User talk:Quiddity (WMF)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Category:Flow

Category:Flow, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 16:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Whoops! Agreed with rename, thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikiprojects interested in assisting with Flow's first release

See User talk:Maryana (WMF)#Wikiprojects interested in assisting with Flow's first release.

Congratulations

I've been waiting for this since we worked together at Wikipedia talk:User Advocacy over the summer. I was thinking Wow, wouldn't Quiddity make a great addition to the WMF team and here you are. This is great news for the project. Sorry I didn't notice until just now. Congratulations. Go team!. 64.40.54.186 (talk) 06:48, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you muchly!

Someone told me, many years ago, (and I wish I could find the exact comment and author, but many searches have failed), something along the lines of "you're not a real Wikipedian until you've made, and learned from, 50 mistakes". I imagine the same will apply to this new role.

*/me raises a toast, to new and interesting mistakes/lessons* :) –Quiddity (talk) 17:51, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Comments on flow

1. Too much white space. Needs to be compacted up. We Wikipedians write a lot and need more packed on a page.
2. My fancy signature does not appear to work. Not a huge issue.
3. New topics should appear at the bottom rather than the top. That is Wikipedia convention. Could probably adapt.
4. I like not having to hit an edit button. Big plus as it is faster (much faster) and that will win me over. VE sucked as it was too low.
5. Like the new time since the edit was made. Way better than that old time thing.
6. Nothing under history yet. I assume that is coming.
7. I like the fact that you cannot edit others comments.
8. While need a way to hide personal info / delete legal attacks
9. And refs? We need a way to add references, preferably using the cite template. We discuss refs lots on talk pages

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts from the edge

A few weeks ago, I noticed something on Wikipedia. I noticed it while editing in my volunteer capacity, but as it so happens I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, and what I noticed relates directly to mw:Flow, the product I'm working on. While thinking about how to approach it, it brought home to me the serious dilemma I face every day - an overabundance of choices. I took some notes on my thought processes, to give the community insight into what I'm actually doing as a liaison (because so much is hidden in private email or public-but-off-wiki locations such as IRC/bugzilla/mingle).

What I noticed is that Flow is missing copy of the copyrightwarning, in the edit-mode. Now, I am normally a cautious and critical (in both senses) person. I will happily point out the flaws in something, whilst taking joy in any of the fine points. I was one of the handful of grumpy & conservative commentators and participants in the various 2006 redesigns (main page, help pages, community portal, sidebar, etc). So, never mind my job, it's in my nature to point this out. A year ago, I would have just taken it to the project-talkpage and said, "Here's the problem, and [if I have any] here's the possible solutions." Now, that simple approach has become a lot more complicated.

As a new liaison - someone who listens to the daily meetings and IRC discussions, and receives a ton of daily email from various directions - I'm getting to know the team's decision-trees and workflow-patterns. For a missing feature, with visual elements, that has to be added somewhere, it needs to be:

1. approved by the manager and prioritized,
2. sent through research, brainstorm, and design [created in Flow at a visual and psychological level]
3. planned, developed, and documented [created at a software level]
4. tested
5. approved.

As an editor-but-also-liaison, I could therefor take the problem to any (or all!) of:

• the WT:Flow/Design FAQ wiki talkpage
• bugzilla
• the Core Feature Team's public IRC-channel
• the Core Feature Team's public mingle
• the Core Feature Team's internal mailing-list
• or just send an email to the product manager and other pertinent "1st-step" staffers.

Each of which has potential pros and cons I have to consider.

[I went with the latter, who bounced it off the legal dept, and entered it into mingle for project-management and further work.]

This is a problem that Wikimedians are familiar with - the profusion of places that Wikimedians have to obtain information. If I make the wrong choice, there are potential consequences. If I take it to the public discussion areas: how many editors are going to suggest an idea that doesn't get used (thereby frustrating them [cf. my years of redesign experiences]), and how many editors will be angry that I even bothered them with such an "obvious" decision (and take it as confirmation that "none of it will ever work! nosir!")? I also know:

1. how prone to distraction many deep-thinkers are. ("Instead of fixing it simply/quickly, let's re-imagine the thing entirely!" [cf. my recent simple question about fixing something typographical at the design-mailing-list, which rapidly tangented into a "big-dreams" thread])
2. How much TL;DR happens if I give ALL the background details. [All of this description so far, is of course just a fraction of what goes through my mind]

I also know how difficult design-by-committee is...

• Eg. Since the last successful Main Page redesign in 2005/6 (which was quite acrimonious), all 4 subsequent attempts have stalled out - a few of them did so only after many-months-long-processes that embittered some previously-enthusiastic editors.]
• [Eg.2. the 2006 site sidebar redesign took 7 talkpages and dozens of upset editors. The 2013 sidebar update RfC last month stalled out with no consensus on anything.

(And if I do take it to the public first, how do I phrase it - As an editor, or as a "liaison"? (How many hats can I wear in a single sentence or paragraph? Should I suggest things with one account ("Quiddity") and then reply with another account ("Quiddity (WMF)")? That direction leads to madness!) [I just asked, and found out that our unofficial styleguide for liaisons suggest that in onwiki communications we refer to the staff we work with as "they". It's all very zen and multiperspectival, which makes me happy!])

So, I have to decide "who do I want to bother with this decision?" as well as "how can I help this decision get made, and get the feature implemented, in the most well-considered, widely-acceptable, and efficient way possible?"

I do a lot of thinking about how to describe things. That includes myself, and my job. The latest job description I've devised is: "difficult questions, phrased cohesively". That's what I'm trying to do this week, at least. (and usually a lot briefer than this! It was even longer originally, but Maggie kindly re-arranged and deleted a few parts, to give it more coherence. :) Public or private feedback is welcome. –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Help with bugzilla

Hey N (not sure if you use your name on-wiki). At WP:Village_pump_(technical)#Highlighting_within_an_article_from_a_list_of_regex_expressions, Kipod came up with the following bit of monobook.js code for a request of mine, which works great, as far as it goes:

if (mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'view')
mw.loader.using(['jquery.highlightText', 'jquery.tipsy'], function() {
   mw.util.$content.highlightText( 'interest lua');
   $('.highlight').tipsy({
       title: function() { 
           return 'See \[\[User:Dank/SomePage#' + $(this).text() + '\]\]';
       }
   });
});

That will bold the words "interest" and "lua" anywhere they appear, and when I hover over "interest" for instance, I get a popup saying "interest is highlighted" (see below). The purpose is to allow Wikipedians to bold the appearance of any word of interest (without making any actual changes to the text) and attach notes so they know why it's bolded, but in particular, I'm working on a big list of "common mistakes" that writers and reviewers want help catching (similar to WP:RETF, but more than just typos).

The problem is, the code doesn't allow regex; in fact, it won't even let me bold a two-word phrase (I've tried \ , \\ , \s, "two words", etc. to code the space, no luck). I imagine people who take bugzilla requests are more likely to respond to people they know, so I haven't tried bugzilla before ... could you help me submit this request? - Dank (push to talk) 13:31, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I just inserted a more interesting popup message into the code. - Dank (push to talk) 13:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

It would also be helpful if it were possible to click on the link in the popup, as is the case for the popup gadget at Preferences/Gadgets. - Dank (push to talk) 14:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Hey @Dank: (I prefer just using "Quiddity" everywhere onwiki, to prevent confusion :)

Regarding bugzilla requests, it's much like Wikipedia: Newcomers should be welcome and encouraged, and mistakes are expected and forgiven (and fixed or clarified by experienced users). So, file away at bugzilla, whenever needed (and if you don't already have an account there, bear in mind that it publicly displays your email address, so select that accordingly :)

Regarding the question itself, it looks like Matma Rex has given some newer feedback (and he's always good to listen to), so possibly that solves it? (Fwiw, examples/use-cases always make requests clearer. I found, and like the direction of, User:Dank/Highlighter/list!)

HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 20:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Yep, and thanks much. - Dank (push to talk) 20:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

FLOW feedback

Thank you for soliciting my feedback on wp:Flow. I am sorry I cannot find the time to be more involved. As far as Wp:Breakf is concerned, I believe that if updates and improvements are posted at wt: breakf, more ediors would be engaged.

Here is the little I collected as feedback:

1. I get no notification when someone replies to my post (I think?)
2. No way to thank participants for a post
3. Weird entry on my user contributions when I post on Flow
4. No titles? (I think this one has been fixed?) – but I still cannot create a sub-thread with a new title
5. Indenting is primitive (no reply to reply)
6. Flow is only legible when I view it on a mobile device
7. Why are dates on mobile showing up as “X days ago” while normal screens show a date (I prefer date)
8. Icons need a legend in an obvious location (is there a legend somewhere?)
9. The dot-dot-dot permalinks have disappeared for me – never got a chance to use them
10. I like the idea of having archives with permalinks – is there one somewhere that editors can view? HTH XOttawahitech (talk) 00:25, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
11. Afterthought addition: I thought the idea was to have threads with recent replies bubble to the top? XOttawahitech (talk) 00:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: Thanks. I fully (all too well) understand the difficulties with finding time for the thousands of interesting possibilities around here. :)

1. You should get a Notification when someone clicks "reply" on your posts, or when someone Mentions/links your username (if you have those Echo Notifications enabled). Let me know if this isn't happening.
2. The Thanks extension is being integrated with Flow by a couple of Facebook Open Academy students (mw:Flow/Thanks).
3. The usercontribs/watchlist/Recentchanges elements are currently being overhauled, with more consistent ordering and link names, and an auto-excerpted edit-summary. Once that's in place, they'll ask for fresh feedback.
4. There's a bug with some of the existing topic titles here (bugzilla:61939), but I think it's specific to the code-version that Enwiki is on. We'll see when it updates tomorrow.
   • Regarding subthreads, it's been suggested by myself and other editors, that we might be able to just use "===subheaders===" in root-level posts within a topic.
5. A third level of indenting is on its way. Once we've had a chance to test that out, they'll ask us for further feedback.
6. What do you mean by "Flow is only legible when I view it on a mobile device" ?
7. The "Elapsed-time" (eg. 1 month ago), and "Exact-time" (eg 00:25, 25 February 2014 (UTC)) are an issue I've raised. Some people like the new Elapsed format, others prefer the standard Exact format. I'm hoping it will become a user-preference.
8. Icon Legend: Hmm, that might be a good idea.
9. the dot-dot-dot icons are still there, but darn hard to see, because they're so faint/pale gray. There's a fix (darker icon) on its way.
10. The topics and posts all have permalinks (in the action menu (dotdotdot icon)). Those are real permalinks, which won't break if the topic-title is changed! There's a requested feature to also have "permalinks to topics within a historical context" (ie, we can see some of the topics above and below the targeted topic). They're already paginated, so that should be easy enough. (I say, not knowing anything about how it works! >.> )
11. They're currently adding a "sort topics" mechanism, so that we can re-arrange the view, either by-time, or by-recent-activity. Suggestions for other "sorting methods" that could be implemented, are welcome.

HTH. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Flow newsletter?

Hi Quiddity. Is the November 2013 newsletter the most recent one? Just curious if I missed anything more recent. Also, any ETA on when we might be able to opt-in to test Flow on our user talk pages? Thanks, 28bytes (talk) 21:17, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi @28bytes: It is the most recent one. Partially because the team has been working on a large quantity of underlying-architecture-level code, rather than new features, and partially because there's a front-end overhaul that I was hoping to announce in the 'next' newsletter, but it has been much-delayed since work started on it in January, due to issues with javascript libraries (if I remember and understand correctly). However, getting a new copy of the Newsletter out is near the top of my priority list, and likely to be here by the end of next week, at the latest.

Re: Opt-in for user-pages, the brand-new and currently draft-state set of Annual Goals, mw:Wikimedia Engineering/2014-15 Goals#Editor Engagement - Core Features has "User talk:" as a focus for development, and hopefully opt-in deployment, in quarter 2.

HTH. Thanks again for your interest; More feedback/requests are always appreciated. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! 28bytes (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Some stroopwafels for you!

No reason in particular, I've just been coming across a lot of your contributions recently and I'm glad you're on our side :D EdSaperia (talk) 20:58, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Maintenance script

A "dev" (??) wrote "If its really a problem to have them in contributions i can probably write up a maintenance script to change the owner". Would you please ask Dev to do that, and remove that from my contributions list? Sincere thanks Quiddity (WMF). Eddymason (talk) 13:21, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Eddymason. Per the rest of what the developer wrote, "but generally its not considered a great idea to go back in time and change existing revisions." it would be best to just wait a month, at which point all of us who have these bug-entries will get them cleared automatically. (eg. I have some, too). Manually changing existing-revisions in the database table carries the risk of very-hard-to-fix mistakes, plus it would take time away from fixing other bugs, and creating new features. Would you be ok with waiting patiently for a month? Thanks for considering it. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay. It helps to know that these are present in the contributions lists of others, too. Thanks. Eddymason (talk) 16:55, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Flow in other wiki

Moved from User talk:Quiddity.

When Flow extension will be included in other wiki (2014, 2015, ....)? What we need to do to turn it on some pages in ru-wiki already now?Sunpriat (talk) 12:12, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Sunpriat. Sorry I didn't see this (at my other talkpage) earlier, and just missed you on IRC today.

Re: Timeline - Flow is getting rolled out very slowly, and currently just to pages that request it and seem like appropriate locations to help actively test Flow in a working environment, whilst it is developed - i.e. places that will give ongoing feedback on the many experimental features, and help report any new bugs (and be aware that new bugs will appear), and importantly to help suggest new features - We don't want to just end up with a replacement for talkpages - we want an improvement. (although, there's already a long (and needing an update) list collecting many of the planned/discussed features, that will be developed over the coming months).

Re: To turn it on in new locations: Technically - we currently have to ask the development team (who change a configuration file), and also get approval from the product manager. Practically - Ask your community to test out the sandbox at mw:Talk:Sandbox, and decide where you might want to have it turned on at Ruwiki to begin with. Once you've got consensus for a page (or a few) to be flow-enabled, let me know, and I'll add it to the list. From there, it would be up to the Flow product manager to decide on the exact timeline. It's a slow-but-steady process, just like the development of the software itself. ;)

Feel free to ping me again on IRC, I'm in the UTC-8 timezone. Or keep replying here. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): These two: ru:Википедия:Песочница/Flow, ru:Википедия:Форум/Новости/Flow. Our discussion - ru:Википедия:Форум/Предложения#Включить Flow. Sunpriat (talk) 10:49, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): There is a ticket in Trello about the ruWP pages? Sunpriat (talk) 10:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Sunpriat: There is a ticket. I'll have to ask the product manager what the specific timeline is for the next rollouts, and it might be longer than desired (possibly a few months) because there's an upcoming staff change, but please do keep me uptodate with what the general and specific feedback is from Ruwiki. Thanks again, for all the information and details so far. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Then I copy the important question here from a letter: We have difficulty in understanding and accurate translation of the name "Flow" in translatewiki https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-flow&language=ru&filter=!translated. The WMF has a requirement as it should look like - as a name or word? For example, a company called Apple (en), in a different language it is also called Apple (as a company, or use the transcription Orthographic transcription), but if they will translate it into they language as a fruit then it will be quite a different word. What can we do better - translate like a word or use the transcription or you have not requirement, and you leave the choice to ruWP community? Sunpriat (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@Sunpriat: I've asked, and was given a fairly ambiguous answer: "Generally product names are retained, not translated. But there are variants by product and by language." - So, it appears to be up to the individual translators at translatewiki. You could either use the word "Flow", or a direct translation, or a translation that hints at "workflow" (which is partially where the name comes from), or something else. However, it is (most?) common to retain the original product name.

The same applies to the "Topic" namespace (which was chosen partially because "Thread" was already taken), which you asked about, elsewhere.

Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Can I work on flow?

Hi, I have heard about your new project flow which provides UI rich interface for editing discussion and talk pages. I am skilled in various web based programming laguages such as javascript, PHP etc. I was just wondering if you needed any help with the development of flow, as I am eager to help.

Thank you in advance

NetworkOP (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't put it any better than (or nearly as well as) Zhaofeng Li did at your talkpage! Thanks, both of you. :) --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Quiddity (WMF). Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 00:59, 24 January 2015 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Go Phightins! 00:59, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Notifications

Wikipedia_talk:Notifications#Pings_not_working could use some attention. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:42, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the nudge. --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Flow revert warring

"there is a lot of opinion and many inaccuracies" Could you please detail the inaccuracies since you used that as a pretext to revert-war the link off of the page? Cla68 (talk) 05:12, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

test

Quiddity test ping. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

test again. Quiddity (talk) 18:28, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Quiddity (WMF). You have new messages at Northamerica1000's talk page.
Message added 16:35, 23 February 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

On my talk page, a user has requested help with errors that have occurred on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast talk page per using Flow. I am unable to fix the matter on the project's talk page. Please see the discussion. Thanks. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:35, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

global.css

Greetings! I've tried several variations to change the "you have new messages" text color in my global.css and none of them works right. Feel like helping me out? —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 02:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

@ATinySliver: You need to add the !important at the end of each variable (before the semi-colon), per my example. I don't remember enough about CSS to explain why! Sorry, hope that helps. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:46, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

That did it. Thank you. :) —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 05:15, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Canada and United States affiliates meetup

	Wikimedia Canada	Wikimedia DC	Wikimedia New York City	The GLAM-Wiki US Consortium	Cascadia Wikimedians User Group	New England Wikimedians	North Carolina Triangle Wikipedians
	You are invited to attend the Canada and United States affiliates meetup at Wikimania 1015, Friday, July 17 at 17:30 and Saturday, July 18 at 18:00. Please RSVP and state your topic preference(s)!
	Wikimedia Canada	Wikimedia DC	Wikimedia New York City	The GLAM-Wiki US Consortium	Cascadia Wikimedians User Group	New England Wikimedians	North Carolina Triangle Wikipedians

Flow survey

[moved across from user talk:Quiddity...]

Could you please quickly point me to the results of this survey: Flow/Second contributor survey

Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@Kudpung:, That survey was not sent/used at all (I.e. it was drafted, but nothing more. I don't recall why not.). I've now added a note at the top of mw:Flow/Second contributor survey to indicate this. Thanks, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:02, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Slightly off topic question

I know that you're working on Flow, but I've got a question about a different WMF project. Is anyone still working on improving the article creation experience here on en.wp? I see there were proposals at mw:Article Creation Workflow and mw:Wikipedia article creation, but nothing seems to have come of those. Conifer (talk) 20:39, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Conifer. Afaik, the Wikipedia:Drafts namespace was the last thing that that team worked on/with, before the individuals went off to other teams (or left the WMF).

Much like every area of wikimedia, there is a huge to-do list, and not quite enough people, or hours in the day, to improve everything concurrently. :(

Eventualism is my/our only hope! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt answer. Sorry to hear that nothing's underway at the moment. Conifer (talk) 21:49, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about this

...but I can not figure out how to edit this page and wanted to comment (since if I am reading the village pump page right you opened up the page for comments) if that's ok. My suggestion is to enable it site wide for a week so everyone can experience it then make it a preference to opt in for. In this way, we all get to try it, those that like it can keep it, and those that don't can return to whichever older system they prefer. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:47, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi TomStar81, you should be able to just click "Reply" under any of the posts there, or in the box at the very bottom (screenshot). If that doesn't work, could you let me know what browser and OS you use? (you can also do sandbox tests at Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page)

In reply to your good suggestion itself: User-preferences are what I always asked for, when I was purely a volunteer editor; but now that I'm more familiar with how software development works, I can understand why developers, product managers, designers, etc, are very reluctant to "just make it a preference". This is (IIUC) because it leads to more complex code, which: increases the chances of problems, increases the number of user-setting-variables that have to be tested-against, increases the maintenance burden over the longterm, and increases the number of things to consider when adding further features that affect that area of the code/UI. Hence, whilst it can be a 'quick fix' at the time, and was perhaps used as such too much in the early days, it leads to more difficulties in the longterm. This is a small part of why we don't have dozens of vastly different site-skins! HTH, and thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Sanity check. Pasting here too.

Year	ICM location	Medalists	Institution (At the time of receiving the medal)	Birthplace	Current/Last residency	Current/Last Institution
1936	Oslo	Lars Ahlfors	University of Helsinki		United States	Harvard University
		Jesse Douglas	Massachusetts Institute of Technology		United States	City College of New York
1950	Cambridge	Laurent Schwartz	University of Nancy		France	Université de Paris VII
		Atle Selberg	Institute for Advanced Study		United States	Institute for Advanced Study

ATTENTION! I NEED AN OVERSIGHT

Can you oversight a Flow post? Alsee (talk) 20:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

@Alsee: I cannot. Please see Wikipedia:Oversight for the standard 'who to email' instructions. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I got it cleaned up. My Watchlist token got caught in a full-page copy. Alsee (talk) 20:37, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Not cleaned up. New bug report. Oversight fails. Can you get someone to remove the post? Alsee (talk) 20:40, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

New bug report. The full page copy appears to be so large that it's blocking my access to the menu item to hide the post Alsee (talk)

Working on it... Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Thx. It's not critical info, but jeeze this is getting ridiculous. No oversight AND no hide bugs, at the same time. Alsee (talk) 21:08, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

@Alsee: After much testing with a number of oversighters, we have been unable to reproduce the bug (even after I reproduced the post that you made, using my own screen (and redacting the token)). At the moment, I'm suspecting either a cacheing error, or some confusion about timing and the need to refresh the page to see some updates. I'll ask Keegan to see if he specifically can reproduce, tomorrow, but 3 other oversighters had success.

(Just FYI, the hide/delete/suppress links are all duplicated on the History page, so even posts that include crazy divs that partially cover the dropdown menu, can be moderated :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:16, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

The community is requesting restoration of article creation to unregistered editors

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This has been discussed in various places and consensus has been achieved in each.

The relevant parts of the latest discussion this week at User talk:Jimbo Wales are as follows:

When they search a topic and there's no article let the comment be

You may create the page "X" but consider checking the search result below to see whether the topic is already covered ...

The proposal to allow article creation by unregistered editors within pending changes has been discussed at the Village Pump and in a thread here which was archived yesterday morning ...

Pending changes reviewers do not fret - any autoconfirmed editor will be able to review these articles - the first edit by an autoconfirmed editor (whether pending changes reviewer or not) will automatically remove the article from pending changes so that the content becomes visible to the general public.

Please ask the developers to implement the change. 109.156.12.254 (talk) 18:12, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

That content doesn't appear anywhere except on this page. I'd be happy to see links to the discussions you mention. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes links to these discussions would help. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to see links to the discussions. I was not aware of them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:25, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Of possible interest is a very similar proposal [1] at the VP in July initiated by a ban-evading sock. Voceditenore (talk) 09:28, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

See also this comment reverted at User talk:Jimbo Wales 3 days ago as "Sock of banned user". It contains the quoted text above virtually verbatim. Voceditenore (talk) 09:41, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

At the risk of appearing to partially side with the intent of banned socks, I think that the message-text could use some updating, myself. But I don't think that anons need direct page-creation in mainspace, we already have page-creation capability in draftspace -- but since draftspace is a new feature, perhaps nobody has yet considered updating the redlink-info-page-wording? Here is an example topic, a redlinked mechanical engineering professor, Nerat_Veziroglu, which upon being clicked says this:

• Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Nerat Veziroglu in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.
• Log in or create an account to start the Nerat Veziroglu article, alternatively use the Article Wizard, or add a request for it.

Here is a proposed wording-adjustment:

• Wikipedia does not have an article in mainspace with this exact name. Please search for Nerat Veziroglu in Wikipedia mainspace to check for alternative titles or spellings.
• Someone may already be working on creating this topic, so you may wish to search draftspace and userspace by clicking here.[2]
• Log in or create an account to start the Nerat Veziroglu article in mainspace.
• You may also click Draft:Nerat Veziroglu to immediately create a draft-article (but please first search for an existing draft you can help improve,[3] plus see further instructions at WP:42 and WP:AFC), or alternatively use the Article Wizard
• If you are not yet WP:BOLD enough to try editing yourself, you may add a request for somebody else to do the work.

This is a rough stab, not fully polished, obviously. The advantage of the proposed wording, is that it explicitly encourages people to use draftspace, for immediate gratification. The 'disadvantage' is that the proposal fails to try and channel them into the register-first-edit-second behavior, plus makes it one-click-easy to manually search for drafts. p.s. And no, I didn't make the Draft:T._Nerat_Veziroğlu body-prose specifically for this comment about wording.  :-)     That was a serendipitous coincidence. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:42, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. The verbiage will put people off. Why do you think it is advantageous to try and channel them into the register - first - edit - second behavior? Last time I looked there were nearly 500 drafts waiting in draftspace. Add to that the backlog in AfC and the number of articles which cannot be improved by other editors is approaching four figures. This is the antithesis of crowdsourcing. If you want new editors you have to incentivise people to work here. People like to bounce ideas off each other, not work in a vacuum. Putting their work on ice for six months is not the recipe for attracting people. How many other journals work in this manner? None. 86.191.193.238 (talk) 13:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Conclusion

To the IP(s): Please stop revert-warring, it doesn't help. This page is not the appropriate place to discuss it. Discuss it elsewhere, and once there is consensus (by vastly more than 2 people) create an account on phabricator and file a task there. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notifications at Commons

Hi Quiddity, I apologize for reporting this here but I'm absolutely clueless with noticeboards at Commons, Basically the new notification system has returned there and all image categories are appearing like this
Just thought I should make you aware :)
Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 19:48, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

@Davey2010: I can't reproduce this problem. I've tried with a variety of accounts, and in Chrome and Firefox, and even tried enabling every single gadget.

Aha! After looking at various IRC channels, I think the problem was already reverted.

It was not related to notifications. - (Over-simplified: All code in 'core' and in all extensions is pushed to the active sites on a weekly schedule (at minimum). For Commons, that is Wednesday. (see wikitech:Deployments/One week for the overview, and the parent page for details and links specifically about this week (continuously updated). I.e. hundreds (thousands?) of things change once a week, every week, though most of them won't be directly visible to editors.)

In this particular case, the bug is tracked/discussed at phab:T113511. It seems they were trying to clear up what-appeared-to-be-duplicated-code (described in phab:T110709), but actually turned out to be necessary. HTH. :-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah it's back to normal now :), That all sounds complicated , Well least it's all fixed now :), Thank you for looking in to it & replying :), Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 20:42, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and happy new year

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Merry Christmas and happy new year. (:

--Pine^✉

Notification about disabling the Wikipedia collections tool

Thank you for using the collections feature in Wikipedia beta! Due to technical and moderation issues, we will be turning off this experimental feature. Your collections will be available for viewing and export until March 1st. If you would like to save your collection as links on a special Wikipedia page, please fill out the following form. If you are interested in giving your feedback about Wikipedia Collections please do so here.

Thanks,

Jon Katz
Product manager, Wikimedia Foundation
Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

• MediaWiki now supports the semantic web standards of Microdata and RDFa 1.0. On Wikimedia projects, a configuration change must be requested in order to enable RDFa 1.0. [4] [5]

Problems

• Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [6]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [7]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with part of the Architecture committee, which will discuss a few topics. The meeting will be on 30 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The Architecture committee has sent a summary of new and ongoing RFC discussions.

Future changes

• Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [8]
• Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

• Last week Tech News said the new MediaWiki version would come to wikis from 21 March to 23 March. The right dates were 22 March to 24 March.

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

19:37, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

cc

i need someone to speak.. Eljayajra (talk) 16:26, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@Eljayajra: Hi, how can I help? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-23

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

Recent changes

• MathML/SVG is now the default <math> rendering mode on Wikimedia projects. [9][10]

Changes this week

• The history page can tell you if a page on your watchlist was updated since you last visited it. This now works the same way in Vector as in other skins. The change broke local designs on some wikis. This will be fixed this week. [11]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).

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

20:43, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016: IdeaLab Workshops

Wikimania 2016 is almost here! Mjohnson (WMF) and I are running two workshops for IdeaLab during the conference, and you are invited to join us for either (or both!)

If you have a proposal or idea you are thinking about, and would like a space to work on it on your own or with others, please consider joining us for either the Thursday or Saturday sessions. We'll discuss a little about IdeaLab and how it works, and the rest of the time is space for idea building. You can also use this session to ask questions about Wikimedia Foundation grants that are available if your proposal or idea may need funding. Thanks, and see you at the conference! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

NPP

Hi Nick.I've left a message for you on your MediaWiki talk page. If possible, please ping me on my WP talk page when you answer. Best, --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:59, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Ping changes

Hello Q. Thanks for your posts at this thread Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Notification issue. In trying to help another editor in an unrelated manner I was reading the Wikipedia:Notifications page and found that there have been no updates to the info there to take into account how things have changed. I am sure that you are busy so you might not have time to get to the needed updates so I have also posted a request here Wikipedia talk:Notifications#Update needed. Thanks for your time and best regards. MarnetteD|Talk 16:14, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for moving the post I made today to the proper spot. I have never posted to VPM - and still haven't I guess :-) I have added the page to my watchlist. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 00:31, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello again Q. Well we tried to get more input but enough time has passed that I think that you should proceed as you see fit. Whether it be your suggestion or a combination of Jo-Jo's and yours I think it is time to move ahead on this. I know you are busy so whatever you think is best is fine with me. MarnetteD|Talk 00:48, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added it to my to-do list. I won't promise an ETA, but a.s.a.p. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. Warning boxes have been added to the top of both pages notifying people that the info is out of date so that should help until you get a chance to work out how to proceed. I find it kinda funny that we have gone from the big "Orange Bar of Death" to a red and blue ping that are so small that they are hard to see for aging eyes like mine :-) Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 22:11, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-29

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

• Due to the rollback, new sorting of Notifications on the Fly-Out Menus has been deployed with a delay. [12]
• Due to the rollback, the daily special patch deployment process has been changed. [13]
• In notifications, "Messages" are now called "Notices". [14]

Problems

• On July 12 all wikis were rolled back to MediaWiki 1.28.0-wmf.8 due to a problem in the log-in system. [15][16]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
• Special:Log now has a help link. [17]
• The RevisionSlider can be tested on the beta cluster. From 22 July, it will be available as a beta feature at: German Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia. [18][19][20]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "Devise plan for a cross-wiki watchlist back-end". The meeting will be on 20 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join. [21]

Future changes

• User scripts and bots can no longer use http:// to edit wiki pages. [22][23]
• Gerrit is going to be updated. Developers are invited to test it. [24]

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

20:13, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

VPT Breakout

As far as the 2 kinds of "patrolling" go - if they are actually different things - we may want to discuss retiring the "old" one - from what I can tell the classic "Mark this page as patrolled" type action (&action=markedpatrolled) doesn't normally have an "undo" at all - and if *I* go to a page I get this dialog, if I use another account I get the "bar" format that allows for marking as reviewed or unreviewed - is there a different shell in place because I am an admin? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:46, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

It's a tangled system of overlapping code and terminology. As best/clearly as I can figure it:

• There's the now-ancient core feature of mw:Help:Patrolled edits, which enables marking both individual edits as "patrolled", as well as pages as "patrolled". It causes the yellow background highlighting in Special:NewPages and red exclamation mark in Special:RecentChanges.
• There's mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs (c.2007), in which "Patrolling of reviewable pages is disabled, but flagged revisions are marked as patrolled in Recent Changes." - but Enwiki only uses this for ~3,000 articles and calls it Wikipedia:Pending changes. It puts the box in the top-right corner. I've never been familiar with this feature.
• There's mw:Extension:PageTriage (c.2011), which implements Special:NewPagesFeed.

Re: Log items - I'll answer at VPT.

Re: "retiring the old one", probably not, or at least not anytime soon. Whilst many editors like NPP, many prefer using RC or Special:NewPages. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm guessing I have something broken in my user scripts that is breaking "pagetriage" for me - I can never get the triage bar to show (but I do get the "Mark this page patrolled" link). On my other account I don't get that link, I just get the triage bar. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:43, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Little more detail, on my other account the [Mark this page as patrolled] link appears momentarily, then is replaced by the triage bar. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Part 2: regarding "Pending changes" (FlaggedRevisions) is the acceptance mechanism just tied to group value - or to a permission in a group? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:49, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

(You redacted this question, but I already wrote the reply! Replacing, just in case helpful). This is what the "review" and "autoreview" user-rights are connected to. Software is always tied to a user-right, and never (or rarely) a user-group. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Please use accurate edit summaries. Your edit summary for this edit: [25] stated that you were making the statement "shorter and more precise". In fact, you were entirely changing the meaning of what was said, since your edit removed totally mention of Flow replacing talk pages. I've correspondingly reverted that edit. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:27, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: The section that is linked to, is about the survey. The survey is about satisfaction with Flow. The section is not discussing whether or not to replace talkpages with Flow (especially not at English Wikipedia). Hence the original wording was inaccurate and potentially misleading or confusing, and I was trying to make it more precise/accurate. Perhaps you could take a second look? Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

NPP & AfC

A dedicated venue for combined discussion about NPP & AfC where a work group is also proposed has been created. See: Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:40, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	For helping me with notifications. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:23, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

FYI

Changes made to LilaTretikov's user page. I left the edit as-is except for a few typoes and such that really called for a fix. Happy for others to decide what tense should be maintained etc. Samsara 03:43, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer granted

Hello Quiddity (WMF). Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.

• Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
• You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
• Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
• Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

New Page Review - newsletter (November 2016)

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Breaking the back of the backlog

We now have 804 New Page Reviewers! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog. Now it's time for action.

Mid July to 01 Oct 2016

If each reviewer does only 10 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
Let's get that over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.

Second set of eyes

Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work. Read about it at the new Monitoring the system section in the tutorial.

Getting the tools we need - 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey: Please vote

With some tweaks to their look, and some additional features, Page Curation and New Pages Feed could easily be the best tools for patrollers and reviewers. We've listed most of what what we need at the 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey. Voting starts on 28 November - please turn out to make our bid the Foundation's top priority. Please help also by improving or commenting on our Wishlist entry at the Community Wishlist Survey. Many other important user suggestions are listed at at Page Curation.

---

Originally sent to all New Page Reviewers 26 November 2016. This message sent manually. Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)).

BBC 12-hour Editathon - large influx of new pages & drafts expected

New Page Reviewers are asked to be especially on the look out 08:00-20:00 UTC (that's local London time - check your USA and AUS times) on Thursday 8 December for new pages. The BBC together with Wikimedia UK is holding a large 12-hour editathon. Many new articles and drafts are expected. See BBC 100 Women 2016: How to join our edit-a-thon. Follow also on #100womenwiki, and please, don't bite the newbies :) (user:Kudpung for NPR. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC))

New Page Review - newsletter #2

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Please help reduce the New Page backlog

This is our second request. The backlog is still growing. Your help is needed now - just a few minutes each day.

Getting the tools we need

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT TO VOTE

• Improve the tools: Vote here.
• Reduce your review load: Vote here

---

Sent to all New Page Reviewers. Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:55, 11 December 2016 (UTC) .

Test announcement

Summary: There's a new opt-in Beta Feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. Please go try it out.

We in the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing department are responsible for making editing better for all our editors, new and experienced alike. We've been slowly improving the visual editor based on feedback, user tests, and feature requests. However, that doesn't work for all our user needs: whether you need to edit a wikitext talk page, create a template, or fix some broken reference syntax, sometimes you need to use wikitext, and many experienced editors prefer it.

Consequently, we've planned a "wikitext mode" for the visual editor for a long time. It provides as much of the visual editor's features as possible, for those times that you need or want wikitext. It has the same user interface as the visual editor, including the same toolbar across the top with the same buttons. It provides access to the citoid service for formatting citations, integrated search options for inserting images, and the ability to add new templates in a simple dialog. Like in the visual editor, if you paste in formatted text copied from another page, then formatting (such as bolding) will automatically be converted into wikitext.

All wikis now have access to this mode as a Beta Feature. When enabled, it replaces your existing wikitext editor everywhere. If you don't like it, you can reverse this at any time by turning off the Beta Feature in your preferences. We don't want to surprise anyone, so it's strictly an opt-in-only Beta Feature. It won't switch on automatically for anyone, even if you have previously checked the box to "Automatically enable most beta features".

The new wikitext edit mode is based on the visual editor, so it requires JavaScript (as does the current wikitext editor). It doesn't work with gadgets that have only been designed for the older one (and vice versa), so some users will miss gadgets they find important. We're happy to work with gadget authors to help them update their code to work with both editors. We're not planning to get rid of the current main wikitext editor on desktop in the foreseeable future. We're also not going to remove the existing ability to edit plain wikitext without JavaScript. Finally, though it should go without saying, if you prefer to continue using the current wikitext editor, then you may so do.

This is an early version, and we'd love to know what you think so we can make it better. Please leave feedback about the new mode on the feedback page. You may write comments in any language. Thank you.

James Forrester (Product Manager, Editing department, Wikimedia Foundation) 19:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-51

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 9 January 2017.
• The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

• Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English. [26]
• Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. [27]

Problems

• Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. [28]

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings

• The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is done. It decides what the Community Tech team will work on during 2017. You can see the results.

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

20:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Merry Merry

Season's Greetings, Quiddity (WMF)! At this wonderful time of year, I would like to give season’s greetings to all the fellow Wikipedians I have interacted with in the past! May you have a wonderful holiday season! MarnetteD|Talk 19:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

New Page Review - newsletter No.2

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

A HUGE backlog

We now have 804 New Page Reviewers!
Most of us requested the user right at PERM, expressing a wish to be able to do something about the huge backlog, but the chart on the right does not demonstrate any changes to the pre-user-right levels of October.

Hitting 17,000 soon

The backlog is still steadily growing at a rate of 150 a day or 4,650 a month. Only 20 reviews a day by each reviewer over the next few days would bring the backlog down to a managable level and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
It didn't work in time to relax for the Xmas/New Year holidays. Let's see if we can achieve our goal before Easter, otherwise by Thanksgiving it will be closer to 70,000.

Second set of eyes

Remember that we are the only guardians of quality of new articles, we alone have to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged by non-Reviewer patrollers and that new authors are not being bitten.

Abuse

This is even more important and extra vigilance is required considering Orangemoody, and

1. this very recent case of paid advertising by a Reviewer resulting in a community ban.
2. this case in January of paid advertising by a Reviewer, also resulting in a community ban.
3. This Reviewer is indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry.

Coordinator election

Kudpung is stepping down after 6 years as unofficial coordinator of New Page Patrolling/Reviewing. There is enough work for two people and two coords are now required. Details are at NPR Coordinators; nominate someone or nominate yourself. Date for the actual suffrage will be published later.

---

Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review-Patrolling: Coordinator elections

Your last chance to nominate yourself or any New Page Reviewer, See Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination. Elections begin Monday 20 February 23:59 UTC. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:17, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review - newsletter No.3

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed.

Still a MASSIVE backlog

We now have 804 New Page Reviewers but despite numerous appeals for help, the backlog has NOT been significantly reduced.
If you asked for the New Page Reviewer right, please consider investing a bit of time - every little helps preventing spam and trash entering the mainspace and Google when the 'NO_INDEX' tags expire.

---

Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review - Newsletter No.4

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Since rolling out the right in November, just 6 months ago, we now have 804 reviewers, but the backlog is still mysteriously growing fast. If every reviewer did just 55 reviews, the 22,000 backlog would be gone, in a flash, schwoop, just like that!

But do remember: Rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling and the use of correct CSD criteria are essential to good reviewing. Do not over-tag. Make use of the message feature to let the creator know about your maintenance tags. See the tutorial again HERE. Get help HERE.

Stay up to date with recent new page developments and have your say, read THIS PAGE.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:43, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Flow-enabled

Template:Flow-enabled has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 04:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Survey Invite

I'm working on a study of political motivations and how they effect editing. I'd like to ask you to take a survey. The survey should take 5 minutes. Your survey responses will be kept private. Our project is documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_%2B_Politics.

Survey Link: http://uchicago.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_80J3UDCpLnKyWTH?Q_DL=6ybvGHdBVVUDi1D_80J3UDCpLnKyWTH_MLRP_5niSoQk5akyLYDb&Q_CHL=gl

I am asking you to participate in this study because you are a frequent editor of pages on Wikipedia that are of political interest. We would like to learn about your experiences in dealing with editors of different political orientations.

Sincere thanks for your help! Porteclefs (talk) 20:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 18,511 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
• Some editors are committing to work specifically on patrolling new pages on 15 July. If you have not reviewed new pages in a while, this might be a good time to be involved. Please remember that quality of patrolling is more important than quantity, that the speedy deletion criteria should be followed strictly, and that ovetagging for minor issues should be avoided.

Technology update:

• Several requests have been put into Phabractor to increase usability of the New Pages Feed and the Page Curation toolbar. For more details or to suggest improvements go to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements
• The tutorial has been updated to include links to the following useful userscripts. If you were not aware of them, they could be useful in your efforts reviewing new pages:
  • User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js adds a link to the new pages feed and page curation toolbar to your top toolbar on Wikipedia
  • User:The Earwig/copyvios.js adds a link in your side toolbox that will run the current page through

General project update:

• Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers, Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Noticeboard has been marked as historical. Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers is currently the most active central discussion forum for the New Page Patrol project. To keep up to date on the most recent discussions you can add it to your watchlist or visit it periodically.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Greetings! Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include: BAG BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are now members of the BAG (see RfBAG/BU Rob13 and RfBAG/Cyberpower678 3). BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are both administrators; the former operates BU RoBOT which does a plethora of tasks, while the latter operates Cyberbot I (which replaces old bots), Cyberbot II (which does many different things), and InternetArchiveBot which combats link rot. Welcome to the BAG! BRFAs We currently have 12 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing! Discussions Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes are still ongoing. The RFC on COSMETICBOT has concluded with "a clear consensus exists to adopt the proposed language". The new wording is now live. The venue for bot appeals and reexaminations has been changed from WP:BRFA to WP:BOTN (see discussion) The Wikipedia:Bot owner's noticeboard is now the Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard (see discussion). New things A historical correction was made to WP:BOTPOL (see discussion). WP:HIDEBOTS now mentions how to hide all bots from your watchlist, not only specific bots. The phabricator ticket T162685 is now closed, and we now have "#Bots-Framework" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked. Wikibits.js has been removed (see discussion). 21 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). WP:BOTISSUE has been updated to mention that BAG members can act as neutral mediators in bot-related disputes. WP:INTERWIKIBOT has been updated to reflect the post-February 2013 practice of putting interwiki links on Wikidata, rather than on Wikipedia (see discussion). Upcoming HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ). Wikimania Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know! Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC) (You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Contacting the WMF Legal department

I am contacting you because you are listed as a Community Liaison.

I am putting together a proposal at User:Guy Macon/Proposals/CAPTCHA (part of a series of proposals at User:Guy Macon/Proposals).

In my opinion, the next logical step is to inform someone at the WMF legal department. My problem is that there does not appear to be any noticeboard associated with the WMF legal department and every member of the WMF legal department appears to have a user talk page that cannot be edited.

I am unwilling to use email or post to a mailing list because I want everything involved with my proposals to be open and accessible through the history of the page where the discussion occurred. Can you suggest a way that I can contact legal regarding this matter? -Guy Macon (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Note: this was answered elsewhere. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 16,991 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.

Technology update:

• Rentier has created a NPP browser in WMF Labs that allows you to search new unreviewed pages using keywords and categories.

General project update:

• The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working with the community to implement the autoconfirmed article creation trial. The trial is currently set to start on 7 September 2017, pending final approval of the technical features.
• Please remember to focus on the quality of review: correct tagging of articles and not tagbombing are important. Searching for potential copyright violations is also important, and it can be aided by Earwig's Copyvio Detector, which can be added to your toolbar for ease of use with this user script.
• To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:33, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 14304 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
• Currently there are 532 pages in the backlog that were created by non-autoconfirmed users before WP:ACTRIAL. The NPP project is undertaking a drive to clear these pages from the backlog before they hit the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing a few today!

Technology update:

• The Wikimedia Foundation is currently working on creating a new filter for page curation that will allow new page patrollers to filter by extended confirmed status. For more information see: T175225

General project update:

• On 14 September 2017 the English Wikipedia began the autoconfirmed article creation trial. For a six month period, creation of articles in the mainspace of the English Wikipedia will be restricted to users with autoconfirmed status. New users who attempt article creation will now be redirected to a newly designed landing page.
• Before clicking on a reference or external link while reviewing a page, please be careful that the site looks trustworthy. If you have a question about the safety of clicking on a link, it is better not to click on it.
• To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 12,878 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
• We have successfully cleared the backlog of pages created by non-confirmed accounts before ACTRIAL. Thank you to everyone who participated in that drive.

Technology update:

• Primefac has created a script that will assist in requesting revision deletion for copyright violations that are often found in new pages. For more information see User:Primefac/revdel.

General project update:

• The Article Wizard has been updated and simplified to match the layout style of the new user landing page. If you have not yet seen it, take a look.
• To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 12713 pages. Please consider reviewing even just a few pages each day! If everyone helps out, it will really put a dent in the backlog.
• Currently the backlog stretches back to March and some pages in the backlog have passed the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing some of them!

Outreach and Invitations:

• If you know other editors with a good understanding of Wikipedia policy, invite them to join NPP by dropping the invitation template on their talk page with: {{subst:NPR invite}}. Adding more qualified reviewers will help with keeping the backlog manageable.

New Year New Page Review Drive

• A backlog drive is planned for the start of the year, beginning on January 1st and running until the end of the month. Unique prizes will be given in tiers for both the total number of reviews made, as well as the longest 'streak' maintained.
• Note: quality reviewing is extremely important, please do not sacrifice quality for quantity.

General project update:

• ACTRIAL has resulted in a significant increase in the quality of new submissions, with noticeably fewer CSD, PROD, and BLPPROD candidates in the new page feed. However, the majority of the backlog still dates back to before ACTRIAL started, so consider reviewing articles from the middle or back of the backlog.
• The NPP Browser can help you quickly find articles with topics that you prefer to review from within the backlog.
• To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. — TonyBallioni (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

New Years new page backlog drive

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Announcing the NPP New Year Backlog Drive!

We have done amazing work so far in December to reduce the New Pages Feed backlog by over 3000 articles! Now is the time to capitalise on our momentum and help eliminate the backlog!

The backlog drive will begin on January 1^st and run until January 29^th. Prize tiers and other info can be found HERE.

Awards will be given in tiers in two categories:

• The total number of reviews completed for the month.
• The minimum weekly total maintained for all four weeks of the backlog drive.

NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. — TonyBallioni (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your efforts in reviewing new pages!

The NPP backlog at the end of the drive with the number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Red is older than 90 days, orange is between 90 and 30 days old, and green is younger than 30 days.

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
• We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!

New Year Backlog Drive results:

• We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!

General project update:

• ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
• Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Magioladitis 2 happened, leading to further restrictions on Magioladitis (decision, summary).
• Betacommand 3 was proposed to be amended to lift the indefinite ban on Δ, but was unsuccessful (decision).
• A motion concerning Crosswiki issues (mostly concerning Wikidata) was passed (see discussion).

BAG

• Hersfold was removed from the BAG due to long term inactivity.

BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things

• WP:BOTDICT, a dictionary of common bot-related terms (see discussion).
• 6 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey happened. Two bot-related proposal passed, #6 deploy Article Alerts to other languages and #10 Commons deletion notification bot, although other entries may affect bots as well.
• Category:Wikipedia bots and its subcategories has had some cleanup. Bot-related pages that were historically important but are no longer of interests can be found in Category:Wikipedia bots (historical)
• The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
• You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.

Upcoming

• HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ).

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

---

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

New Page Review Newsletter No.10

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

• ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.

Paid editing

• Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

• The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
• Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies. A further discussion is currently taking place at: Can a subject specific guideline invalidate the General Notability Guideline?

Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled

• While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.

News

• The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.

---

To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

• WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

• Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

• A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

• There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

• Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

• The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
• Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

• A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

• Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
• The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

---

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

• As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
• Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
• Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

---

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. ()

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules

• New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
• Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
• Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.

Editathons

• Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

The Signpost

• The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

---

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Greetings!

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.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

• 24 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
• 5 open BRFAs and 3 BRFAs in need of BAG attention (see live status).
• 54 approved bot tasks since the start of 2018. Of note, Community Tech bot 5 (the #10 Wish on the 2017 Community Survey) was approved to notify users concerning problematic images and files from Wikimedia Commons.

Also

• If you're a bot operator that can help with Tidy/Linter error cleanup (see discussion, discussion), please file a BRFA!
• 8 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion, discussion, discussion).

Discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

• Use of tags by bots – Exploring the use of a new 'bot' tag.
• Mass page moves – Bot policy question/clarification about mass moves.
• Creation of redirects – Bot policy question/clarification about the creation of redirects.
• Guidance on disruptive use of semi–automated tools? – Related to meatbots (see also MOS discussion, which resulted in small addition to MOS:VAR).
• Discussion concerning WP:BOTFLAG/WP:RC – A reminder that bots should use the bot flag when it makes sense to use it (see also VPT discussion and CREATEBOT update).
• Out of curiosity... (to all bot operators) – BotPasswords vs OAuth usage amongst bot operators.
• Introducing Toolhub – Toolhub is looking for feedback.

New things

• {{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).
• Massive updates and improvements have been made to Citation bot in the past few months (see discussions, discussions, discussions). You can activate the bot here, amongst other methods.
• HTML Tidy has been phased out (see Tech News #28).
• {{Newbot}} has been reorganized a bit (diff). In particular, it links to previously approved BRFAs (see discussion).
• Wikipedia:Bots#See also has been reorganized a bit (diff).
• The bot dictionary has two new entries, context bot and context-sensitive edit.
• The bot request header has been updated to include better guidance (see discussion).
• The subcategories of Category:Wikipedia bot requests for approval have been sorted in a consistent manner to make past BRFAs easier to find.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

---

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Test

test. Quiddity (talk) 20:25, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

test 2

test 2. Quiddity (talk) 20:25, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news

• The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.

As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.

• There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Coordinator tasks for more info to see if you can help out.

Other

• A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

• Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
• If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
• Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
• The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
• The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget. In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions. MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues. User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page) User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50). User:Primefac/revdel.js(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you. User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link. User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion. User:Evad37/rater.js(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Quiddity (WMF), thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal

• There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
• Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!

Project updates

• ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
• There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

New scripts

• User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Can

you please clarify on the usage of Template:MFDWarning-NPF? Thanks~!

@Winged Blades of Godric: Hi. I believe those templates were all part of an attempt (one of the many attempts over the years) to make our user-welcome/warning/notice templates a bit more friendly and a bit more concise.

You can see some old details in this slide-deck from Wikimania 2012 (the TLDR is in pages 6 and 7) File:Template_A-B_testing_presentation_deck.pdf and much more in m:Template_A/B_testing.

That particular attempt is from before my time as a staffer, and I don't recall taking part in the endeavour as a volunteer, but I do generally appreciate that many newcomers can feel 'bitten' by some of our more bluntly phrased templates (or excessively detailed (YMMV!) overviews of issues), or they might miss the crucial information if it's surrounded by too many other points or a deluge of links.

I think the "...-NPF" templates are meant to be subst'd, and hence the "unused" or "no transclusions" is a false indicator, however some of them were also not ever utilized by editors (after being prototyped) and hence will also not turn up in a search for excerpts in the usertalk namespace.

That summarizes everything I was able to determine last time I looked into these. Hope that helps. :-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

The template's pretty much used, to leave t/p messages after nominating user-pages for deletion! Silly me to miss that:( That the reason dawned upon me, I did hit the rollback:-)

Absolutely concur on other parts. And, I do feel that some of the templates were never integrated to PageTriage.See Template:Reviewednonote-NPF.

For a note, the proposed change in the template over the linked pdf looks damn more user-friendly.But, sadly I don't remember coming across such examples, w.r.t to the ones delivered via Twinkle.Can you kindly link to the test-examples that were created and were they incorporated into regular use? If not, why?

Shall there does not exist any previous consensus against implementation of these changes, I'm very inclined to be bold and push the changes.They ought to be definitely more welcoming to the newbies:-)

I've been looking into adding more functionalities to the NPP suite and thus my interest:-) And, thanks for drafting the reply! ∯WBG^converse 19:20, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: Yup, it's all a bit confusing because (A) things have changed a lot since 2012, and (B) they were trying to improve multiple competing 'standards' at once (Huggle, Twinkle, AfC, NPF, various bots, etc), hence the various template-naming-schemes are all inconsistent.

Searching my email archives, here are a couple of specific examples I'd dredged up to explain it to other people, a few years ago:

• Template:Nothanks-sd (default) versus Template:Nothanks-sd-NPF (rewrite) <--- The former is now a redirect to the gigantic Template:Db-copyvio-notice.
• Template:Uw-attack1-default versus Template:Uw-attack1-short (rewrite) <--- It looks like those changes were incorporated into Template:Uw-npa1
• You can find many more in Maryana/Steven's contribs, e.g. search for "page-creation-only" in the "template-namespace" to get: these results
• You can perhaps find the rest via Wikipedia:WikiProject User warnings/Testing ? The {{znnn}} templates were used as part of the A/B testing, and might help you dig around.
• See also, my comments in this old Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2016_December_24#Template:RFDNote-NPF which links to some related things, e.g. Category:New Pages Feed templates.

HTH! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW

• Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.

If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.

We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.

With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.

Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.

Training video

Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.

---

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Impostor

This user is not me. Thank you. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:31, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and happy new year to you too. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:44, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Resolved. :-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 3

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (February 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the third issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Bradv's Superlinks

Abelmoschus Esculentus: Discussion Closer • Edit Filter False Positives Response Helper

PrimeHunter's Search sorter • Reinischmax's Internet Archive Books

Erutuon's Charinsert-names • DannyS712's De-Stub • Evad37's Timeless New Message Highlighter

RhinosF1's Status Changer • Suffusion of Yellow's Filter Highlighter

Timotheus Canens's SPI Helper (now in 1.6.8)

Open tasks

• Evad37 has raised the idea for a pseudo-namespace be created for "script modules". Find out more and discuss here
• Cyberpower678 has proposed adding a "Read Now" feature for book references; a working demo is available.
• FR30799386 has also suggested making their mobileUndo script into a gadget

Miscellaneous

• Following a discussion, a new process for reviewing code for user-scripts and gadgets has been created.
  

See Wikipedia:Code review for more.

• This month we welcomed three new interface administrators: Evad37, Galobtter, and Enterprisey.
• On a sadder note, just this morning we said goodbye to Abelmoschus Esculentus, a prolific script writer.

We are three months in to this newsletter and everything is going great–keep on creating amazing new scripts!
Who knows–maybe the scripts will take over one day... --DannyS712 (talk) 17:59, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Pending requests WikiProject Portals is looking for some help making scripts...

• to help build navboxes
• to simplify adding links to portals
• and even to make creating the portals easier
• other open requests are available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

---

• About the newsletter
• Subscription options
• Discuss this issue

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

News

• The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.

Discussions of interest

• Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
• {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
• A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
• There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.

Reminders

• NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.

NPP Tools Report

• Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
• copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
• The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

---

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 4

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (March 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the fourth issue of the new Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Joeytje50's JWB

PAC2: Chouette • Just A Click Away

DannyS712: FPC voter • Easy-link

Zackmann08's unwatch deleted • Begoon's addUploadsLink

Pythoncoder's voteSymbols (now in release 3.0.3) • Evad37's rater (now in release 1.2.0)

Abelmoschus Esculentus retired from Wikipedia; DannyS712 is now maintaining their scripts:

Ajax Rollback • Ajax Rollback with summary • Contributions Search • Tags Manager
Teahouse Talkback • Mass Category Modifying Helper • EFFP Response Helper
Skip to bottom • Source Assess Table Generator • Userspace • RandomAfC
Mass Message Sender • Discussion Closer

FR30799386 was blocked from Wikipedia; DannyS712 is now maintaining their scripts:

communicator • copyvio-check • Undo • Quick-undo • Readonly • Redirectify • Section-strike

Pending requests

• A request for helping with help requests
• Hyphenating ISBNs
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation has requested help with the testing of and feedback on a new tool for "Automated article section recommendations" for stub articles. See the village pump notice for more.
• mw.loader.getScript has been added to mw.loader, closing a feature request from 2010. It allows users to load a script via URL (like mw.loader.load()) and specify a callback function (like mw.loader.using()). See mw:ResourceLoader/Core modules#mw.loader.getScript for more.

Enjoy your April Fool's, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

---

• About the newsletter
• Subscription options
• Discuss this issue

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 5

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (April 2019). Hello everyone and welcome to the 5th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

The Evil IP address' Heading Editor

Newslinger's Notifier • Suffusion of Yellow's View Source

BrandonXLF: To Top Button • Restorer • Easy Summary • Subpage Mover

Evad37: Xunlink (v2.0.0, handles portals) • XFDcloser (v3.13.0, upgrades at TfD and removal of backlinks, minor tweaks and fixes)

Twinkle (commit 26305a2, major updates to csd, xfd, and tag menus, additional improvements to other smaller features)

DannyS712 is now maintaining Visual editing, a fork of Flooded with them hundreds' VisualEditist script

Pending requests

• Twinkle for mobile
• Working with "psuedo-headings"
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Until next month, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

---

• About the newsletter
• Subscription options
• Discuss this issue

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

• Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
• Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.

Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News

• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Discussions of interest

• A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
• There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
• What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250

---

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 6

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (May 2019).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 6th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

userRightsManager

Opencooper's domainRedirect • Danski454's hotcat-summary • Guywan's 12HourFormat • DannyS712's Subcategories

Twinkle (commit 53b6bf4)

Pending requests

• Help with helping
• List annotator
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Enjoy your summer, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

---

• About the newsletter
• Subscription options
• Discuss this issue

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.

---

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)