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The Signpost: 29 January 2014

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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.

Tech News: 2014-06

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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 (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
  • Global AbuseFilter rules are now active on all small wikis. [1] [2]
  • The buttons used in pages like log-in, account creation and search are now using the same colors and styles. [3] [4]
  • You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links. [5]
  • There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [6]
  • Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [7]
  • All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [8]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [9]

Future software changes

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

08:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

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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.

POTD notification

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POTD

Hi KoH,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Moscow State University crop.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on February 26, 2014. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2014-02-26. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:18, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-07

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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. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]
  • 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). [25]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [26] [27]
  • The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [28] [29] [30]

Problems

  • On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [31]
  • 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. [32] [33]
  • 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. [34]
  • You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [35] [36]
  • The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [37]
  • Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [38] [39]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [40]
  • You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [41]
  • You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [42] [43]
  • 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. [44]
  • Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [45]
  • 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. [46]
  • The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [47]

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)

Promotional accounts issues

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Hello King of Hears, I have seen you close a few SPI cases I have opened, and I hopped you could help me. There was a recent SPI case, that took care of the socks and meats at the time, however the issue still rages on. Urbaninformative has seemingly made many other contributions, mostly to recent changes, to make it seem he is not a SPA, however yesterday he once again created Demetrice Nguyen (after failing to create it at Deezy). The edit summary when he created it was "spelling errors". This subject's article has been created by the various promotional accounts under names such as Deezy (has been deleted 7 times and was salted in the past), Demetrice jackson (salted) and Demetrice Jackson (salted). This subject has had articles deleted twice at AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deezy and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Demetrice Jackson, which both resulted in clear delete. However, on top of this, the page for Deezy's record label Last Kings Entertainment, where more possible socks, definitely meatpuppets; User talk: Dare2beyou, User: 108.60.242.214, User talk: BriannaManagement and User talk: Pmasontheatre have all been editing, along with the record label's navbox Template:Last Kings Entertainment. All of these accounts are clearly SPA and promotional accounts, and they have the exact same behavior as the accounts in the linked SPI. What do you think should be done? I think Deezy and Demetrice Nguyen should be salted for one, but all these sock/meatpuppets need to be taken care of. STATic message me! 22:17, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Could you file an SPI report? Unfortunately I'm a bit busy IRL and don't really have time to look into it in detail. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 12:58, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

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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.

File:ING.svg listed for deletion

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A file that you uploaded or altered, File:ING.svg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-08

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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. [48] [49]
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [50]
  • You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [51]
  • You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [52]

Problems

  • On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [53]
  • On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [54]
  • 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. [55]
  • You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [56]
  • Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [57]
  • You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [58] [59] [60]
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)

Upcoming Saturday events - March 1: Harlem History Editathon and March 8: NYU Law Editathon

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Upcoming Saturday events - March 1: Harlem History Editathon and March 8: NYU Law Editathon

You are invited to join upcoming Wikipedia "Editathons", where both experienced and new Wikipedia editors will collaboratively improve articles on a selected theme, on the following two Saturdays in March:

I hope to see you there! Pharos (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by removing your name from this list.)

Monstercat - Reversing deletion

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Some time ago, you were the closing admin on Monstercat (see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Monstercat). However I wish to discuss with you possible recreating this article, with new notability I've pulled up. The label has now reached 200 million views on youtube1, and been covered by several news sources; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7 8 Does this count for enough notability? If so, what is the procedure? I haven't looked into reversing deletions before. JTdale Talk 12:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can open a deletion review to get consensus for recreating the article. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

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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.

March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive

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It's that time again! Starting on March 1, there will be another GAN Backlog Drive! There will be several changes compared to previous drives:

  • This drive will introduce a new component to it; a point system. In a nutshell, older nominations are worth more points than newer nominations. The top 3 participants who have the points will be awarded the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Wikipedia Puzzle Piece Trophy, respectively.
  • Unlike the December 2013 Backlog Drive, earning an additional barnstar if you reached your goal has been removed.
  • The allowance to have insufficient reviews has been lowered to 2 before being disqualified.
  • An exception to the rule that all reviews must be completed before the deadline has been created.

Also, something that I thought I would share with all of you is that we raised $20.88 (USD) for the WMF in the December 2013 drive. It may not sound like a lot but considering that that was raised just because we reviewed articles, I would say that's pretty good! With that success, pledges can be made for the upcoming drive if you wish.

More info regarding the drive and full descriptions regarding the changes to this drive can be found on the the drive page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message on the drive talk page.

I look forward to your participation and hope that because of it, some day the backlog will be gone!

--Dom497

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:58, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-09

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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. [63] [64] [65]
  • You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [66] [67]
  • You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [68] [69]

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)

File source problem with File:Albertsons.svg

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Thank you for uploading File:Albertsons.svg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

If the necessary information is not added within the next days, the image will be deleted. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please refer to the image use policy to learn what images you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. Please also check any other files you have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is a list of your uploads. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 08:15, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

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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.
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