
  • The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [200]
  • You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [201]
  • There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [202][203]
  • Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [204] [205]
  • You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [206] [207]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome. [208]
  • You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
  • If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself. [209] [210]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Courcelles, my name is Jim Carter coming to you directly, let me tell you why am here, actually I become interested in working with files. And thought of helping out at Category:Wikipedia files requiring renamingy but for that I need file mover rights. So, I thought if you can help me. I already have some userrights here (Reviewer, rollback etc). You can trust me :) many thanks. Jim Carter (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

  • This one gives me a little pause; the guidelines for the flag request some experience with files either here or on Commons, and I just can't find any such evidence on your account. (One edit to the file namespace locally, for example). Is there some experience I am missing, perhaps? Courcelles 18:34, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
Actually I generally upload free files at commons, but while doing those works I became interested in working with files. That is why I thought of working here since English Wikipedia is my home Wiki. Anyways, I will try to work on files here. BTW how many edits on file namespace is required for this flag? Jim Carter (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Commons admins generally look for at least 2,000 local edits and several renaming requests that were completed before granting the flag locally. We don't need anything that high, but 1 file edit here and 61 total edits on Commons just isn't enough to gauge experience, I'm sorry to say. Courcelles 15:40, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Courcelles, I will gain some experience and will come back to you soon. Thank you again. Jim Carter (talk) 06:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 May 2014

The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. A new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.
For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems the human race most wants is a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.
In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.
Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain.
Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.
Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went to the stage to talk with one of the project's members.
Four articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

Wikidata weekly summary #109

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
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