This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
Past: State of the Map, the OpenStreetMap equivalent of Wikimania, was held in Milan from 28-30 July. There were two meetups on interactions between Wikimedia and OSM, and Wikidata was mentioned in several sessions, including:
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sebastian Deery until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Bearcat (talk) 21:32, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
Highlights for this newsletter include:
ARBCOM
Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.
BAG
There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.
{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
JOSM/Plugins/Wikipedia/GSoC 2018: 'Floscher' has been working to improve the Wikidata/Wikipedia-related functionality of the 'JOSM' editor for OpenStreetMap
Design Challenges in Named Entity Transliteration - a paper discussing "fundamental design challenges that impact the development of a multilingual state-of-the-art named entity transliteration system", with reference to Wikidata
Quicksilver: Training an #ML system to generate draft Wikipedia articles and Wikidata entries simultaneously, slides by John Bohannon and Vedant Dharnidharka
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jane Delfino until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Rogermx (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible to add somevalue and novalue using QuickStatements, and to use the tool on test.wikidata.org as well.
More properties can be searched using haswbstatement. This includes all properties with "external identifier", "string", "item", "property", "lexeme", "form" and "sense" datatypes, except published in (P1433) and cites (P2860). In addition you may make queries without a specified value.
The page creation and edit rate limit imposed in April will be removed in the next days. However, users who are not bots or administrators are throttled to 90 edits per minute (which was set up on all Wikimedia wikis in May).
These new languages are now supported for monolingual text strings: mid, mnw, gmy, rar, haz, uga. The language doesn't show up in the suggester, but you can save the statement and it will be stored properly.
Hi old friend. I'm glad that this article survived the AfD. My articles on murders and disappearances have constantly been brought to AfD but have survived. I'm glad I've been vindicated. Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 15:23, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that Wikipedia has strict guidelines on the ethnicity parameter, but virtually all of those that appeared on my watchlist were appropriate. Is there any reason for the removal other than sourcing? Because many of them that you altered on my watchlist were already sourced for example Gani Adams and many other Yoruba/Igbo actors.HandsomeBoy (talk) 18:30, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, amazing what happens when one takes a wikibreak. reading the RfC shows a clear consensus, even if I don't agree with the consensus which came about. The statements in support of retaining the ethnicity category in the infobox were often more lengthy and though out than many which supported its removal. Oh well. Guess people have to find out that one of the leaders that actually started the Delano Grape Strike is a Filipino by clicking past the rough information provided in the infobox (which many lay people never get past).--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:44, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think it's more that ethnicity is only relevant in a few cases. Filling (and even listing) all possible fields seems a Wikipedian failing. Perhaps we will find a better solution long term. All the best: RichFarmbrough, 19:40, 3 September 2018 (UTC).[reply]