User talk:Billinghurst/2021

Wikisource-bot cat chores

Touch the categories

• category:Author-PD-old-99-1923
• category:PD-old-99-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-80-1923
• category:PD-old-80-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-75-1923
• category:PD-old-75-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-70-1923
• category:PD-old-70-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-60-1923
• category:PD-old-60-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-50-1923
• category:PD-old-50-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-30-1923
• category:PD-old-30-1923
• category:Author-PD-old-25-1923
• category:PD-old-25-1923

— billinghurst sDrewth 02:07, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Done — billinghurst sDrewth 13:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

TO DO: WD checks of PD-old cats and templates

• Category:Author-PD...
• Category:PD...
• Template:Author-PD...
• Template:PD...

Looks like some names and merges need to occur — billinghurst sDrewth 02:07, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Done — billinghurst sDrewth 13:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

div col

I'm planning on getting a photo of {{div col}} failing gracefully, yet still failing on the kindle 5. Where should I put it? Scriptorium? A sub-area of that? Forget it here and just put it somewhere at wm? Amazon product page (only)?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 01:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian:: Help talk:Preparing for export perhaps, it's where I am collecting problems with exported files. In the case of {{div col}}, it's most likely that the Kindle rendering engine just doesn't support it. I don't think many ebook engines do support it, and in the common case of indexes and glossaries, there's no HTML construct that I'm aware of that lets you have a top-to-bottom, left-to-right column that reflows across pages. This ends up with having A and M together on the first page, not Aa and Ab. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 02:04, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: yeah -- this was difficult for me since I have been previously conditioned to avoid tables in html where tabular information is not present. So, especially stuff I take seriously.... So, thanks for the where....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 02:18, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe that we encourage columns Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading — billinghurst sDrewth 04:23, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Author:Thomas Macgregor Greer

review and fix according to comment — billinghurst sDrewth 05:46, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 20:47, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [1]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [2]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [3]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [4]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [5]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [6]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [7]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [8]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

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

15:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

File:International Law and Custom in Ancient India.djvu

This work is by Author:Pramathanath Bandyopadhyay (b. 1894), whose death year is not known. So I had uploaded it locally. Now you have exported it to Commons, with a wrong author (with the same name). Therefore, the file is now liable to be deleted at Commons, whenever a deletion proposal comes up. So I am requesting you to kindly revert this file export. Hrishikes (talk) 02:29, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

@Hrishikes: You had it labelled with {{Do not move to Commons|expiry=2020}}. You also didn't have it pointing to that author, you had it pointing to the disambiguation author page and didn't fix the links. So if I see 1960 death with 2020 expiry I think that it is a reasonable assumption to migrated to Commons AND assign it to the person dying in 1960.

There is no requirement to revert the file export, just undelete it here, and request a deletion at Commons.

Please don't @ me. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Unprotection query

Why did you unprotect Shaving Made Easy? It is meant to be protected, being a featured text. BethNaught (talk) 19:29, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Because we have typically only protected FT for their time of being FT. It has never been permanent. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:01, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

That has never been my understanding. Once a work reaches FT, its mainspace pages are protected. Perhaps we should establish something in writing? --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

(ec)That policy statement is icky old. Since we have ProofreadPage, it hasn't really been necessary, and is technically difficult to protect all pages. We also found that we were unable to run bots through to make header changes, and it was a general discussion years ago that we would prefer to not have to create administrative bots to undertake header maintenance. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying I disagree. It's just clear that two of us were unaware, so something in writing would probably be useful. Having your memory of the reasoning behind it helps. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:23, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Yep, guessed so. About when we were migrating from {{header2}} to {{header}}, migrating to year parameter, and doing a whole lot of fixes it was just problematic, which prompted the discussion and the change when we reflected on where we were, the numbers of subpages in some works, ... and the low amount of vandalism we got, and that it just didn't protect the text, and as we had moved our criteria for all FT to be image supported. And so on. And in our inimitable way, of course we just reinterpreted policy and not fuss with that boring text change and wordsmithing. <eyeroll> — billinghurst sDrewth 22:44, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey, @BethNaught: This is why unnecessary protection is problematic. Forcing me/us to the requirement to run an administrative bot for what should be a simple task of touching files. The page are caught on thinking they are on old templates and won't update without a forced touch.

WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Benjamin Bunny]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Two Bad Mice]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Story of Miss Moppet]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Tom Kitten]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Roly-Poly Pudding]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Mr. Tod]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse]] is locked.
WARNING: API error protectedpage: This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.
ERROR: Page [[Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes]] is locked.

— billinghurst sDrewth 14:41, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [9]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:10, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

your assistance please...

I'm very rusty, it has been years since I started a new document here. And standards may have changed.

I have a __NOINDEX__ on Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against President Joe Biden, until its ready.

What is it missing?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 11:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@Geo Swan: That only applies it that to external search engines, not internal. Possibly a better way to do that is to create it in your user namespace in a sandbox, and move it over when it is complete. Then delete the redirect in your namespace. Can I also suggest that the case of your title looks whacky, are they really capitalising words that are not proper nouns? Detail at mw:Manual:Noindex — billinghurst sDrewth 11:24, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

That is how Ms Greene drafted it. Since that sounds like your only concern I am going to remove the __NOINDEX__.

Thanks for the quick reply. Geo Swan (talk) 18:45, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Thomas Becket

Hello. The Canterbury archbishop’s name was Thomas Becket and if any original work by him is ever added here, it will definitely not be signed as Thomas à Becket. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Please look at all the biographical works we have on the page. Wikipedia's dismissive approach and lack of documentation is interesting but should not affect our alignment with our works. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:08, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

1. Several old encyclopaedias call him "Thomas à Becket" but e. g. Britannica sticks to his original name "Thomas Becket" too.
2. As for Wikisource works generally, we have for 159 hits for "Thomas à Becket" and 232 hits for "Thomas Becket".
3. I am not sure what you mean by Wikipedia’s lack of documentation, the statement about his name is referenced by a reliable source there. Historian Frank Barlow writes that "à Becket … seems to have been a postreformation invention", which means that neither Thomas Becket himself nor any of his contemporaries called him in that way, or at least there is not any evidence of it.
4. Another source
5. Modern sources are mostly in accordance with this too, compare Google search for Thomas à Becket" with the search for Thomas Becket, which means that the latter gives our readers a better idea who the page is about.
6. It is semantically confusing. The Latin preposition "à" means "from", but in reality Thomas Becket was not "from Becket".
7. Naming the page in this way seems not only more correct, but also makes the use of the disambiguating brackets unnecessary. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:47, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

The Osteology of the Reptiles

For this work, the text of the license doesn't work well. The author died before the work was published, the date of 1970 is the date the editor died (not the author), but the license text says "author". All the drawings and all but a very little of the text (mainly a handful of annotations) were by the author. The forward is the only part that can truly be said to be written by the editor. Do we have a means of making this clear? There was no renewal, so I do not know who was credited with authorship and copyright at the time of publication, nor do I have a good sense of how that information would be applied in the EU. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:14, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

The licence for the work will always be the last person with a portion of copyright. Some could say that they are all authors, and this issue exists with many works. <shrug> It is easy to put in a qualifying parameter to the template—and even easier now as I re-jigged the templates—if the community can agree on a terminology. Or we can just think of the "author" in a broader sense. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:47, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

OR say author(s). — billinghurst sDrewth 00:49, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I just want to be sure we do what we can to help the reader understand. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I am not fussed either way, just saying to have a parameter for that text is easy. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:21, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Is there a proposal going forward, or are you now not that fussed? — billinghurst sDrewth 07:56, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not that fussed. I don't have a lot of time to devote to wiki these days. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Author:Clinton Richard Dawkins

Could protecting the page from mainstream editing not be a reasonable method to discourage the creation of this page? This author page is essentially a non-entry as it stands. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: No. There is always a chance that they will write something licensed with creative commons and it can be added. We don't protect just because, but in line with WS:Protection policy and this template has proved more effective than deleting the pages. There are a handful or so of these types of author pages. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [10][11]

Changes later this week

• Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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

18:31, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

To do: Case law by year

Utilise Template:Categories by date to create template series for "case law by year", needs {{plain sister}} and link upwards to "category:yyyy works" and "category:case law by year"

• Categories \d court decisions

— billinghurst sDrewth 13:15, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Botanists with author abbreviations

Instead of copying these authors over by adding an additional category, wouldn't it be faster to place Category:Botanists with author abbreviations inside the Category:Botanists as authors? All botanists with author abbreviations will be published authors (though not all botanist authors will have author abbreviations). The author abbreviation crowd are an important subset of authors. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:27, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Both. They are both, really. Like being 'a digital document' and 'validated'. A person can be an author, an author from the United States, an author who published in 1801, 1802, 1809, and 1810, an author who won an award, and an author who lived in some city. None of those subcats excludes being an author. Well, they are all authors here -- but my claim holds for s/author/botanist/g as well.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:17, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Also, Petey's very right about this. Author abbrev. in all biology is a publishing thing, not just botanists. The first person that authors a description of a species, genera, family, etc. has their name follow it whenever anyone publish something new about it.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Botanists with author abbreviations is a by type classification, and is automatically populated; and it is my intention to have it as a category that canNOT be selected or show through HotCat.

So the question is do you expect to find all our botanists listed in the one category by occupation, or do you expect to have to find them in multiple. I don't believe that we can utilise DPL criteria matching across cascading categories. And I am not set on anything at this time. Happy to have your feedback at WS:S where I have been pushing the discussion about occupational categories as I strive to resolve these issues. Ideally and eventually these will all be populated out of WD and we will just be building hierarchy. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:43, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Congressional Record page hierarchy

The main work, for the purposes of the hierarchy, is Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4; this alone is 97 pages. The next level, “House,” is a division for length and clarity. The next division, “Counting Electoral Votes,” would normally be the lowest-level division, but, as it is quite lengthy, the debates on the objections are separated. The individual speeches are separated because they are the works of different authors, and would be useful to have as separate pages. All of the pages have in-text Wiki-links at the next level above, so previous/next would not be appropriate. A separate system could be created to navigate between, for example, all of the speeches given during debate for one objection. I plan to proofread and transclude the Senate speeches soon, as well. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:39, 28 January 2021 (UTC).

Files to move from Commons

• File:The Indian Medical Gazette1904.pdf

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 22:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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

Problems

• IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [13]

Changes later this week

• You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [14]
• Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [15][16]
• Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [17]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [18][19]
• Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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

22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

To do: hard to soft redirects

Special:prefixindex/Proletarskaya Kul'tura

and continue the conversation that special:prefixindex/Translation:Proletarskaya Kul'tura should be under the root page.

Done primary task — billinghurst sDrewth 11:36, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

volume issues, Popular Science, etc

I had this same problem with another set of rebounded issues, so I think it is not limited to Popular Science Monthly/Volume 1. Probably the original indexes were on the "lost to the material world" covers.

I have set the "struts" at Popular Science Monthly, Volume 1 (Q20873000) for Volume 1. And filled out the May issue at Popular Science Monthly, May 1872 (Q105323531). My problem is that I want to put a wsource link to this at wdata but none exists. It would go at Popular Science Monthly/Volume 1/May 1872 and would require the pasting of the index part from the Main page and futzing with the previous and next of the affected navigation.

What I did with another journal was to recreate the index on a blank page in the Page namespace so it could be transcluded with the rest of the issue. I could do the same here, as it will be used twice.

For 2009 work, it is pretty nice.

Also, a different (but somewhat related) item. Have you seen the 1960s original Star Trek as it was renovated for bluray? It started life on film so cleaning was easier. The groovy 60s colors were incredible on the new millennia screen. I mention it now because of this great thing they did. While viewing it you can flip between a cgi updated version (mostly it was the ship that they doctored) or the renovated original. Its that option to switch between original and modernized that makes me mention it now; an attempt by me to share a mindset.

Thanks for your time.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. Personally I don't do any creations of volumes of journals at Wikidata. I see little value in it. I have zero issue making references to works at WD, and I think volume level references are just more likely to confuse things than help things. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:38, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry. As author of the redirect I thought you might take issue.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I am still none the wiser, please be specific. {PS. Don't make anyone have to dig through someone's contributions to work things out.] — billinghurst sDrewth 22:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Popular Science Monthly/Volume 1/May 1872 I haven't done anything yet. To get to that page so you can see your name in its history, you will have to scroll up to find the redirect link. Changing those redirects is next on my list. I think (but do not yet know) that with the toc there, the single issue can be exported to epub, mobi or txt. Without it there, it is the whole volume only for ereaders.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 23:44, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

If you are asking whether pages like the redirects at Popular Science Monthly/Volume 1/May 1872 can be converted into per issue ToC, then sure. I am guessing that they had been left as redlinks back then. Don't expect me to remember. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Contributing translator -> header template

(parking) See if we should plug in a parameter so something like Popular Science Monthly/Volume 3/September 1873/Hypnotism in Animals I can properly represent the translator. Otherwise we can have it as a note as we do for {{illustrator}}. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Done section_translator — billinghurst sDrewth 12:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Review templates due to name conflict

• Template:WikiDark
• Template:Wd

  Done converted WD to redirect to w: and "wd" is not known as "wdl" — billinghurst sDrewth 12:38, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-06

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

Recent changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [20]

Changes later this week

• You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [21]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Future changes

• When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [22][23]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [24]
• Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [25]

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

17:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07

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

Problems

• There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [26][27]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [28]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

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

17:56, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Deletion - try again?

Hi, thank you for your fulfillment of my deletion request. However, what I was after was to delete the page including subpages. I mistakenly ran a Match & Split prior to confirming that all pages were present...and I was burned for my haste. (I've since repaired the underlying DJVU file.) Could you recreate and re-delete? -Pete (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I random checked subpages against the text and they seem to be suitably accurate and any fixes would be done in proofreading. Which pages are you seeing as problematic that require deletion?

As stated in the original request, it's every page from about 60 up. Either delete just those, or delete all of them (I can perform the match & split again, so it's really no loss if you delete them all). Thanks. -Pete (talk) 02:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Oh, you hadn't upgraded the image file. When you rematch, you will notice some of the end words have missed. We/you could have moved them FWIW, but deleting is possible too. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:28, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't quite follow – you mean some of the words at the page breaks are misplaced? I usually fix that stuff manually, but if you have any clever regex patterns to share, I'd be much obliged. -Pete (talk) 03:55, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

As for moving vs. replacing, my reasoning…and maybe I missed something… is this: moving would require either doing several hundred individual moves, or some clever custom coding; but deleting, for an admin, should be possible just by clicking a checkbox to delete subpages. And a new match/split takes almost no (human) time. Is there an option I overlooked? -Pete (talk) 03:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Moving would be a pretty simple script to write for pywikibot, and we could get a bot to do it without rights changes; just start at the end. and work back, one move per page when it is a static number of pages to migrate. Deletion of subpages is unfortunately not the case of a checkbox, it is a build a list and add to a frontend page, a change of rights, run the deletes. I misjudged how long it would take and did a little flood of RC. Anyway, all done. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah. Sounds like I made a bigger mess than I realized. Thank you for taking the time, and I'll avoid repeating that. -Pete (talk) 04:52, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Meh, shit happens at times. We have all been there, done that. Having been there more than once, I now have a better understanding of better cleanup. Just sometimes takes time to get the right access for the right fix. Don't overly worry about it, just give us the best info, and a little time to fix. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Template:IndianBio

Convert works in special:Prefixindex/Dictionary of Indian Biography/ from {{header}} to {{IndianBio}}.

This edit [29] removed the transclusion. Attention drawn to it by IP adding text to page. Haven't checked to see what it did with other pages, as RL calls. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 16:46, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Beeswaxcandle. Seems that {{SUBPAGENAME}} encodes (inconveniently) the semi-colon to the w:HTML entity Singrauli, Raja of&#59; Rudra Pratap Singh. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:56, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Tasks

• Run through all IndianBio subpages, find where semi-colon is in pagename, and add parameter onlysection = (with hard section name) to template.
• Fix all the feral WD additions (may need to set overwrite)
  1. Fix title to be subpage, not rubbish pagename (better allow main topic match in {{topicmatcher}})
  2. Add description article in The Indian Biographical Dictionary
  3. add author Conjeeveram Hayavadana Rao (Q5006515)
  4. add published in The Indian Biographical Dictionary (Q16009531), then qualify with page(s) (P304), and from template "from -40", "to -40" (if different)

Tech News: 2021-08

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

Recent changes

• The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [30]
• The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [31]

Problems

• Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [32]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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

---

00:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

My recent doc

As you saw as you replied I have uploaded and moved the short interview paper through to needing validation. I have to travel tomorrow and should have but cannot garuntee a wifi connection where i am going. Just hoping you could watch it and if anything comes up in validation I am fine with your judgement if I cannot be online. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 02:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I have transcluded the article, added to author pages, and linked to the WD item. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:00, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Category:Acts of Thai legislature by name

Hello, these categories should be unified, though I don't know if they should all use a slash or a hyphen. To me, the slash seems more natural, though Category:Authors by alphabetical order uses the hyphen. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 23:05, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Any opinion on this? 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 13:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@1234qwer1234qwer4: Categories have subpages per this, so the slash should only be reserved in its use. Yes those categories need standardising, though they belong in a larger corpus of thought, and I have other categorisation that needs to get fixed first. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:41, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09

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

Recent changes

• Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
• A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

• There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [33]
• Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [34]

Changes later this week

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

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

---

19:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

redundancy vs. described by source

@Billinghurst: I just completed a scientific text at wikidata where each item had its own page and therefore could be added to the wikimedia collection at the "main subject" via "described by source". Not unlike the author and encyclopedia links that you were instrumental in putting there. If evolution is positive, those links might eventually make it to the wikipedia page.

I was going to do the same with some taxonomy, but this text doesn't have the luxury of the single item per page, and I found myself (almost) recreating a page that had been deleted due to redundancy.

Meanwhile, I find it interesting in a sad way, that wikivoyage made it to the w:en:Moon before wikisource did. And, when ws did finally make it there, it was in a broken, sad way. I am hopeful that wikisource can make it to Jupiter before wikivoyage does, but the "rules" will need to change some.

Wikidata items for categories are just stupid reflections of each other, like lolcats of lolcats -- if I might be allowed an unasked for opinion. It is a shame that, because it could have been a swift solution to the portal problem (see the previous paragraph).

I am here asking that I be allowed to restore a previously deleted redundancy (in the name of taxonomy) and that the redundancy rule be rewritten to exclude those redundancies that have a wikidata association.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:50, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

If you are talking WD policy, then this is the wrong place for that discussion. I think, but cannot be sure that you are having some discussion about aligning like Category: crosswiki; that is WD policy, and they have other means to apply links from topic and lists to those corresponding categories. ,Otherwise, I have no idea about what you are discussing. For us portals usually align with subjects that are encyclopaedia, as typically we have no overlap between portal: and author: nss. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:37, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Deletion

Hello, you deleted an argument related to the closure of a Wikipedia on Meta, because it was "out of scope". It is very inconvenient to have an argument on Meta, as that user page redirects to the one on Wikisource. AnotherEditor144 ^{t - c} 07:27, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@AnotherEditor144: Yes, Wikisource is not the place for discussions about other wikis. The purpose of meta is for those wikimedia-type conversations, so please use that wiki, not here. I am happy to look at any redirects at meta that are causing you issues. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:20, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Billlinghurst: Okay, I have an idea.. Because this argument is supposed to live at Meta, did you save it so that I could copy it to Meta? AnotherEditor144 ^{t - c} 09:41, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@AnotherEditor144: page returned to User:AnotherEditor144/Texts/nawiki closure, please ping me when migrated; otherwise I will look to remove by next weekend — billinghurst sDrewth 12:15, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10

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

Recent changes

• Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
• Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [35]
• When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [36]

Problems

• Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [37]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
• The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [38]

Future changes

• There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
• Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [39][40]
• New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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

17:51, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Paltock, Robert

Hello Billinghurst, coming across this edit of yours, I thought it might me helpful to inform you in the book, the word "normnbdsgrsutt", and not "Nosmnbdsgrutt". Lotje ツ (talk) 11:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lotje: 12 years ago all I did to that page was wikilink the author, nothing else. If you are interested in the work, you can the scan at Index:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu and the specific page at Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/306 — billinghurst sDrewth 12:17, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Billinghurst, is that what one would call a secondary reference? nosmnbdsgrutt spelled here, and normnbdsgrsutt (sources and at page 88 of the The life and adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish man (1853) at commons.

And actually,... it even gets better: “ Kobert Patlock, [not Pultock as Leigh Hunt writes it, and Paltock as Southey calls him]], of Clement’s Inn, assigned the MS. of the Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornishman, to Dodsley, Jan. 11, 1749, for twenty guineas, [Southey says ten] twelve copies, and the cuts (or coppers used for the plates) of the first impression.” (source: Aug. 5. 1854, page 113 of "Notes and queries", volume v.10) Thank you for your time. Lotje ツ (talk) 13:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Just think of the times through history that the local keeper of the record books interpreting an old register, and the interpretation of local inflexion of voice. Then the later re-interpretation through time as someone else reread each set of records of someone who was semi-literate writing phonetically. You can see how different interpretations of spelling can be made. I have seem parish records where the spelling of the family names change with each parish priest, as the person themself wouldn't often know how to spell their own name. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:39, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Indeed Billinghurst that is correct. The only way to find out the original spelling, is to find the first edition. Hence, first editions are more then welcome. Also then, plagiarism was common practice I guess :-) Lotje ツ (talk) 06:05, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

required maintenance March 2021

• Alien and Sedition Acts => Portal:Alien and Sedition Acts; link fixes needing to be done
• Idylls of the King; move the parts to be subpages
• Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man; move the parts to be subpages

— billinghurst sDrewth 22:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 12:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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

Recent changes

• Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
• Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [41]

Problems

• Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).

Future changes

• You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [42][43]
• You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
• You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [44]

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

23:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Flickr Commons

If you want to cooperate on a project, we can both help add context and help date the images that the Library of Congress releases each Friday, 50 new ones are released at Flickr Commons. We are currently in a 1923 tranche. 99.9% of the images are already at Wikimedia Commons, loaded by User:Fae, but the date says "1900" at Wikimedia Commons. They usually need a Wikimedia Commons category, and sometimes the image added to Wikidata, if none are present already. User:Fae used a bot to load them all as "1900" for the date. The people depicted may need a Wikidata entry. See for example S.A. Santa Maria (Q105592488), that way if someone figures out the person, they can fill in the info at Wikidata. Are you interested? The latest tranche is here. Most of the images still need categories at Commons. The first tranche from 13 years ago is here. There are still hundreds of people that were inadequately identified, or never got a Wikidata entry, or have one now thanks to The Peerage and other databases added to Wikidata, but no one added the image. --RAN (talk) 23:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I currently have more than enough maintenance to do. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:46, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Index:Knole and the Sackvilles (1922 London).djvu

This is given as being by Victoria, but the writer was Vita the daughter. I am just being overly cautious? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:17, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Not my area of expertise, but I think that you will find that Vita is a Victoria => Author:Victoria Mary Sackville-West. Family pet names when family members have the same name (guessing). — billinghurst sDrewth 21:27, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Right, so if this work is by the identified author, (who died in 1962), this might need localising as it's not yet PD-UK, which means whilst it is okay locally, it cannot necessarily be on Commons. That said it is PD-US (1922) publication. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:30, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

File:A Passage to India.djvu

This file was deleted from Commons after a year-long discussion where all commenters said "keep". Can the file be salvaged and uploaded locally so that Index:A Passage to India.djvu works again? --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:31, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Done, please check that I have amended the data file appropriately. Commentators were wrong, it is under copyright in UK. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:52, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
• The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [45]

Future changes

• Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [46][47]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [48]

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

16:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Jack Turncott

Thanks for fixing Jack Turncott! --RAN (talk) 22:16, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Didn't fix anything, just updated following research and more data. Death was registered as John K. so perfectly reasonable; presumably just wrong assumption by whomever registered death. Always the issue with death registrations. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Bobbie, General Manager cover moved to "front matter" and index page now messed up

Was there a necessity to do this stuff to my work? The cover and half-title were fine where they were. Also, if they're both to be called the front matter, why have one with a subpage called "front matter" and another that's called "front matter" by other pages? Confusing.

And secondly, something I have more concern with than that, you did something unnecessary to the index page that makes everything look and work worse. Now the individual pages can't be anchored to individually if that was ever necessary, since they're all "—". They have no individuality anymore. I.e. a wikilink like "the copyright page of Bobbie, General Manager" won't work anymore.

Are we going to take away the anchors to the frontispieces of works next, which are literally linked to within the works themselves?

Please link me to a community consensus that warrants any of these changes. Because I haven't even seen a work on all of WS before that called literally everything that's not a numbered page "—". I was going to link you to an example of a page with things like "copyr", "cover", "dedic", etc., but just look anywhere else on Wikisource and you'll find any of them pretty quickly. PseudoSkull (talk) 12:50, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Help:Page numbers is the guidance page. Anyway, how often are you expecting to link to a copyright page? How many have you linked to so far? How many references within a work have you seen to them? They are generally unnumbered pages and don't need labels, they are what they are. Many of our works actually have these pages page numbered, and people should be using the page numbering, but instead we still have those ridiculous and ugly abbreviations/labels that mar the basepage and are never the source of a link. And you can always add {{anchor}} to get to a point without it having to look ugly or be a manufactured page number.

The transcluded cover and half page just looked butt ugly in my opinion, what purpose were they forming in leading into the book multiple scrolls down a page. Removing them to a pre-chapter is quite often done if people are choosing to display the cover and half-title, and many don't, and it is quite a recent and, IMO, weird trend, in holding up getting to the book content, especially rubbishy when you are using a mobile device. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:47, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

I said that the guidance was at, I didn't say it was set in stone. These many Index pages are ShakespeareFan's rubbish that he went and set on many pages because he likes it. It just useless manufactured labelling, rather than page numbers. More than happy for you to bring it up as it is truly butt ugly and unnecessary, and it has been brought up before, and the advice was number the pages as they are numbered. Do we drill holes in people's heads? Nope. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:18, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Alright, well I'll bring it up as a discussion then.

I did want to take the opportunity to say that, though I vehemently disagree with the things I have brought up, I do appreciate the other edits you've made to Bobbie, General Manager and don't contest them at all. PseudoSkull (talk) 15:42, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

We probably want to reconcile the guidance on Help:Index_pages under the pagelist tag where it has guidance label the Cover as Cvr, the Frontispiece as Fpiece, Title as Title etc. to match Help:Page numbers MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:02, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: "These many Index pages are ShakespeareFan's rubbish" , Okay then you want me to replace the runs on every single Index page I contributed to? Much appreciated if you could provide a specific format to use (such as considering all front matter to be numbered as lower case roman) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I can also take out specifc identification of things like ToC etc... - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Handbook_of_maritime_rights.djvu

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:46, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Index:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu Also updated - That's the most recent the oldest 500 Index I could find in my contributions, I've updated some of them as I found some issues. I'd appreciate a review, before I update any more, but will be adopting the convention of lower-case roman for front-matter starting at a half-title (if present) or title in the absence of another specfic-pattern, on new Index currently unchecked.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:11, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

These many Index pages are ShakespeareFan's rubbish Sorry, this is out of line. SF00 does an enormous amount of page list work and scan checking of all sorts of tricky indexes, which is tedious, difficult and valuable. They are almost single-handedly responsible for ongoing clearance of Category:Index - File to check. Dismissing it as "rubbish" because you don't like a convention (and like it or not, right or wrong, it is a convention) used for <1% of the pages is unfair and unnecessary in my book. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 10:28, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. I realise you only meant to express your personal opinion on the convention in an emphatic manner, but when you use a term with such a strong negative connotation and connect it with the contributions of one individual contributor it crosses the line. To paraphrase our big sister: direct such comments at the inanimate object, not the person. --Xover (talk) 12:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Do not take it out of context of the discussion of labelling of pagelist. And rubbish is exactly how I see those manufactured page numbering, they are butt ugly and add zero value => rubbish; and even more importantly where there is specific or clearly implied page numbering in a work and that is then replaced with manufactured numbering. It may have been less ambiguous to have said "rubbish page numbering" if that makes you feel better. That style of page numbering has been expressed and expressed in WS:S over the years and I don't resile from having my opinion on my out of the way talk page. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

And re connotations, maybe it is a local language usage, but calling something rubbish in Australia is hardly strong negative connotation. Far more gentle that many have accused me of other things here with little to no response by others. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

That's rubbish. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:12, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Directing your expressed opinion clearly at something inanimate—e.g. the page numbering convention—would indeed make me feel better. But more to the point, it would make those people who would otherwise be the target of the comments feel better. It is also usually possible to express dislike or disagreement with something like this without dismissing it as mere "rubbish", which would go even further towards insulating the person from the thing you dislike or disagree with. If you just call it "rubbish" you are going farther than merely expressing dislike and disagreement, you are also asserting that holding the contrary opinion is invalid, completely without merit, and implying that something must be wrong with those who hold those opinions (stupidity or malice being the obvious inferences). Sometimes that may be warranted, but that's a pretty aggressive position to take, especially if you then want to argue that you're "just expressing my opinion".

Oh, and the reason I don't jump in to defend you when someone is being… less than cordial… is that you're very much a big boy, with the +sysop hanging from your belt, and presumably fairly thick skin from dealing with xwiki LTAs for, what, a decade or so now? That being said, in the episode I'm guessing you're thinking of, it was a very close thing and had it escalated any further I would have interposed myself. That behaviour certainly wasn't ok, and if it persists for too long or even escalates then some kind of intervention will be needed. --Xover (talk) 13:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Convert

Dictionary of Indian Biography from {{header}} to {{Dictionary of Indian Biography}}/{{DIB}} — billinghurst sDrewth 15:07, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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

Recent changes

• Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [49]
• IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [50]

Problems

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [51]
• Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [52][53]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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

17:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The War of the Worlds (radio drama)

Conversation moved to "user talk:Nicole Sharp/The War of the Worlds (radio drama)." Nicole Sharp (talk) 18:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Special:Contribs/2600:1700:9A00:20D0:D421:42F0:9B2F:7EC2

Calling attention to this user's vandalism/test edits (at best). Looks like possibly the same person as another IP who edit warred me yesterday. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:00, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Done month-long block on /64. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:50, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

Recent changes

• Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [54]

Changes later this week

• The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [55]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

• PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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19:41, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Year

I'll send a bot through there later to remove all the years from the chapter header templates, in multiple books I've done in the past. PseudoSkull (talk) 03:32, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Okay, just cleaning as I add WD items. Try to spend an hour a day doing maintenance. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:52, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

A History of Japanese Literature

Will you be fixing all of the headers? Right now they are broken: the title parameter and link is incorrect on most pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Oh thanks, I had done some check of a few pages and all was fine, though I must have fluked single level subpages. AWB has a narrow list window so hard to see the the cascading level of lists, will run through soon. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. This was one of the first lengthy / complicated works I did, so there are likely to be errors that I would no longer make. I make take a look through it in a week or two when I have some time off work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

When there is no ROOT page then they don't get tagged as subpages, and they then appear as uncategorised. And I hear you about early transcribed works. What was important then is not so now, and what wasn't them can be now. Experience! — billinghurst sDrewth 00:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Portal:Wars of the Three Kingdoms

It ties in the two sub portals that are children of the Portal:Wars of the Three Kingdoms

• Portal:English Civil War
• Portal:Interregnum

Eventually there will be primary sources for the other wars in the w:Wars of the Three Kingdoms. There already is for the Cromwell's infamous Irish campaign Category:Storming of Drogheda -- PBS (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@PBS: Yes, though an empty page there now is less than helpful. For the interim it would seem better convert it to a redirect to a heading on another page, like how I set up Portal:Victoria and split it out later when it is worthy. Populate or perish IMO. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:57, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Unlike that redirect this is a parent rather than a child, so:

1. what do you propose?
2. under which portal would you place the two sub portals that are tied together by this portal?

-- PBS (talk) 16:44, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I am not the expert and was trying to prompt your thinking, or prompt your population. Maybe stick it under Portal:United Kingdom#Wars of the Three Kingdoms or find a nice heading. Dunno, however, empty portals are just false promises. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:25, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

New text guidelines

What do you think about adding a Documentation page to Template:New texts with some form of the following text, and inserting a link to that documentation page from the phrase "completed texts" in the verbiage that currently is the first line that appears when editing the template?

The minimum criteria for adding a New Text:

(1) The work must be fully Proofread (in the Wikisource sense) with all pages checked against the source, and no unproofread or problematic pages. All images from the work must be inserted and all major formatting must be completed.

(2) The work must be fully and correctly transcluded, so that the entire work is available in a correct and logical sequence.

(3) A suitable license template must be placed on the work's primary Mainspace page.

It is also good practice to create the Author page if it does not yet exist (to avoid a redlink on the Main page), and to add standard categories to the work (so that it can be found through category searches).

There have been several recent questions about this issue. Putting something in writing in obvious locations would make such discussions easier. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:50, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: We already have a doc, it is at Template:new texts/item/doc, we do need to be wary of further dilute and complicating would should be a simple process. For the instructions, when adding/editing we have MediaWiki:Editnotice-10-New texts. I will note that I do prefer to keep the template as clean and as simple as possible so additions are easier, so that is part of my construct of anything that can happen.

I think that we can be less emphatic (words like fully, must, ...) for new texts additions. I don't see issues with things like {{missing greek}} and some of the ephemeral diagrams missing (though would expect these to be wrapped in noinclude). I think a checklist of good practice like you have expressed can be included without necessarily being the measures.

I do think that a statement that any member of the community who is uncomfortable an addition for whatever reason can remove that listing and then discuss with it the other contributor or the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:52, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I've seen that documentation before, but the documentation shows up only at Template:New texts/item, which is not the page that Users edit or ever see when adding to the list. My concern is (in part) that people don't seem to be finding that documentation, since it is not set up like other documentation for templates. Whatever we do, we definitely need to make the relevant information more visible.

Right now, we have only a single cryptic statement that "This is for newly completed works", which does not show up until someone begins editing Template:New texts, but there is no elaboration or explanation of what that entails. There is a single cryptic line about what belongs on the list, followed by fourteen lines about syntax and parameters. Surely the matter of what belongs on the Template merits more than six words hidden inside the edit window?

I agree about missing Greek (unless it is a significant part of a chapter or work) and ephemeral or loosely associated content or front matter (such as lists of works by the author). But I would argue that if something is not important enough to "complete" the work, then the pages containing that something should not be considered "problematic". I had this discussion with LanguageSeeker over a film, where there was illegible on-screen text. Since that text was not significant, and probably was used with the expectation that the audience would not be able to read it anyway, then the fact that it is missing is not "problematic". --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:32, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Not arguing with anything that you have said. I am not advocating no change, just expressing some of my PoV and how I measure an outcome. This is also not the place to argue what is or is not problematic and I don't think that we are far apart on what is a proofread text. I found your measures emphatic, and not certain that is what is required for proofread works. The purpose is to get proofread works, announce them and to give the users a bit of a thrill. It is not to make it difficult or scary for anyone. I would rather pull a few than to scare off a few. So maybe start with a list or ins and out, and not fret the language or the process. It may be that we have an avenue of places to put and explain. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:55, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Carol Johnson

I can't seem to find any information at all about this author; all I know is that her name was listed as illustrator in these two books. I request your Author Page Magic. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Modern book with an illustrator with a common name in a vague area is a pretty hard task you need to start with some distinct and known data for a point in time, and we don't have that. From a preliminary look there is nothing overt. You are going to be looking for a botanical illustrator or nature illustrator who did (other) work for the university of Georgia. Need more data points to do anything, and even then identifying the distinct info to say more is hard. In short, not enough known to even start. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Category:Scans to be extracted

Quick question: what does this category do/has its purpose been served? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 20:11, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Umm, don't exactly remember which template it would have connected to. It would have where I had files that needed the djvu layers applied if it is that page. More I don't remember. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:54, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: On reflecting, I am guessing that it was a manual-addition category where I had uploaded texts and wanted to scrape the text layers with pywikibot's djvutext.py and was queuing them. It can stay, it can go, it doesn't matter. I will kill it though if it is unused; I can do things by other means. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:18, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Index pages: transclusion and validated date fields

The "transclusion status" and "validated date" data can now be set via formal fields in the index page, rather than stuffing a template into some other plain-text field. Before I embark of some kind of reckless bot-wielding mission, does it make sense to you as it is? E.g. Index:35 Sonnets by Fernando Pessoa.djvu. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:26, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: I know that this is not keeping it simple in coding, but it is keeping it simpler for the user.

• Yes in view is good.
• Can we do a "Transcluded?" yes/no checkbox where the default is NOT transcluded, then when you trigger that box it then activates the dropdown lists for "Tranclusion status" (remove the temptation/cluelessness for someone creating an index page to overprogress. These later components don't even need to be present/visible on creation, come to think of it)
• "Validation date" field only appears/activates when the work has "validated" set (it requires that condition)
• Can we put in placeholder text rather than help buttons? Like in Template:Engine

Thanks for your work. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:10, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Anything that needs the form the be "reactive" will have to be done in JS. It can be done. I think it might be better to disable the element rather than hide it, which means it's not "secret", and the other fields don't "bounce" when you change the "validated" status?

Checkbox: not without adjustment to the ProofreadPage extension itself, but you can have a "Yes/No" dropdown. Might be better to keep a single dropdown, change the default to "Not yet transcluded" and split "Transclusion check required" to a separate item? Otherwise the "no" item is confusingly overloaded.

Placeholder text: not without adjustment to the PHP extension, but one might (might) be able to "polyfiller" it with JS.

Inductiveload—talk/contribs 06:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Whatever you think is both reasonable and practicable. They were thought bubbles to progress, and if some come as later refinements, then I am okay with that. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:31, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Can we implant the check transclusion button into the form next to the section? (make it obvious!) It sits on the top as that was as good as I could do at the time. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

OK, how's that? We had to lose the help on the transclusion field due to OOUI being dodge AF (phab:T280638), though I guess since they're going to scrap/supplant it with Vue at some highly non-specific point, who knows what's going on with the development there. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 09:36, 20 April 2021 (UTC).

Point number 1) Help buttons/fields are truly F'up on monobook display—I love monobook for our work here. Otherwise all looks good, we are giving people two opportunities and means to check transclusions. :-) — billinghurst sDrewth 10:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

This is phab:T280543. I have hacked something in to our local CSS.

Also check out User:inductiveload/scan transcludes.js for another transclude checker. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 10:44, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Neat and neat, thanks. In your checker how will you handle pages labelled category:not transcluded? See Index:A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices.djvu for an example (roman numeral i) — billinghurst sDrewth 10:57, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Good point: it handles that now. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:48, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

So, the final piece of the puzzle: what do we do by default? Currently it does nothing, and Category:Transclusion check required (triggered by no) is, as before, a dual purpose cat for "not transcluded" and "needs checking". Would it make sense to dump the ~850 members into a new Category:Index not transcluded and repurpose that one to a new "transcluded but messed up" maintenance category? Are there many members of Category:Transclusion check required that should truly be in the "to check" pile rather than the "nothing doing" pile? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:45, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: (I will try and make sense, it is late and I'm tired) I tried to keep the "not there yet" untranscluded simple, though am comfortable with a progression if it is desired. It is (was to be?) independent of the proofreading status as we have "not proofread" works transcluded.

That category is filled with "Ugh", "Errr", "Sigh", "No time today" and "We need to get to it". My gut feeling, but it could be wrong is that everything that is not marked should be sitting in the base/unsorted. Having them reviewed is not a bad idea. So all works that have had their proofreading status advanced but no check, need checking; however, we also need to cater for non-proofread works that are transcluded (though maybe that is manual assignation, rather than through the form).

How all that fits with your schema, I am too tired to figure out.  :-/ — billinghurst sDrewth 15:04, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

So it sounds like all pages currently marked 'no', should be "seen, but needs checking" and everything not currently marked at all goes in a "not even thought about" bucket? Respectively, Category:Transclusion check required (as now) and Category:Index not transcluded (to be created). That's certainly an easy way forward. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 15:08, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Sounds like a decent plan. I like simple. Thanks for the work. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:14, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

Recent changes

• Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [56][57]
• If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [58][59][60]
• Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [61]
• The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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16:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

An old and a new text

Hi. I'm interested in what is practicing on enwikisource in the case of the old texts without sources. When I proofread text, can I change old text into the new? For example, I have a short story without source, and new already with source. Can I insert proofreaded text to the old? Tommy Jantarek (talk) 10:46, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tommy Jantarek: No, please do not overwrite works. Create your work with your source, and then the community likes to make a decision about what to do with the old version. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:42, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Forgive me that I ask again but I want to ascertain. Could you look at Hap, Neutral Tones and Friends Beyond. All poems have no source, no year of edition. The first and second poems have no item on Wikidata and the third poem have an item on WD but empty. All those poems are located on this index. Are you really really sure I should create new texts in this concrete case instead overwriting and moving the old texts? I promise that I ask about it the last time.
By the way I have a second question. Look at, please, this page and following. Did I well understand it are a critical works by Poe and I should mark this chapter ("The Critic") as by Smith and Poe? Tommy J. (talk) 11:47, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

template pd/us

Hi,

just to inform you that I get a message when I look at Template:PD/US. The message is: Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "{". Do you get that same message? And do you know what's wrong? Greetings, --Dick Bos (talk) 11:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Dick Bos: That is just the template, as it is and not an issue. As long as you put a year in place when you use it, it will be okay, it is just as it lacks the data that we use when implementing. If you are seeing that error in the main or author namespace, check that you are using the YYYY, and if you are then we are needing a fix. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

In short the template is trying to undertake calculations, but it is not getting a YYYY to do its sums. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:40, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

Recent changes

• Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [62][63][64]

Changes later this week

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

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

21:24, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you

For your great work uploading early Australian history books. --Somnifuguist (talk) 18:35, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Somnifuguist: If you know of any good ones that we are missing, then never be afraid to suggest them at Wikisource:Requested texts. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:57, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

convert template:NIE to template:header

convert template:NIE to template:header

CLOSING. will be part of larger overhaul if occurs — billinghurst sDrewth 02:31, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Author disambiguations

• Author:Robert Brown (disambiguation) needs to be moved to base, and others fixed around it

  Done All cleared over time. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:09, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Author biog

Hi hi! An author kicked up by a WS:RT request: Author:Beatrice Hart Slaight. No obvious trace of her on Google other than the very book in question. No VIAF entry. Presumably American due to publishing location and topic. I have no particular interest other than not leaving a totally uncategorised author floating about, so no real expectation of action on your part, I just don't know of a better "someday" queue to drop this off in. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 22:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! So looks like the "H" in the Preface signature is actually Harrison, and all the people saying "Hart" have mistaken it? Presumably Slaight is the maiden name? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 23:12, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Beatrice Harrison => (1879) Beatrice Harrison Slaight => (1899) Beatrice Harrison Hart / Beatrice Hart. You could always try Beatrice Harrison Slaight Hart thought that would be excessive IMNSHO. I suggest (1858-1918) though there is some variability. The 1865 New York census with age of daughter is going to be the most accurate without a specific birth/baptismal record and they are tricky in NY at that time (well from my experience in remote research). — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: There is an open invitation for reasonable attempts research on authors for UKI/USA/Aus/NZ/(India) where I have access to records. Always like to give hospital corners to our authors dates of life, so never feel concerned about asking for that research. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:28, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks :-) I went with "Beatrice Harrison Hart" because that's what her obituary used. And I used the dates you suggest at WD. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 23:59, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Oliver Twist (1838)

The page Oliver Twist (1838) should be Oliver Twist (Boz Issue) because Dickens published two different editions in 1838. Many thanks. Languageseeker (talk) 03:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

It will do for now. Put some notes onto it. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:17, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

This is one of the reasons Hesperian started to use [[Category:The Title (YYYY, Publisher)]] at commons, and now I do as well. The authors won't always have some cute nickname like this....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-18

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

Recent changes

• Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [65]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [66]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [67][68]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [69]

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15:43, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

consider disambig Palestine Mandate

• Palestine Mandate and special:prefixindex/Palestine Mandate

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 14:18, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

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

15:10, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Removal of line-breaks in EB1911 pages

Hi, we'd prefer you didn't remove line-breaks in EB1911 (e.g. https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:EB1911_-_Volume_27.djvu/948&oldid=10869187). It makes proofing much harder and it's also difficult to see what changes have been made to a page. Running the clean-up script also incorrectly alters "outlier" to "outher". Thanks. DivermanAU (talk) 21:02, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Sure, I rarely do on such pages, must have been a habit thing. Thanks for report of the incorrect replacement, those OCR scans that convert h -> li, I keep that replacement pretty tight and I cannot immediately see which little line is doing it. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: My current script doesn't pick up outlier for replacement, and it isn't that page. Can you please point me to the page of concern so I can check against it. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:45, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi, It's good your current script doesn't check "outlier". Looks like the script I was given a few years back is out-of-date. I found this page [70] where the script was run and changed "outlier" to "outher", I've since fixed that page (and I usually don't run the cleanup script). Are you able to update my cleanup script (or show instructions how to update it? Thanks. DivermanAU (talk) 06:01, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: We are using Pathoschild's m:TemplateScript, and I will have implemented in embedded script. It will do regex replacements like you can do from the pop-open replacement tool. If you don't use the pop-open tool, then probably not something you want to do in your common.js file. Tell me what it is that you are wanting to do it, or how you are wanting to do it, and then I can best advise. The existing scripts can be trimmed or broken into components, depending on needs. I have even learnt how to write things specific to a work, which I use a little. I think that Inductiveload put up a separate script as a gadget. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:56, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I edited my common.js to only change "tlie"→"the" if there's a space before the "t". That solves the problem. DivermanAU (talk) 12:20, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

The script Billinghurst refers to is User:Inductiveload/cleanup.js. It has a rather extensive list of typos actually encountered in the wild (and most of the regexes are tested against a wordlist to avoid unintended replacements, with the occasional oversight that slips though) and quite a few other configurable replacements. However, it's still work in progress and there's no good configuration UI. So I'll welcome additional regexes for the lists but I make no claims it won't cause nasal demons. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:11, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

(ec) @DivermanAU: Okay. For education part one, you can put a \b which matches a work break, as that will pick any quotation marks, hyphen, em and en dash, etc. Typically I would use the \b as it is more flexible. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:17, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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

Recent changes

• There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [71] [72] [73]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [74][75]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [76]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [77]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:49, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Internet Archive

Hi, I see you've been removing the {{Iau}} template in many places. Seems reasonable enough, I'm not convinced it's useful to have it all over the place. Thanks for taking the trouble. Two suggestions, though:

1. Might it be better to replace it with {{IA small link}} rather than deleting it? That template results in a link that, I think, is useful to readers as well as editors, as it helps them find a genuine copy of the thing mentioned. (Unlike the upload link, which is rather useless to readers, especially if the toolserver is down.)
2. I don't know whether or not this has been discussed, or whether it's something you're doing on your own; either way, though, a brief note at Template Talk:Iau might help people understand what's going on.

-Pete (talk) 16:01, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: They were rem'd rather than deleted. They were not standard file links, they were overly complicated for what could and should be simple links, so I just wrapped them out of the way. They are extractable, and convertible easily at some point. I just don't have the fiddle time, as busy with a range of multitasks.I have said to Languageseeker that they would be appropriate within the project for getting uploads, however, they were beastly ugly on numbers of author pages, and they had not been discussed as a change, let alone in author pages, main namespace pages, or portal pages, so I neutered. I am hoping that someone is going to grab them from the page versions and take them over to the project. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:15, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

And no, the talk page of a template is not the place to discuss a community consensus for a change in approach to namespace pages. You would not use that page to get consensus for its use, so you wouldn't use it get consensus about its removal. I would use that page to discuss its function once it was approved by the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:19, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. If I can figure out a good way to build a list, I may run AWB to do what I suggested. Thanks for explaining.

As far as explaining, I'm not sure what got you started talking about consensus, but OK ;) I've added a note myself. -Pete (talk) 16:51, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I can assist at a later stage, just not now. I was needing to fix things author pages, and when one has to struggle because a page is full of gumph is rather irritating, when one just wants to go and do a simple task. I am just caught in fixing some issues with headers and links that is affecting a couple of thousand pages, and pages from where people cannot follow simple direction, they just want to go their own way. Consensus? Why do you think that I talk about consensus? When people don't seek it, and do their own thing, we have these issues. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

OK. I don't really disagree with anything you're saying, and I'm sorry you're feeling stressed. There isn't much meeting-of-the-minds going on here though, I'll let you be. -Pete (talk) 17:09, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

PD US only scans...

Thanks for the recent catalog management :)

I'd previously noted some other Scan localisations here under the heading "Scan localisation Requests" on WS:CV previously.

If you think those requests are more appropriate to be made at WS:S I have no argument with that being the consensus procedure in future. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:22, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Personally I am less likely to look at WS:CV for things that need moving, whereas generally I will look more follow WS:S. Not certain what the community wants. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:02, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Edit window font size in Main namespace

Has there been a change made that affects the font size in the edit window of the Main namespace? When editing in other namespaces (such as when writing this comment, or editing in the Page namespace) my preferred font size is the same as it has been. But editing in the Main namespace, I get a larger font size. Do you have any insight, or is there a solution already underway (I hope)? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:04, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: I am not seeing any (noticeable) difference, or know of any configuration between namespaces. Noting that I am still in monobook [(url)&useskin=monobook] and I have a monotype, so my edit windows are pretty and simple. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:10, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Noticed that some default fonts have changed elsewhere, eg. categories at Commons. Can be controlled through common.css or global.css if required. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:59, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

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

17:07, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

"Dictionary of Australasian Biography" template issue

Using the "Dictionary of Australasian Biography" template has made a bit of a mess of The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/M'Combie, Hon. Thomas article, I'm afraid. The first part of the article is not displaying and several other articles are displaying on the page. DivermanAU (talk) 12:25, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: Needed onlysection = the system converts an apostrophe to the unicode, and that fails inside <pages>. I thought that I had gone back and got them all. I will run another check. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:29, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: Missed some m'xxxx names. While I have your attention, if you have a look at {{topicmatcher}} and user:billinghurst/common.css, you will see that we have a means to identify those biographies that have no Wikidata item, and then where no connection through main subject (P921) to a person item. The categorisation happens automatically, but if you add the css code you get a click link that pulls up topicmatcher. At the moment I have the template inside this {{DAB}} code. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:44, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

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

Problems

• There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [78]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Template talk:Page

Thank you. I had already figured out that {{page}} was talking directly. In the end I implemented something like you suggested in the sandbox. (I also moved the start and end portions of the relevant table inside the "section" tags.)

What had actually "broken" was the discussion post itself, namely that the <syntaxhighlight> was failing to engage, and I could not figure out why it was treating the <pages> as actual markup, rather than the example content it was intended to be. Thank you repairing it. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [79][80][81]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [82]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [83][84]

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

20:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

data habits and book template at the commons

Some of my wikidata habits have formed from working with the book template at commons. Some of my solutions to the problems there are causing you problems with me at wikidata.

I would encourage you to try wikidata for re-filling out the book templates and keep your eye on the hidden categories and the other problems. I like to make a nice clean title page for books at commons, with the original dimensions of the scan (in 300ppi). Some of my conflicts are with that. Other things also caused me to give it up and start giving scans their own data, independent of cat or Main link but not independent of the index url.

Perhaps, if you have these problems also, you can author the phab ticket. I like my solutions, so authoring a please fix it just isn't in my vocabulary.

Any title page or cover that you would like, just ask, I really enjoy making them and do not think it is a waste of my time or wiki space to have them.

They have a hidden cat for P6243 in the structured data, also, they use "inception" instead of "publication date" like it is a building or a company or something. I would fix those things, "digital depiction of" just make me kind of queasy -- it is a scan or a microfilm.... The book template uses the art module which might be some of the problem. I will quit just rambling now. Avoiding a template broken problem....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 02:48, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian: Template flaws at another wiki are not an excuse for poor/incorrect data entry. Ask them to fix the Commons issues at c:Template talk:Book. I have been working at Commons and at Wikidata and with the book template for years, and have put correct data into those and choose not to import data, and just add the wikidata link, the rest will fix itself in time. Though I do typically complete the book template at the beginning of the process. Scans do not have their own data, that is wrong, please do not create pseudo-solutions. Get the technical problems fixed not redesign the world for the wrong problem. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:51, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24

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

Recent changes

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [85]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [86]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [87]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [88][89]

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20:26, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Template:PD-old

This template doesn't seem like a good thing because there's always the (rather unfortunate) possibility of a nation extending their copyright expiry time to something greater than 100 years. In case this were ever to happen, wouldn't it be useful for the parameters to be fulfilled?

If not, we might just want to run a bot through all of Wikisource to replace every instance of years < 1921 in Template:PD/US parameters with just Template:PD-old. PseudoSkull (talk) 14:49, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

All the authors have PD-old where they have a death date prior to 1921. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:51, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-25

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

Recent changes

• The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [90]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [91]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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15:49, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

DIB conversion

Hello! Page Dictionary of Indian Biography/D'Oldenburg, Serge did not convert very well to new DIB header template. I cannot establish why. --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 07:56, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Tar-ba-gan: Thanks, fixed. We have to force pages with apostrophes (use onlysection = <subpagename>) as {{SUBPAGENAME}} sees it as &#39;. There may be more through there that need fixing. I will run my bot through. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:40, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Samuel Johnson: the Leslie Stephen lecture

This lecture has been reproduced already here, but it seems I neglected to add that collection of essays to Raleigh’s author page. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

No issue, they are different editions, so both are acceptable. We could do a versions page, or just have them both on the disambiguation page, I am happy with both on dismbig page until there is a specific WORK level item on WD. I will note that for these types of work that I typically don't utilise Essay 1 ... Essay N for subpage titles and utilise their essay name so they are self-descriptive and not hidden away from search; different from fiction works in that regard. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:01, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [92]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [93]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [94][95]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [96][97]

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

16:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Question + request

Hi Billinghurst,

I have a question to you: How about an abuse filter that prevents edits on other user pages? I've got a proposal for a script:

page_namespace = 2 &
!(user_name = page_title) &
!('/' in page_title) &
!(
 "bot" in user_groups |
 "sysop" in user_groups |
 "Patoschild" in user_name
)

It can result in less deletions like this. So would you want to create an abuse filter with the script I've proposed, or is it not necessary? Nieuwsgierige Gebruiker (talk) 12:34, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that editing of other people's user pages is particularly a problem here. I implemented the script at meta, and haven't seen a need to replicate its function here, and I am not going to implement a filter for once in 3 months in user ns. Vandals are always going to vandalise, and this was already picked up in our abuse filters, just not set to disallow. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:56, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [98]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [99]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [100][101]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [102]

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

17:33, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Recent header formatting edits

I don’t know how long this problem has existed, but it seems that automated editing strikes again. This edit removed valid formatting on the page, and needs to be reverted insofar as it did such; and all edits made with that automated editing tool (to that work and others) seem to have the same problem. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:51, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I tested the simpler pages, and didn't account for the non-transclusion. It is a bit of an ugly regex to account for the range of distributed approaches of users to go outside the style. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fixed now. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:14, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

quote plus italics?

Hi, run into problem with a quote plus italics in footnote. Makes whole phrase bold. I cannot make it a quote. see: Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/52—unsigned comment by Daytrivia (talk) .

@Daytrivia: use &apos;. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:56, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks much but I do not understand how to insert the &apos;

@Daytrivia: '''word''' => 'word'

I have also seen it done like '' 'word' '' => 'word' — billinghurst sDrewth 12:16, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Outstanding!!! Thanks so much. Be well. —unsigned comment by Daytrivia (talk) .

Bangladesh Constitution

Hello there Billinghurst!

The original document was published in Bengali, but there is an English-language translation of the document.

The Govt. of Bangladesh has published it over here: [103]

Roovinn (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

allow_illegal_formatting no longer needed in {{versions}} et al.

I've added a pretitle to {{header}} which allows to reinstate illegal formatting checks, and also tightens up what goes in the microformat fields a little bit. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 19:59, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

An experiment with Wikidata (it's....alive!?)

User:Inductiveload/Sandbox/worklink and {{work link}}. It's almost looking hopeful, but it's also halfway to blowing the Wikidata entity limit too. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

stop interfering

Please stop this behaviour, there is no consensus for your decade of edit warring on this matter. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 00:39, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

There is the consensus, and the practice is now well-established. That you don't like what exists is problematic. What is the issue with fully expanded names. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:41, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

No, it doesn't, and that is established. Find another way to troll me. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 00:42, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Please follow the practice of the community. You have never presented a good reason for your exception. We are not Wikipedia, and there is good reason why we do this. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

What is that good reason? And stop casting aspersions when your business is putting tickets on yerself. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 00:57, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Please don't get personal, and stop what appears to be belittling approach.

The reasons were explained way back when we had the RFC and you know it. In short we had huge issues with multiple duplicate author pages and we had disambiguation issues. This schema resolves both issues and it stopped the arguments that existed at enWP about priority. We also know that author names match the biographical works that we have.

Once we have an established practice, it should be a universal practice, and we should continue that practice, not make exceptions for you because you still don't agree with it. The solution is not problematic. The solution puts no extra work upon you. Please follow the practice. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:11, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Addendum. If the practice is problematic, then please take the matter to WS:S and tell the community how and why it is a problem, the alternative solution that you see; your expressing pros and cons would be nice. I will continue to undertake what I see as the consensus of the community and our accepted practice to a uniform approach. If we get into an edit war about it, I will specifically refer your actions and the matter to the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [104][105]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [106]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:31, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

deletion of Author:Tyler_Weitzman

Billinghurst May I ask for the reason of your deletion of Author:Tyler_Weitzman? How was it beyond scope? "Each person who has written one or more texts hosted on Wikisource should have a page in the Author namespace" from Help:Author_pages. Perhaps this deletion was an oversight? See Group_Messaging_Encryption --DarrowStormBlessed

Billinghurst Checking in on this, thanks!DarrowStormBlessed (talk) 06:42, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Done It was out of scope at the time when the work was being questioned. I have removed the out of scope material. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:38, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Date removal from subpages

Since the pages here are editions of poems, certainly we would want to keep the date on the subpages, rather than remove them? [107] I don't see any reason to remove this bit of information. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

No, why would we want to do that? Year of publication sits on the parent page, it doesn't differ as it cascades. We have always said to put the data on the top page, and not overly categorise subpages. We add it when we are differentiating a subpage from the parent/ — billinghurst sDrewth 14:29, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Searching for author

I'm looking for an author "Lydia Miller Mackay", who published a novel in London and Edinburgh by Thomas Nelson and Sons in 1908, called The Return of the Emigrant. However I can't find much information about her at all. Findagrave seems to have nothing. There are a handful of magazine articles about her or written by her but nothing that shows a date of death. PseudoSkull (talk) 17:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: I have put the basics there and years of life, I will have a look at some other sources. Shall I leave you to do the WD item? — billinghurst sDrewth 00:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

• A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Constitution of the Portuguese Republic

Hello. I have recently translated the original edition of the 1976 Portuguese Constitution contained on the Constitutional Court's website found here and found an English language translation of the 1992 revision of the 1976 Constitution here and would like to add them to Wikisource. However, both Constitution of the Republic of Portugal, 1976 and Translation:Constitution of the Portuguese Republic 1976 already contain the year 1976 in their titles despite both using the text of the Constitution from after 1992. Is there anything I can do, or should I abandon my efforts to add these texts to Wikisource? (The Professor (Time Lord) (talk) 08:34, 1 August 2021 (UTC))

@The Professor (Time Lord): We are going to need to disambiguate whatever is there based on the edition/year of publication, which will need a little investigation for someone like myself without knowledge of the space. I would suggest that you place what you can at an appropriate name for the editions that you have. Anything that you translate belongs in the Translation: ns, anything formally published belongs in the main namespace, and any disambiguation page will belong in main namespace. I think that we will call the disambiguation page Constitution of the Republic of Portugal and work from there. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I cannot see sources for either of those works, what factors have you saying that they are not translations of the 1976 edition? What has you saying that they are after 1992? What is the history of the constitution that has later amendments? Answers to these questions allow me to provide better advice on how to progress with renaming as tying down each presented version to an edition is what we endeavour to do. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I know that they have to be translations from after at least 1992 because both mention the Constitutional Court (which was not present in the 1976 edition and only added by the 1982 amendments) and neither mention Macao (which is mentioned in the 1976 edition and still mentioned as late as the 1992 edition). Is this answer helpful? (The Professor (Time Lord) (talk) 19:11, 1 August 2021 (UTC))

@The Professor (Time Lord): helpfulish => w:Constitution of Portugal shows a review in 1989, so are we essentially talking the 1989 version? Does ptWP provide better information on the history of the constitution that may better assist. This page says seven revisions though beyond 7th being 2005. We are looking to assign dates to the editions/versions. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that Translation:Constitution of the Portuguese Republic 1976 is from 2005 while Constitution of the Republic of Portugal, 1976 is from after 1992. In terms of dates, the original revision of the 1976 Portuguese Constitution is from 1976, while the first revision is from 1982, the second revision is from 1989, the third revision is from 1992, the fourth revision is from 1997, the fifth is from 2001, the sixth is from 2004, and the seventh (and current) is from 2005. (The Professor (Time Lord) (talk) 02:15, 2 August 2021 (UTC))

@The Professor (Time Lord):I have moved the Translation: ns to ... (2005). If we cannot find the provenance of the post-1992 edition, then we should put it before the community to work out whether we retain it or what. That doesn't stop your adding your work, and we can disambiguate once we have something with which to work and when knowing we have something better. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:53, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

• If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [108][109]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [110]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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

20:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Bot edits on A translation of Anstey's ode to Jenner

Hi, there is some bot edits on the above mentioned title that look like they may not have gone to plan? Specifically it seems to be template substitutions within poetry tags that are showing up in the transclusion as the template code within the {}

One example on the first line of the poem on image 7 - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Translation_of_Anstey%27s_Ode_to_Jenner

Nickw25 (talk) 03:21, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Fixed. <poem> can be an issue at times. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:08, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

T241691

Hi,

I finally went this path when needed to undelete a validated page. Ankry (talk) 16:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [111]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [112]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [113]

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

16:21, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

author page "William Wilson"

@Billinghurst:I need an author page for d:Q104748450. No date of death, etc. I think my viaf search failed, for obvious reasons (common first and last name). There already exists Author:William Wilson who is for sure not the same. The pamphlet Index:Sheakespeare and astrology, from a student's point of view (IA sheakespeareastr00wils).pdf is at hathi, lcc, etc. and is well documented so maybe the author is also, more than I could find.

I am here mostly because I am not sure how to make the author page. I think maybe Author:William Wilson (1853-) but would rather defer to your better judgement.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 15:29, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Also, one of the encyclopedia authors. Author:William Rae MacDonald. I have been working on a translation by him and he spells his name there with a little d. Author:William Rae Macdonald.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:20, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

To note that the work is already at Commons File:Shakespeare_and_astrology,_from_a_student's_point_of_view_(IA_sheakespeareastr00wils).pdf. With no death date I would have normally done "William Wilson (b.1853)". I will move the existing author page, and then disambiguate. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:55, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [114]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [115][116][117]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [118]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [119]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:27, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

• The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

This will affect your wiki as well as 11 other wikis. During this time, publishing edits will not be possible.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Removing of Voltairine de Cleyre Sources

Hi, I noticed you deleted some of the sources for Voltairine de Cleyre's texts with a comment about "adding a license." Was this a mistake? Uprisingengineer (talk) 00:38, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

No, the body of the work is kept for the text of the work. You have added the sources to the talk page per our style. Probably worth talking to me before reverting the edit. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:44, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@Uprisingengineer: I have removed your speedy tagging of Dawn Light of Anarchy because your rationale was not one of the criteria for speedy deletion. If you really want it deleted you can try G7.

But I have to say I have no idea how you arrive there from the above conversation. Billinghurst just added a license tag (which is required on Wikisource) and moved the source link to the talk page, which is where that information belongs. In other words, they helped you to make the text compliant with Wikisource policy. Xover (talk) 18:39, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

If not linking a source from the page itself is "policy", then everything I create is 'non-compliant'. I included the link in the notes. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 22:58, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: The guidance is to put the source on the talk page inside {{textinfo}}, and it has been that like forever. The user did that, so it is not required to be in the notes section as well. Yes, the notes section is okay, though not preferred, and I will often do that myself with newspaper transcripts as I will include the date of publication detail. If it had been put in notes, I would have left it, however, as it was already done per style, then that was unnecessary. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:38, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

please look at the diff

Please look at what you undid at Undine and explain to me what was wrong with it: diff --RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:07, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I did, and it would seem that you didn't look at this diff, because you removed the page breaks that TE(æ)A,ea specifically added. Page breaks have a purpose when exporting. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:25, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

And the purpose is....? (Because I remember being, well, "harrassed" is a strong word but it is my memory so forgive it, harassed into always using <pages />)--RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

What are you talking about? That is using <pages>. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:30, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

=> <pages> is {{#tag:pages}} just a more convenient form. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

If you include page 4 and exclude pages 2 and 3, you will get the endpapers side by side.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I did not change the pages that were included or excluded, I simply changed the method of transclusion, nothing more, nothing less. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:55, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

There was a table so that the two pages would appear side by side and not sequentially. If you look at the current rendering of the page, the endpapers are showing sequentially. The simple table I made on page 4 means that this formatting is not required in the Main and that the endpapers can appear side by side, as they did in the book. So, you do not have to do as I asked (include 4, exclude 2 & 3) but if you could do something that makes the pages be side by side, then all is good.

About the page breaks. I am not understanding the reason this is required for exporting.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:12, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It is a page break, have a guess what it does when it exports. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:13, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Transclusion done. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

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

Recent changes

• Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [120]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [121]

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

16:01, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Recent Template:EB1911 changes stop Wiktionary links

Was this an intended outcome? Many EB1911 articles have a wiktionary= entry which now doesn't work. DivermanAU (talk) 07:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: They should still be working from the interconnection if one works, but I will db check with Inductiveload. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

If it is failing, then it should be a simple issue to double check the Wiktionary item and link it. Can you give me some examples? — billinghurst sDrewth 08:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Ugh, it is just butt ugly for enwiktionary. I have re-added the parameter and will talk further with Inductiveload to see what is possible. The others should all just work. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:00, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

One example is 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clerk - it's good the link to Wiktionary is back there now, thanks. DivermanAU (talk) 09:41, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

Recent changes

• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [122]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [123][124]
• Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:20, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

lines of dots

It makes lines of dots and uses the text background color to cover the ones under the text. It seems less complex to me after I saw it, so I thought maybe you would like to see it also here, after some scroll.

I very much appreciated your answer.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 02:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Block for no reason?

Hi @Billinghurst: Why would you block User:LigetC4tta? This user hasn't edited anything, and this block still exists from 2009 up till now. What happened? Twilight Sparkle 222 (talk) 21:29, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Not certain why you are asking me to remember a 2009 action. And please do not start activities that got you blocked at English Wikipedia, we all have better things to do. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:55, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

{{translation table}}

This change of 7 August to {{translation table}} rather amazes me, as it is the collision of two recent concerns of mine, templates in chaos and the expurgation of non-English snippets here. Summary "null foreign language components" seems to confirm my pogromish worries, and I can't find recent discussions at Scriptorium or /Help or archives that seem to touch on this.

Was there a technical reason for neutering this template? Would you please point me to any explaining discussions for this or the other long-term excisions, as I *am* very distressed at the continued bowdlerisation of texts, such that I'm believing many works here should need renaming with "(expurgated)" appended to their titles. The apparent exclusivity (down to the paragraph and sentence level it would seem) I keep coming across here just seem so out of step with the world today. Shenme (talk) 02:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• billinghurst: That change broke things in other templates, and defeats the purpose of the template. Such a change needs consensus. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shenme: You can stop the hyperbole. We are English Wikisource; works where separated (for example, English on one page, opposite French on the other) are meant to be at respective wikis. Works of mixed language are meant to be at multi-language Wikisource (mulWS). That is not bowlderisation, that is just scope. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:03, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• No, that’s not what old Wikisource is for. All multi-language dictionaries would be relegated there, as well as all translated works (as use this template), which is nonsensical. “[W]orks where separated… are meant to be at respective wikis”—not true. To be proofread elsewhere, yes; but not to be kept there, and off English Wikisource. Such is the use of {{iwpage}} and family. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 04:13, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Script wanted

Hey, I know that you know how to automatically move subpages (and delete the redirects if necessary) to move an entire work. Do you use a pywikibot script for this? If so, is there any possibility you could link it to me so that when/if I get the admin flag, I can be prepared to make mass moves here? (I also have personal MediaWiki wikis I own that I can use as test cases, but I don't know if pywikibot will work for those.) Thanks. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Built in to admin rights; as an admin there is an additional check option to include subpages and a list of subpages. If we are talking page namespace, I create a pseudo Page: ns rootpage, which I delete afterwards; where more than 100 pages, you just have to move it back and repeat. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:47, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: I use User:Inductiveload/Scripts/Page shifter.py, which allows to move pages between indexes and optionally add an offset (and also add an offset within the same index, e.g. if you insert or delete pages). It can suppress redirects as long as the bot has the relevant rights (suppressredirect, which comes with the bot flag). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 07:41, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

Recent changes

• 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [125]
• A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [126]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
• Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [127]
• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [128]
• The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [129][130]

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

15:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

EB1911 template changes

Hi, looks like your recent changes to this template have broken links to sub-pages e.g. the "previous" and "next" entries on 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Egypt/2 Ancient Egypt DivermanAU (talk) 02:39, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: Fixed. Geeze there is ugly methodology in place through there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — billinghurst sDrewth 11:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Madame de Barrera

Memoirs of Rachel (1858, New York) was published anonymously, with the author credited as "Madame de B—". It was also published in London although I don't know which came first. However, sources now say that it was written by a Madame de Barrera. Some Amazon pages suggest the name of the person may have been "A. de Barrera" (of course it's Amazon so can't trust it wholesale). Could you research into possible people with the name "de Barrera" if you don't think this is a pseudonym only? I suspect (without much knowledge) that it may have been a journalist, because the Wikipedia article says about Rachel: "Efforts by newspapers to publish pictures of her on her deathbed led to the introduction of privacy rights into French law." PseudoSkull (talk) 10:47, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

PseudoSkull I will have a look. On my user page, there is a list of uploads of directories anonymous and pseudonymous published works and further down there are links to some larger directories at IA. You may wish to poke through those. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:20, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Anita de Barrera per Internet Archive identifier: Lithiaka which specifically mentions the quoted work. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:06, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

And my Spanish sources are piddling. Corresponded with Leland in the 1850s. I have no dates of life. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:23, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Merging Author-space disambig pages into Mainspace disambig pages

Hey, I notice that you've merged a couple of Author-space disambig pages into Mainspace disambig pages where the titles are the same. I know you wouldn't do this without community consensus, but I don't recall this discussion; last I recall the consensus was separate disambig pages in separate namespaces. Can you point me to the relevant discussion thread where this was resolved? If so, perhaps I can help with some of the page merges. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Also, if this is truly the current consensus, perhaps we should look at bot-moves of all Author-space disambig pages? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:16, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

When WD came into we could only have one disambig per term. We said that where it was within one ns that we would host it there, where it was spread across namespaces, it would be main ns. Conversation at WS:S and I would guess circa 2015. I see that I made a summary in Help:Disambiguation in 2016, though didn't think that it was that late. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:28, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

2016 Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2016-10#Disambiguation and Wikidata items — a conundrum with no perfect solution — billinghurst sDrewth 13:31, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I have memories of a following conversation, though nothing obvious is showing there. So it may not have a good subject line, OR it was in IRC; less likely to have been in email, or it is a faulty memory. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:36, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Recent changes

• Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
• MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [131]
• A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [132]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
• The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [133]

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [134]
• The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:32, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Head Pages in Plato (Jowett)

Thanks for the help. One thing that I've noticed is that the work is a five volume work, and the transclusion does not currently reflect that. Is there an example of a multi-volume work that would be a good model? — Rodney 16:15, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@RH Swearengin: There are a number of approaches to multi-volume works, and a number of schools of thoughts, so what follows is my opinion, and others may have slightly different.

In published books, I am generally less concerned about volumes as they are in volume form due to the size of the works, and if I believe that they can be displayed in without partitioning to volumes then I do not do so, essentially I reproduce the work as a contiguous and continuous reproduction. What guides me to put them into specific volumes as subpages is where they are reproduced over many years, and the latter volumes have common parts that require volume disambiguation, or have updates to earlier volumes with new replacement article parts, etc.

So the question that I ask to you, is how vital is the volume number to the reproduction of the work. How does it add value going to an extra hierarchical level? If there is little value, then we can simply capture the volume information in the title line as text like title = [[../The Dialogues of Plato]], volume 1

I haven't investigate the multiple volumes at this time to provide a recommendation, though I can if needed. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm of the same opinion. I'll try out some things with Vol. 1, and link to Vol. 2. See what you think. — Rodney 23:06, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@RH Swearengin: For some examples of ignoring. The DNB, EB1911 and Alumni Oxonienses ignore volumes, though they each have a specific biographical aspect. For the work My Life in Two Hemispheres, I ignored the 2 vols, and the Book sectionality and just squibbed on the chapter naming, though I did create redirects. Another work recently (forget which) we essentially ignored the vols. though we did have /Volume 1, /Volume 2, ... pages as a container for each table of contents. I want to be loyal to a book, though not to have a horrid reproduction and get buried in a computer subpage hierarchy. BUT if tens of thousands of references existed to a work that cited "Bookname Vol. 10, Book 3" then I may just be influenced. :-) — billinghurst sDrewth 12:13, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-39

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

Recent changes

• iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

• Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [135]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
• The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [136]
• A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
• You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [137]

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22:22, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi!

Hi, I decided to start editing here again. :-) I've imported Index:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu today and started proofreading it - it would be great if you could have a look and give me any pointers for where I'm not doing things quite right. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Welcome back. Apologies, for not responding a little earlier, got distracted by RL. The one important note is block <div> <=> <span> templates and their nesting. Generally where we have the two doing the same things, we name the div version as "something block". All looking good, obviously tweaks to where we have things catering to our quirks. I personally don't tend to use {{TOC link}} as I prefer to use raw linking. I will try to follow on behind. If you need reminders or help with transclusions, then let me know. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Good to know I'm not going horrendously wrong. :-) The templates are definitely the hardest things to remember, thanks for the pointer to the 'block' ones, and the importance of the ordering (position then size, right?). Is there a way to get the common templates to appear in the editing bar, so I don't have to remember them manually? Happy for the TOC links to be converted to raw links if you prefer - I was just using the style from Index:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu (which finally has been completed, more than 10 years after I started it!) I'll carry on proofreading the book soon! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:12, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Not so much size, more <div><span></span></div> span on the inside. Re customisation, yes, a few ways.

• Depending on which toolbar you are using mw:Extension:WikiEditor/Toolbar customization
• mw:extension:CharInsert which we have installed as a gadget, and you can add your custom scripts in your common.js page
• meta:TemplateScripts is set up as a gadget, and that allows miniscripts to be set into your left sidebar.

Pick your poison. I use old old toolbar, so cannot assist with the first, though can assist with second and third. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:15, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I've run into a problem. Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/222 contains what is probably a copyrighted work (I'm checking with the author). It should never have been included in a CC-BY publication. There are also a few images later on that might be similar. Do you have a standard procedure for handling this sort of case here? If not, I can probably crop out the problematic images from the PDFs, re-convert to djvu, and re-upload to Commons - but I don't know what happens in that case with the transcribed pages? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: It depends on whose copyright, US or home country. If PD-US we will move the file to enWS, otherwise we can just comment out the sections. There is a template somewhere that we use, though forget its name at this time. Basically says this section is not in the public domain. Feel free to blank the images and re-upload. Hopefully someone reading this will tell us the template name to use. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:27, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

CC-BY vs. full copyrighted ... not sure the file can stay either here or on Commons. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 05:36, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

That would be {{image removed}}, and {{text removed}} when relevant.

@Mike Peel: Already proofread pages have been saved locally on enWS as normal wikipages and will not be affected by any changes to the file at Commons. For pages that have not yet been created here, the content of the file is fetched dynamically (modulo caching) when you go to create them so their contents will be updated when the file is updated. In either case the image of the scanned page that you see on the right in the Page: namespace is not saved here and will always reflect the current version of the file on Commons (also modulo caching).

The only thing to really be weary of there is if pages are reordered in the file, for example by a page toward the start of the book having been completely removed from the PDF/DjVu. When that happens the mapping from pages in the file to wikipages here breaks, and we have to shuffle wikipages around to compensate. It's a bit tedious (manual job) so we try to avoid having to do it, but if it's needed any admin can help you with it. Non-admins will run into trouble because the necessary moves leave redirects behind that will get in the way, and the process isn't particularly intuitive so it's best handled by experienced users who know about the pitfalls. Xover (talk) 05:49, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xover: Thanks, good to know that changes to the file won't affect proofread pages here. In the worst case, I think I can remove the images from the PDF/DjVu without affecting the page order at all. So I'll carry on when I can, and wait for the answer from the author of the chapter (probably before sorting out all images at the end). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:27, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and if there is a page in the <pagelist> where you don't wish to create a linkable page, you just label it as "empty". See mul:Wikisource:ProofreadPage — billinghurst sDrewth 16:18, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

OK, this is all done from my side. All pages proofread, and wikipages at Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project and subpages. It's been great to see other editors joining in (and I've been advertising this on Twitter a bit), and I'm learning from the changes people are making. A few things:

1. I've uploaded screenshots of the images to Commons under the book's CC-BY license. My understanding is that the release of the book under that license also releases the images under the same license. Where possible, I've included the images already on Commons into the book. If this is challenged in the future, then my plan would be to redact the images from the book PDF/DjVu and wikitext.
2. I looked into adding it to Template:New texts - but couldn't figure out how to do so since there's no clear author for the book.
3. I also downloaded the book as a PDF (the 'Download' link is new since I was last here, and looks like a great addition!). I'm puzzled by why the redistribution of the book seems to be under CC-BY-SA or GNU FDL, rather than by the copyright of the book itself (CC-BY in this case; PD in other cases). Why is this?

Thanks for your help with this, and for your patience with my questions! :-) Mike Peel (talk) 21:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Congratulations on completing the work,. I will work through and add the author components to the header and the author pages.

1. If Commons is an issue for the images, we can host them locally if US-free, label them over there and I can move them over. Otherwise your plan is fine. Probably need some placeholders to indicate what was there.
2. For {{new texts}} I would have used editors so 2= edited by [[Author:Laurie M. Bridges|Laurie M. Bridges]], [[Author:Raymond Pun|Raymond Pun]], and [[Author:Roberto A. Arteaga|Roberto A. Arteaga]] and added a nowiki=yes as an extra parameter. I will look at whether to wikilink them later, once I have got through the pages.
3. If a book download is showing with a different license than the work, then please create a phabricator ticket and mark it for WS-EXPORT, thanks. @Inductiveload: There has always been download links in the sidebar, though they are somewhat mute in a page of text. The issues of so much to offer and how to display it.

We truly do try to be cooperative and work to consensus, even between our failures to do so. Our two community spaces WS:Scriptorium and WS:Scriptorium/Help are well-watched and supportive. Help:Templates is useful as editors rely on the same tricks, so we can standardise an approach. Thanks for bringing the work in and adding diversity to what we have to offer, for asking questions and learning, and for adding them to WD. Always here. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:52, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I've added it to the new texts, but without the list of editors - the problem is that it appears as 'by edited by', which doesn't look too good. With the license, since you've pinged Inductiveload I guess wait to see what they say? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:18, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Hi Mike! Looking pretty nifty!

The download has a CC-BY-4 licence (which covers the original work) in it near the front, so it could have been an stale cache? Unless you mean the end-plate text, which comes from MediaWiki:Wsexport about and (I assume) is based on the overall site license Wikisource:Copyright policy. AFAIK (and that's not that far), that covers any WS users' creative input on top of any work license, which is intrinsically compatible, or we wouldn't host it. Since users have agreed to the CC-BY-SA/FDL terms by editing here, I don't think it's possible to re-distribute WS works without the SA aspect. But I guess that's one for WMF legal, or whoever else has a sharp suit and is paid handsomely to be responsible for that kind of thing!

And looks like Jan beat me to the editor parameter in the new texts template. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:41, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

On to the next one ... Index:Open Skies (Kellermann).pdf - feedback of anything I'm doing wrong would be appreciated. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:38, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Looking fine in the body. Consider replacing .... with ellipsis &hellip; / ….

FYI with tables, you can just set them to the wikicode, and we can apply css to them (see the Index: page and you will see a style.css tab/dropdown). I will get in a shake that one into place. Also to note that we do have template:table style/parse / {{ts}} for making that coding a little quicker if you do want to do it by cell. Typically I will just get a table framework right to get it in place quickly, and go back and tune, but that is just me. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:34, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Been and hacked. Also did an example of the easy way to do index pages. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:06, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-40

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

Recent changes

• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
• Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [138]
• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

• You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [139]
• The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [140]
• The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [141]

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16:31, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

U. L. S.

This is purely for personal interest, and will probably not produce an author page on Wikisource, but I wanted to contact you to see if you could find someone with the initials U. L. S. who lived in Sutherland, Scotland and flourished in 1935. They likely were alive in 1908 as well. This person hand-wrote an entire poem in a copy of The Return of the Emigrant (1908) that I own, which was authored by Lydia Miller Mackay. Written after the poem is "In memory of a dear friend", which suggests that U. L. S. knew Mackay personally and was well acquainted with her. On the title page of the book, a passage from the Book of Revelations is quoted under her name, and U. L. S.'s poem seems to be inspired by that passage. Above that Revelations passage was written: "Entered into rest-at-Windybrae, Dec. 10th, 1935". 1935 was Mackay's death year, so all of this was almost certainly a dedication left in the book in Mackay's memory. "Rest at Windybrae" would've apparently been referring to Mackay's home according one source.

Can you find any possibilities of who U. L. S. might have been? If you do, let me know, because the hand-written notes in this book are very intriguing and I'd like to find out who this person might have been, for the sake of solving this intense mystery. Thanks. PseudoSkull (talk) 03:38, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: I only have access to Scottish census to 1900, and there is no 1939 register, as there is for the UK. I feel that I would be fumbling in the dark in a small stadium for that one in public records when they may not even have any confirmatory detail. I can think of three women's U... first names for that period, Ursula, Unity and Uphemia so see if you can find anything that helps in Mackay's works or bio. I will see if I can find a report of the burial, as that can often list attendees. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:43, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Obituary has no particular mention of people beyond her parents and grandfather. No funeral arrangements found. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:26, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-41

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

• The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.

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

15:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

WikidataCon?

Hi Billinghurst. We talked a bit before about WikidataCon, but I've lost the contact method (was it on Twitter? I found the email at [142] - but your email address wasn't available there!)

I'm writing to you as a co-curator of the 'Sister projects' track along with Susanna Ånäs for WikidataCon 2021, which will take place online on 29-31 October 2021. The conference website is at [143].

We would like to invite you to submit a session proposal to the track, specifically on how Wikisource interacts with Wikidata.

If you are interested, you can find information about how to submit a session proposal at [144], and you can access the submission form at [145]. Please submit a session proposal through the Pretalx process so that we can review and schedule it appropriately - and make sure to mark it as a 'Sister projects' track proposal. Please note that we cannot accept a session outside of the Pretalx process. We also encourage you to submit talks to other tracks if you are interested!

Note that the deadline for submitting proposals is the 20th October - sorry for the short notice! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:11, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-42

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

Recent changes

• Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
• 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
• Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.

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20:53, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Zoologist

Hi Billinghurst,

thank you for helping with The Zoologist/4th series, vol 1 (1897)/ToC, The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/ToC and The Zoologist/4th series, vol 4 (1900)/ToC. But these ToCs are also used on the index-pages, e.g. Index:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu. And unfortunately the links to the issues etc. do not work correct here. Is there a way to repair that? Greetings, --Dick Bos (talk) 08:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Done. Would you mind putting {{header}} templates on them, and you probably want to wrap the headers in <noinclude> tags. Sitting there like that they are just going to trigger all sort of warnings. Alternatively, either move them to template namespace, or just embed them into the root page. Pages like that are always going to get caught up with bot fixes where we want relative links and those sort of non-standard "tricks". We had fixed up all the pages like that and don't really want to back to that as a style again. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Billinghurst,
In the first place: The problem is not fully solved:

• For instance on Index:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu the contents still show "red links"; and:
• The content-pages per issue that I created are alright for vol 3, but not for vol 4. E.g.
  • The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/Issue 692 - alright

versus

• • The Zoologist/4th series, vol 4 (1900)/Issue 703 - red links.

Could you please help me with fixing that?

And concerning your remark: I would be happy to put header-templates on the contents-page of the volume (like I did on the content-pages per issue), but I don't know how to put them in the <noinclude> section. And I think that's necessary, because I use the contents on two different places. May I ask you to create an example of that, for instance for The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/ToC ?

Thanks again, --Dick Bos (talk) 09:56, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dick Bos: I have reverted my edits. I think that my advice in this case is that these ToC constructions should be better housed in the Template: namespace. That way we don't need to worry about header inserts or noincludes, and it just removes these pages well away from bot maintenance for standard fixes around subpage construction. Things in Template: ns wouldn't typically get automated bot edits. I would also say that we can be a bit cleverer in constructs if we tuck them over in template: ns. We can use the template styles, so you don't have to do all that fiddly internal template style code, and instead just have simple tables. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:13, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dick Bos: Okay, I have been in big time and converted the series 4 ToCs to templates, and utilised css styles (see Template:The Zoologist ToC for component parts). Noting that it is not how I would have set it up from scratch, just least disruptive change. We can fiddle with styles.css page to get the best outputs and have them consistent across all ToC, and you just need to tablify, and add very little table styling code. A note with the navigation head, we would and should put those inside the notes field of the header, and I have also template'd that too. Noting that we can do similar things for the internals of the works as each Index: page has an styles.css page to allow this. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:52, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Billinghurst, thank you very much for helping me with this! It is looking great, and I can use it. I am working on 4th series, vol 5 (1901) now, and just inserted February. I first finished the issue page and created the articles in the main namespace, and then copied it to the template for 1901. That works fine. Still one question: on the template-pages the page-numbers are red (the djvu-page-link seems not to work). It's not very important. In the places were it is used, it works fine. But would it be difficult to fix that?

By the way: I plan to learn how I can easily create Wikidata-items for the separate articles in the main namespace, using OpenRefine. Sandra Fauconnier is giving a workshop on WikidataCon2021. I tried some things already, but it does not work good, until now. But once I have found the way to handle it, I'll create all the Wikidata-items for the articles on my list.

Greetings, --Dick Bos (talk) 09:48, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I never bother using {{DJVU page link}} I just let the page numbers be an artefact, informative rather than active. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:36, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Growth projects

Nothing urgent: I just wanted to make sure that mw:Growth/Communities/Wikisource was on someone's radar. It may be of more interest to the Indic Wikisources, but I figure that the English Wikisource is the next beneficiary in line. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-43

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

Recent changes

• The Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [146]
• The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [147]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Community Wishlist Survey. News about the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes will be shown. The event will take place on Wednesday, 27 October at 14:30 UTC. See how to join.

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

20:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Something you might be interested in

This is a transcription request for 2022: Since you seem to be interested in Australian works, the final part of the Australian Encyclopaedia, 1st edition, is apparently going PD in the US next year. Thought I'd let you know in case this wasn't on your radar. Scans of all volumes are apparently located here but it is unfortunately locked, and it probably will be for a long time to come. Google Books has the M to Z volume (1926) which will likely be unlocked next year. PseudoSkull (talk) 10:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Editions of both volumes of edition 1 Australian Encyclopaedia appear to be abundant on AbeBooks, a site I commonly buy books from. PseudoSkull (talk) 10:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-44

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

Recent changes

• There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [148]

Changes later this week

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

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

20:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Journal articles?

Just to check, are these OK here? How should they be structured? I'm thinking about importing the publications of [149] (should all be CC-BY licensed), but there are also stand-alone cases like [150]. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:35, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Wikisource:Periodical guidelines — billinghurst sDrewth 10:20, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel in terms of if they're in scope, they just have to be "published" formally. For example, an actual journal is fine, self-publication or vanity presses might not be (exceptions can be made on a case by case basis). Predatory journals without editorial control are a grey area, but that's not, AFAIK, been relevant yet. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:12, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the info! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:30, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-45

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

Recent changes

• Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [151][152]

Changes later this week

• Wikidata will be read-only for a few minutes on 11 November. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [153]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.

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

20:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-46

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

Recent changes

• Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.

Problems

• Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [154]
• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [155]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).

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22:06, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

al <-> Author with brackets

Hi Billinghurst,

do I understand this discussion right that it has no added value to use template:al, in stead of using brackets? Please let me know, so that I will stop replacing the brackets by the template. Greetings, --Dick Bos (talk) 09:43, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dick Bos: Not certain I understand the question. We simply need to substitute the {{al}} template so that it converts to a traditional style wikilink. Its use in template:New texts breaks the conversion script to json, plus it makes the universal disambiguation tools problematic as they don't cope with our templates. So no problem using it, just subst: its use. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:27, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-47

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the new wikitext mode Beta feature will be heavily improved on a few wikis. Your feedback is welcome.

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

20:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-48

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).

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

21:15, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-49

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

Problems

• MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
• At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
• The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [156]
• An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead. [157]

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

21:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-50

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

Recent changes

• There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [158]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).

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

22:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.

Recent changes

• Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [159]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [160]

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

22:05, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

OCR

@Billinghurst: Hallo Billinghurst, in the below link of the book, the words are totally messed up. And really complex to proofreading. How are you doing the the OCR (automatic text recognition) with the least few losses as possible?

Index:The science of religion.pdf

Thank you! --Riquix (talk) 17:15, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@Riquix: The problem is that the original scan is both too low resolution and has been too aggressively compressed (about 10:1). The PDF file generated from those scans have also been rescaled to about a tenth the resolution of the originals and had massively aggressive compression added to them (a further 10:1). The net result is the really crappy image quality you see in the page image, and really poor OCR quality as you can see in the text edit field. On top of everything, MediaWiki has problems extracting text from PDF files which adds even further degradation of the quality of the text you see.

To try to alleviate this somewhat I have grabbed the original scans and generated a DjVu-format file from them, with very conservative compression settings and at the full resolution available. It's still based on the same scan images (which, as mentioned, are too low resolution and already somewhat compressed) but I have tried to preserve as much of the original data as possible; and since it is in DjVu format MediaWiki will do a little better at extracting the OCR text that is there.

You can see the result at Index:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu. Take a look at a couple of pages and see if you think the results are more or less workable. If so we can move the existing pages from the old index (Index:The science of religion.pdf) over to this index and you can work from there. Xover (talk) 09:12, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Xover Ok thank you! This is normal and again the previous perfect. I move the old pages.--Riquix (talk) 09:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Files to recover from Commons

• Page:KAL801Finalreport.pdf/49 <- c:File:KAL801Finalreport_-_Figure_7.jpg
• Page:KAL801Finalreport.pdf/31 <- c:File:KAL801Finalreport_-_Figure_5.jpg
• Page:KAL801Finalreport.pdf/30 <- c:File:KAL801Finalreport_-_Figure_4.jpg
• Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/97 <- c:File:Territory_in_bird_life_p97.png
• Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/159 <- c:File:Territory_in_bird_lifep158.png

write proposal to remove "categories"

• use of this methodology overrides redirect and disambiguation aspects of templates and hotcat
• makes maintenance harder with pywikibot, AWB and HotCat
• put in a tracker on use
• non-standard and should be avoided unless part of a standard

Done and resolved. Use of category in header can be replaced. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:14, 14 February 2021 (UTC)