User talk:Billinghurst/2019

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2019, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion.

AutoWikiBrowser

Look to better configure AWB for use here. Probably of most interest is the Typos functionality. More detail at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage_format — billinghurst sDrewth 01:52, 23 September 2018 (UTC) }

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [1]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [2]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [3]
• On several wikis, an account named "Abuse filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [4]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Captions in January

The previous message from today says captions will be released in November in the text. January is the correct month. My apologies for the potential confusion. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - file captions coming this week (January 2019)

My apologies if this is a duplicate message for you, it is being sent to multiple lists which you may be signed up for.

Hi all, following up on last month's announcement...

Multilingual file captions will be released this week, on either Wednesday, 9 January or Thursday, 10 January 2019. Captions are a feature to add short, translatable descriptions to files. Here's some links you might want to look follow before the release, if you haven't already:

1. Read over the help page for using captions - I wrote the page on mediawiki.org because captions are available for any MediaWiki user, feel free to host/modify a copy of the page here on Commons.
2. Test out using captions on Beta Commons.
3. Leave feedback about the test on the captions test talk page, if you have anything you'd like to say prior to release.

Additionally, there will be an IRC office hour on Thursday, 10 January with the Structured Data team to talk about file captions, as well as anything else the community may be interested in. Date/time conversion, as well as a link to join, are on Meta.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to seeing those who can make it to the IRC office hour on Thursday. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Deleted 1923 Mark Twain work now in public domain

Hey, sorry to bug you, but you are the only admin I know who is active right now. Can you tell me how to get a work undeleted? The deleting admin hasn't edited since 2011.[5] -- Kendrick7 (talk) 21:07, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Never mind, got it sorted. -- Kendrick7 (talk) 18:11, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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

Recent changes

• You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [6][7]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [8][9]
• Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [10]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [11]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [12]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15 17:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [13]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [14]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [15][16]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [17]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [18]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Check

my recent edit at Portal:Educational institutions of Europe. There is a Oxford portal but not a Cambridge one here in WS. I am the author of w:Cambridge Companions and w:Cambridge County Geographies I hope that eventually we have WP articles on every notable book series published by OX and CAM. But that is too much work for me alone, what I would like to propose that we create a new list of book series by these two press first (two articles) from which redlinks can be turned blue slowly. If they are public domain we can consider creating portals similar to Portal:Cambridge County Geographies. Ping @Charles Matthews: if they are interested.

My second request is to create a template similar in format and scope to Template:Rulers of India for the indexes of Froude’s History of England (there appears to be two more volume indexes not uploaded here yet). Also ping @Beeswaxcandle: as they have it in their to-do list. Solomon7968 (talk) 09:39, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

@Solomon7968:I paused on the Froude project because I couldn't find scans of Volumes 6 and 12 in the same edition as the other 10 volumes. At some point I do intend to find those two volumes and complete the proofread, there is just rather a lot on my plate at the moment in RL as well as multiple projects here. I'm not sure why you want a template in the Volumes field, what I have done there is sufficient and covers everything required. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:38, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I thought you had forgotten about it and would appreciate if others would join in this effort. I have seen Billinghurst using templates frequently but if you are fine with not templating I am of course ok with that. FWIW I am reading the first volume of the series slowly along with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (both cover the same period). Have you read the book? Solomon7968 (talk) 06:21, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

And Foss, Edward (DNB00) needs to have an author page ASAP (from your booklist). Solomon7968 (talk) 13:03, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

CUP article now started. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:18, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

• When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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

Changes later this week

• It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [20]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

[Toolforge] Tools you maintain are running on Trusty job grid

With ref to:

This email is a reminder that the tools listed below have run jobs and/or webservices using the Ubuntu Trusty job grid in the past 7 days. This job grid will be shutdown on or before the week of 2019-03-25 as the final step in the removal of Ubuntu Trusty from Toolforge and the larger Cloud VPS environment.

* wikisource-bot

I took care of the migration, following this instructions: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Toolforge_Trusty_deprecation#Move_a_cron_job. Sanity check appreciated, if you don't mind— Mpaa (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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

Recent changes

• You can use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-08

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

Recent changes

• When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [21]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [22]

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23:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

1. First, sign up your group here.
2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
   1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
   2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
   3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
   4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
   5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:09, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-09

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

Recent changes

• There is a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [23]

Changes later this week

• When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
• The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [25][26]

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

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

Recent changes

• Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements Lua function or the #statements parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
• There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems

• Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
• Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [27]
• Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [28][29]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

Changes later this week

• When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [30][31]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [32]
• Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Formatting Table of Contents

Hi User:Billinghurst, it's been a long time. :-) kathleen wright5 referred me to you. Might you be able to suggest the best way to correctly format a Table of Contents page like this one? Thanks, Dovi (talk) 09:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13

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

• The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [33]

Problems

• There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [34]
• The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [35]
• Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [36]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-14

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

Changes later this week

• Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-15

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

• More wikis are now testing visual editor section editing for mobile users. You can read more.
• Admins on French and Polish Wikipedia can block someone from editing a page or a namespace. If your wiki wants to get these blocks before they are available to all wikis, you can tell the developers. [38][39]

Problems

• You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [40]
• A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [41]
• Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [42]

Changes later this week

• When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [43]
• The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [44]
• The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [45]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [46][47]
• The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.

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

18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-16

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

Recent changes

• All wikis now have the TemplateWizard for the wikitext editor.

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will get a new constraint status called suggestion. This will change how the WikibaseQualityConstraints constraint checking API works. [48][49]
• You can test the depicts property for structured data on Commons.

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

23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-17

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

Recent changes

• The advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [50][51][52]
• The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [53]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikipedia articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [54][55]

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

19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-18

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

Recent changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [56][57]

Problems

• Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [58]

Changes later this week

• You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [59]
• When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [60]
• You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [61]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikidata wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
• Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [62]

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

22:28, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-19

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

Problems

• Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [63]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-20

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:49, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-21

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

Recent changes

• The report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.

Problems

• File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [64][65]
• Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [66][67]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [68]
• The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [69]

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13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

phab:T224355

Hello. Please take a look, not a duplicate? Ratte (talk) 22:43, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-22

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

Changes later this week

• Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [70][71]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:34, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-23

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

• You can now write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [72]
• There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [73]
• Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [74][75]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [76]

Changes later this week

• Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [77]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-24

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

Recent changes

• When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [78][79]
• The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [80]
• Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [81]

Problems

• Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [82]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:07, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-25

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [83]

Changes later this week

• MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [84]
• A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [85]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [86]

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20:38, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

QST/March 1916/Latest List of Additions to American Radio Relay League Stations

I've had enough of playing 'hunt the pedantic syntax' with this, Please reformat the transcluded pages, so I am not playing 'hunt the minutiae' every single time. Thanks ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:42, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Eventually resolved by removing the overly complicated LST approach entirely. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:56, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology templates

Hello, I started doing some work on Volume 3 of this dictionary and mistakenly started using the author and article links for the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. On the face of it it would seem to be a simple task to replicate the DGRG templates for use in DGRBM but I don't know how to do it. Do you know of anyone who could help me by doing it? Thanks chrisguise

@Chrisguise: The styles adopted for the DGRG and for the DGRBM are not aligned with each other, so duplicating the templates may not be a good idea. There are additional issues in that the person who started the project made a huge blunder in numbering the articles. Fortunately, not many articles were actually created, but it means that the indexing pages are all off. I may have time to discuss this more next week, but this week is very busy for me. I've done several articles for the DGRBM and know what quirks exist. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:26, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

@Chrisguise: Template:DGRBM link exists. What more are you needing? — billinghurst sDrewth 10:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-26

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

Problems

• The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [87]
• Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [88]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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17:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Comment

Well, you've gone and closed the thread before I could respond to a load of hostile nonsense. Ok, I get it -- you don't want our help. I will leave, and remove Wikisource from my search script that I use to purge WMF projects from the relentless activities of a mentally ill individual who, by the way, is not a troll in any conventional sense. He believes he is on a mission, and will continue until he is jailed again. Ask Jimbo if you do not believe me. But I don't care any more. Most wikis appreciate my help, and my inclusion of the link to the ban is an effort to spread the word -- someone has to remove his nonsense, because it is relentless and will not stop until he is arrested again. And I'm glad I don't have to explain the concept of 'vandal' to you. Have a nice day, Antandrus (talk) 00:03, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

@Antandrus: I definitely closed the thread. I was trying to not make it about you or anyone, and to talk about global bans. Every time you make it specific about the person, they are at it again. They are fed and they respond. Surely you can see that for what it is, and that you don't need to be leading any sort of defence case about the ban, or their inappropriate actions.

If you want his nonsense removed, then please label it with {{delete}}, and it will get cleaned up. Probably even protect the page so its propagation is curtailed.

I am hardly new here, or there, and hardly unaware of vandals, LTAs, etc. I know that he is a PITA and occasionally I get a stream of torrents of his crap. It is my belief that it dies quickly as I don't engage. Plus, I have look at certain pages that you and he have been at it for four years, so I don't think that your current approach is working. You are engaging in debate, you are giving him every bit of air that he wants. I feel that your methodology is feeding the troll. We should smother the troll quietly, no air. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:28, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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

Recent changes

• The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [89]

Problems

• Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [90]
• Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [91]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [92]
• There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

USGov-SCOTUS

That's funny, I actually put it on my page as a reminder to delete it myself! BD2412 T 22:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

After we had the 2009 conversation, no point in waiting longer. No evidence that change is required. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't planning to wait for anything, I was just going to get around to it later. BD2412 T 02:48, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Passionist Nuns in Author:Arthur_Devine

"Passionist Nuns" is a sub-article of Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Passionists. It is not in bold, it is a mistake of Page:The Catholic encyclopedia and its makers.djvu/73 to have it listed as separate.— Mpaa (talk) 23:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

See Page:Catholic_Encyclopedia,_volume_11.djvu/578.— Mpaa (talk) 23:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Suggest that you create a redirect and put an anchor on the target. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

No need of a redirect, that article should not exist. I fixed the link where it is wrongly mentioned.— Mpaa (talk) 23:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-28

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

• For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [93]
• Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [94]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
• The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [95]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [96]
• There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [97]

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

20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Bot request - {{right sidenote| and {{LR sidenote| to {{USStatSidenote|R| and {{USStatSidenote|L| respectively

Billinghurst,

Would you be able to run your Bot over US Statutes at Large Vol. 33, Parts 1 and 2 in order to replace obsolete/broken sidenote templates, please?

{{right sidenote| needs to be replaced by {{USStatSidenote|R| and both {{left sidenote| and {{LR sidenote| need to be replaced by {{USStatSidenote|L| please.

No hurry! Thanks. CharlesSpencer (talk) 09:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

I've just done it myself (I think), through the wonder that is AWB! CharlesSpencer (talk) 15:46, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-29

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [98]

Changes later this week

• The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Abuse filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [99]

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15:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Page:A_history_of_the_military_transactions_of_the_British_nation_in_Indostan.djvu/11

As you helped design the current sidenotes scheme, perhaps you would be able to advise on how to get the result here looking closer to the what's present in the page? My approach would have been to just ignore the sidenotes entirely but someone asked me to look into this on Index_talk:A_history_of_the_military_transactions_of_the_British_nation_in_Indostan.djvu.

It would be nice to have the figures line up (they don't currently do so consistently) especially even when the same alignment is set on BOTH sidenotes. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:23, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

The underlying template is {{sn-year}} to handle the "under-bracing" ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

It would also be nice to have templates that render consistently in Page, Main and Template namespaces, regardless of viewing, editing or preview. {{left sidenote}} and {{right sidenote}}, are not CONSISTENT in respect of this as far as I can tell.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:37, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, the inconsistent presentation of {{left sidenote}} and {{right sidenote}} seems to be an issue of a user-side script I have changing the layout slightly. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:04, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I have no opinion. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:34, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

reJennie Jerome

Hi, I created Author:Jennie Jerome at the end of a long day and didn't investigate her proper name enough before creating the page. Wikidata has it as Jeanette Jerome. Could you do a redirect, please? I keep forgetting, and have just remembered but it's been another long day and my brain is mush. Sorry/thanks/cheers Zoeannl (talk) 06:31, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

moved leaving a redirect. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:54, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

Recent changes

• Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
• The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [100]

Problems

• The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [101]

Changes later this week

• Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [102]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [103][104]
• With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [105][106]
• Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
• The variable user_wpzero will be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.

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

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

No notice template

We continue to have editors make well meaning changes to {{PD-US-no-notice}}, but which will cause problems. Specifically, the change people wish to make is not backwards-compatible with prior usage, such the wrong text will be displayed on all of the oldest works that use this template.

I've devised a solution proposal, if you (or someone) is willing to implement it.

• Step (1) : Add the year of publication as a parameter to all uses of {{PD-US-no-notice}}.
• Step (2) : Rewrite the template to do the following (except in the Author namespace):

  (a) Check for the existence of the pub. year parameter, generating an error message if it does not exist.

  (b) If the pub. year parameter exists, determine that it falls within the correct range of dates (CURRENTYEAR-95 to 1977) for current usage of the template

  • (i) If it is post 1977 (too late), generate an error message.
  • (ii) If it is more than 95 years ago (too early), display the PD/1923 text, but generate a message / category to permit cleanup
  • (iii) If it is in the correct range of values, generate the current no-notice text.

• Step (3) : Update the documentation, especially regarding the mandatory pub. year parameter.

The added pub. year parameter will allow us to track and correct old usages each year as the calendar rolls over, which is the biggest wrinkle of previous attempts to "update" this template. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:13, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

 Comment I don't think that we need to change anything (well except I just protected the template to admin only with specific protection statement). The no-notice applies to works between 1923 and 1977, so it will always be factually correct. They should be picking a different license if post 1922 and out of copyright for another reason, and the actual year of publication doesn't need to be there. Only reason for a death year is so it goes to PD-old or equivalent. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Problems

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [107]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Roman numerals in {{article link}}

This was initially requested by @Levana Taylor when cleaning up the Once a Week (magazine) pages (Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2019-02#Cleaning up Once a Week namespace) and implemented in the sandbox by ShakespeareFan00. After two months I saw no reason why it wasn't added to the main template, and copied the code over.

My apologies if this was not wanted due to standardising on Arabic numerals. --Einstein95 (talk) 11:21, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Nothing to worry about, just don't want it to propagate. It is due to our requirements for future wikilinking that we decided that we would standardise. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:25, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Could you please explain me the reason for this decision? I was not notified of this, and will have to change dozens of author pages if Roman numerals are forbidden ... Levana Taylor (talk) 18:44, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: Roman numerals are not "forbidden" (in big scary letters), but they are non-standard on Wikisource, and should only be used in certain limited cases where there is strong reason to do so. They should never be used to record the publication date of a work, even if the source uses Roman numerals. They should not be used in page names to represent volume or issue numbers, in part because the trend in modern libraries has been to shift away from Roman numerals for these purposes, and to use Arabic numerals instead.

Roman numerals are still used on Wikisource for the page numbers of front matter, for some bibliographic information, for the acts of plays, and in titles of works such as Shakespeare's Richard III. But on the whole, the use of Roman numerals for information about parts of works is discouraged. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:22, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

OK! My knowledge of bibliographic practices is evidently severely out of date. Back when (in the Pleistocene?), it used to be that Roman numerals were a way of distinguishing different levels of numbering: in a play, Act III Scene 2; in a magazine, Volume III Number 2. But if that's not done now, so be it. Levana Taylor (talk) 21:00, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: hi, apologies for the inconvenience, I checked SF00's additions and didn't find particularly anything in their edits, and it was only yesterday that someone identified that it was your work. I will get a bot through and do the maintenance, and it should be able to get done in the next few days. Please do not feel required to make these amendments ... maintenance are us!

With regard to the style, we have long had the guidance about the use of numbers rather than roman numerals for subpage titles (different from the presentation layer), and it came about as one of the changes that we would make to a book to enable future-proofing and to have one standard rather than multiple standards for our works. This information should have been put to you by the community ages ago, and that should truly have been said when the linking and templating was being envisaged. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 22:30, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I have had a quick look, and I see that {{Once a Week link}} hasn't been particularly used, and there has been a direct use of {{article link}}. I will convert all existing plain links, and convert the particular article_link to use the template, though will do it when I can concentrate on the task at hand. It doesn't look overly egregious. Noting that "Once a Week link" is simply a dressed up "article link" and meant to allow easier finding and manipulation of said articles. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The reason I wasn't using {{Once a Week link}} is because it doesn't have enough parameters. Thank you very much for doing the conversions but could you please add the display title parameter and also an "author" parameter? Levana Taylor (talk) 00:18, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

ETA: Please don't convert any more of my {{article link}} to {{Once a Week link}} until you add the title parameter ... I had reasons for doing the titles the way I did ... Thanks Levana Taylor (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: Not a problem, I do these conversions slowly and with testing, diligence and looking at what is in place for existing manual links. The template already has contributor, coauthor, year, p and pp parameter fields that can be used now. (These "link" templates were pretty much converted to utilise these base templates so these additional parameters can be made available, and allow a universal presentation, I have converted over 20 old disjointed formats.) FYI I ran a test on one author looking at what was involved, and saw that "display" was not present, and will be adding it though will only do so after sandboxing that change. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:15, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

(unindent) Sounds good. What do you plan to do for translations? You can see the format I've been using so far for translators on the pages of George Borrow and Blomfield Jackson. I hadn't yet settled on a format for putting these works on the pages of the original authors; you can see two of my attempts at Emanuel Geibel and Ludwig Uhland. Levana Taylor (talk) 02:51, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Urk, more complexity. @Levana Taylor: 1) The neat thing about the approach of nesting children templates is that the formatting is something that can be easily changed on all the templates without effecting the data, to the point that we can plug in the parameter even when it hasn't been created and when it is done, it will magically appear (a trick I have used when I know that I need to improve them but don't want to remember where); 2) the template is a bit of a complex beast, so will need to look at it when I have 100% concentration (hasten slowly). With the receiving author of a later translated work, I would suggest that we would want to keep the template data the same though look to have trigger text that switches, so one indicates "translated work of" with a text switch that indicates "translated by" if at all possible.

I suggest that what we want to do is start populating testcases in {{article link/testcases}} (and I would point to what I have done at our complementary template {{authority/link}} and {{authority/link/testcases}}). So let us start populating simple through to complex testcases—even with ridiculous amounts of parameters to worse case scenario—and then when we build the sandbox we can tweak the formatting. I will build for the situation without translators, and we can work from there. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:56, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I have added some test cases to that page. In the best-case scenario, the information I give about the original work is its author, title, and original publication date. However, sometimes I don't know some of those facts. In the worst case, some sort of free-text explanation seems unavoidable, like when the work is "from a Russian folktale" instead of a work with an author and date, or when I wanted to note that the poem "From the French of Malherbe" (Jackson) translated only part of its source. Levana Taylor (talk) 18:13, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: Thanks for the test cases, and I agree with your thoughts. We can try to design so text can be (seamlessly?) appended outside of the template, or we can look to have a "comment" parameter as I did with template:authority/link. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:51, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

searches, regex, etc.

"\[\[Once a Week \(magazine\)\/Series (\d{1,2})\/Volume (\d{1,2})\/([^\|]+?)\|.*\((\d{4})\)(?:.+)?\n
{{Once a Week link|series=$1|volume=$2|article=$3|year=$4}}\n
<Typo word="<enter a name>" find=""\[\[Once a Week \(magazine\)\/Series (\d{1,2})\/Volume (\d{1,2})\/([^\|]+?)\|.*\((\d{4})\)(?:.+)?\n" replace="{{Once a Week link|series=$1|volume=$2|article=$3|year=$4}}\n" />

• SEARCH insource/\[Once a Week/i in author: ns
• SEARCH insource:/display = Once a Week/i

• {{Once a Week link}} needs an article/link parameter update, look to translator; build testcases

Aribtary break

I am now slightly confused as to why I even got asked about this, as my recollection was that I'd put this in the sandbox with a view to a wider discussion (which didn't happen, with the additional functionality being swapped in by a single contributor).

The actual structure of links, (as I indicated on the relevant template's talk page) was such that as I also stated there, the display of a Roman numeral, was display only (ie. the right hand side of a piped link), It didn't and was never intended to change the ACTUAL links (on the left-hand side) of a piped link. English Wikisource has long said that pagenames shouldn't generally use Roman numerals in names.

If there had been a decision to standardise BOTH sides of a piped link to use conventional digits, then that's a discussion that should linked, so there can be no confusions as to what had ACTUALLY understood to have been reached as consensus. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Annotations

Did we ever decide as a community whether Annotations such as this work are allowed? I understood that we wanted clean copy in the main namespace, and annotated copies in a separate namespace, and only once a clean copy existed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:55, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource:Annotation is pretty clear that this would be unnecessary. A simple note could cover this, or wikilinks to wiktionary. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:44, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Previous "simple notes" from me to this contributor have been ignored, or have led to Scriptorium arguments that are still going on. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

• A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [108][109]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource-bot

Hello. At the moment, it is not apparent to me that I have access to this robot. If I did, I do not, at this point know how to operate such a robot. James500 (talk) 03:57, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Re the message you placed on my user talk page: Are you asking me to make a request for the pages to be created at Wikisource:Bot requests? Please tell me exactly what you want me to do, because I really am not sure. James500 (talk) 11:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: Apologies for being unclear. Yes, we can run the bot through to apply the text layers rather than the repetitive and noisy component of having to do it personally. The bot requests page, the bot's talk page, or my talk page are all acceptable places. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:33, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

In that case, would it be possible for the robot to create the missing 'page namespace' pages of Notes and Queries? James500 (talk) 14:06, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: Which Index: pages? Identify which you need, and I can get the files and inhale the data. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I have kicked Index:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu as an example. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:44, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I was planning to do all of them, starting with the most recent and working backwards. I have partly completed volume 7 of series 12 (up to the 185th page). The following volumes of series 12 (from volume 8 onwards) are complete. I do not know whether any of the preceding volumes are complete, as I have not looked at them yet. James500 (talk) 02:44, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: I am pushing volumes 4, 5, and 7. Please can you look to see what is the issue with Index:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu. If it is overly broken, is it repairable, or do we need to find another version? — billinghurst sDrewth 07:51, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure why volume 6 says "Source file must be fixed before proof reading". I suspect it refers to this, which is a request to "create a pagelist for the source file ... to verify file is correct". The pagelist was started by this edit, but it is not complete. The pagination given on the index page is consequently not correct. The adverts do not have page numbers and should be marked as "???" on the index page. While the early adverts are correctly marked as far as I can see, the later ones are not correctly marked on the index page. That may be all that needs to be fixed. I have not seen any missing or duplicate pages in the file yet, and there might not be any, though I have not looked at all 400+ pages. If, for the sake of argument, there were any missing/duplicated, my understanding is that individual pages can be added to or removed from a file, so it would be repairable anyway. All the pages I did see looked okay. I suspect there is nothing wrong with the file. James500 (talk) 15:46, 21 July 2019 (UTC) I have looked again. Page 28 of the volume seems to be missing from the file. James500 (talk) 17:28, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I have completed the pagelist for volume 6. The only missing page is page 28. As far as I can tell, there are no other problems with the file. I apologise for the mistake I made earlier. James500 (talk) 05:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: are you able to find an alternative version? See if there has been another scan at either Google or archive.org? — billinghurst sDrewth 11:15, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I cannot find another copy of volume 6 on the Internet Archive, and I am unable to read the scans of post-1878 books on Google Books. However, I think that page 28 probably never existed. My reasoning is that page 27 looks like the last page of every other issue, and page 29 looks like the first page of every other issue. I think the error is probably an error in the original pagination of the printed volume, and not the result of there being a page missing from the scan. And I apologise for probably having made another mistake. James500 (talk) 14:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: I am applying the layer of s12v6 now. We are probably also able to upload s12v11 and s12v12 and s12GeneralIndex if they are now available (I believe that copyright term complete). Note that I have also added a local search engine to the volume table of contents, so you can search for pages with keywords. I have started on working backwards through volume 11. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:47, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

ser. 11 vols. 1 through 6, underway. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:23, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: series 10—1,2,3,4,5,7,8 underway 11,12,index done Index:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 6.djvu and Index:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 9.djvu need fixing or replacement. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I cannot find any scans of volumes 6 or 9 on the Internet Archive other than the ones we already have. Google Books is likely to have multiple scans of both volumes, but I cannot read scans of post-1878 books on that site, so someone else would have to look there. James500 (talk) 01:34, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I will just leave those volumes. You may find someone at WS:S who may look for you as I will probably end up with the same restrictions. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:48, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I would prefer to make a start on series nine. James500 (talk) 05:30, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

S9 v1-6 done, v7-12 running. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:07, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

A further query about the capabilities of the robot

I have noticed that the OCR text of scans of certain volumes of other periodicals has words to the effect of "digitised by google" etc on every page. Would it be possible and desirable to have the robot perform the repetitive task of removing those words? James500 (talk) 17:48, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@James500: Not really, it would be a separate run and process. It can be cleaned out during proofreading, and if you are using m:TemplateScript (straight or as gadget) then you can take the text replacement script that I utilise in my common.js. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:11, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

File:Patents Act 1970 (India).pdf

This is not GODL. See discussion at 1. Moreover, the file should be moved to Commons. Hrishikes (talk) 04:24, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Was moving the file to Commons. If not GODL, then we need to create a PD-IndiaGov at Commons to host it there. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Already exists: c:Template:EdictGov-India -- Hrishikes (talk) 04:56, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I have updated the data files so that these can now be exported to Commons, and paired these templates between sites. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:22, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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

Recent changes

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [110]
• Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [111]

Changes later this week

• Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [112]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Richard Tangye

According to w:Tangye, Richard Trevithick Gilbertstone Tangye is the son of Richard Trevithick Tangye; you recently moved the latter page to the former name. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:12, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Oops, thanks, I opened up the wrong probate entry. <facepalm> — billinghurst sDrewth 12:31, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

• There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

• Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
• Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [113]

Changes later this week

• Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [114]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
• Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [115]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Thomas M. Shallenberger

The burial you listed at Author talk:Thomas Martin Shallenberger is for Thomas C. Shallenberger. Is that the source of the death date you used? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:32, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Sure, the transcript will be wrong, as often happens on many death records, and especially with Find-a-grave, which is other people's effort, not primary records without quality control. I didn't change it, just left it as reproduced. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:48, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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

Recent changes

• You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [116]
• The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
• The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [117]
• The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [118]
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [119]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [120]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [121]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [122]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [123]
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [124]

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

09:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Alden's Cyclopedia of Universal Literature

Why do you think it belongs in portal space, unlike the other encyclopedias we host here? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:07, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The build page with lists of external scan links, or index: links, belongs in Portal: ns or Wikisource:WikiProject, as we have always done, or tried to have done. The content, when it comes, belongs in main namespace. Otherwise it becomes a stop, drop, forget, and move-on exercise, as we have seem with many pieces over the years. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

meta Requests for help

thanks for the level headed remarks. however, give the pattern of behavior of giving out indef blocks, with locked talk page access, you should expect the same behavior here. this is the behavior of the banned admin who started this fight. so get ready. - cheers. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 16:10, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@Slowking4: I try to be reasonable, and considerate and give people the ability to edit. That doesn't mean that I should be taken for a fool, nor taken for a ride. If you were issuing me with a threat, then I think that it would be wise for you to reconsider that approach, as that is not the basis for any trusting or cooperative relationship.

When taking on administrative roles in these communities, one is elected by the community to try to be impartial, and to offer the best impartial advice and especially to act on the consensus of the community, whether the admin is in agreement of the community or not.— billinghurst sDrewth 16:17, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

oh, no. i have no power to threaten. however events elsewhere might serve as a warning. the admin misbehavior which has disrupted english wikipedia for many years, is now being carried to other projects. it seems we have a cadre more into rules enforcement, than collaboration. they would rather delete references and content, thereby harming the project, than compromise. they would rather act summarily because they are always right, than consider consensus. and my case is a crucible by which to judge the leadership or lack thereof among admins. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 16:24, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

This is a community with its strengths and weaknesses; we work better if we work together rather than divided. One is better to discuss and promote and work through issues as our differences will be actually small. Throwing the baby out with the water, or having hissy fits, or going ballistic are not options for a functioning community. I would ask that you work within the framework of the consensus of the community, and to partake in the discussions to form those consensus. Your case is just one like many others, and you have contributed to it more than others, though there have been others who have willing participated and similarly shown intolerance as you have. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:31, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

i have always tried to work within consensus. while trying to advocate for fair use here, i have not confronted the failure to get one. the dispute thus far was about an admin bringing their URAA drama here, where there was not a consensus. i am intolerant of abuse of power; i follow proven leaders including wikipedians of the year. it is quite a contrast between non-leader admin behavior. but, it is a matter if time until the power abusers come here. and 100k edits on commons and 25k edits on wikidata counted for nothing. so they will try to find an admin to do an indef here and then go for a ban again. i am ready. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 16:47, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

I will stand up for Wikisource, our established editors and editors here in good faith. I believe that the community has the integrity to stand by its principles, and not to have unreasonable interference by those coming here on crusades. Our peace has long been established on trying to be reasonable and inclusive, and to understand the value of compromise, rather than winner-takes-all, combative approach of some other places. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:54, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - blogs posted in Wikimedia Space

There are two separate blog entries for Structured Data on Commons posted to Wikimedia Space that are of interest:

• Working with Structured Data on Commons: A Status Report, by Lucas Werkmeister, discusses some ways that editors can work with structured data. Topics include tools that have been written or modified for structured data, in addition to future plans for tools and querying services.
• Structured Data on Commons - A Blog Series, written by me, is a five-part posting that covers the basics of the software and features that were built to make structured data happen. The series is meant to be friendly to those who may have some knowledge of Commons, but may not know much about the structured data project.

I hope these are informative and useful, comments and questions are welcome. All the blogs offer a comment feature, and you can log in with your Wikimedia account using oAuth. I look forward to seeing some posts over there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. @Keegan (WMF): I did put a note at m:user talk:Lucas Werkmeister#Re blog and structured data ...IAUPLOAD a while ago with some thoughts/questions, though Lucas mustn't be looking at that page (or hiding from me o_O) — billinghurst sDrewth 12:05, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

The American Printer: A Manual of Typography

Hello. Regarding your message: Do you want me to create an author page for MacKellar, or do you want me to create a portal for his manual, or do you want to upload the scans etc so that a versions page can be created? If you want the scans to be uploaded, I would need some assistance as uploading scans and creating index pages is beyond what I am capable of at this time. James500 (talk) 20:54, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

@James500: My discussion was about what we put into the main namespace, and consequentially, what we we don't; primarily we are focusing on presenting editions of works.

No, I am not asking for uploading of a scan unless you are going to work upon it. If you wish to create an author page and list the work, then go for it, and whilst we may list that a work went to twelve editions, we typically wouldn't link each edition unless there is a specific purpose to do so. If you wish to mention all the editions, and something akin to an encyclopaedic article then the work level has been done in portal: namespace. If you are wanting to create a project for people to work on the 12 editions, then that belongs in Wikisource: namespace. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:12, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I have reworked the page and moved it to Portal:The American Printer: A Manual of Typography. Please let me know if this is okay. James500 (talk) 00:28, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Methuen Catalogue (and Author pages)

Thanks for the updates to Author pages. I am wondering if I lack the skills to do the consistently high quality level of biographical research you produce. :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:32, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

It is both a learnt skill, and access to resources. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:42, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Error

Hi Billinghurst. I've noticed an error here, but I have no idea how to fix it. Can you help? Trijnstel (talk) 22:29, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Someone deleted the work at Commons, then someone deleted part of the work here, and didn't properly clean up. I have followed through. You're the best. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:33, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-40

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

Problems

• Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [125]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
• Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other Special: pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to. [126]

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

16:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Maintenance query about categories

I’ve been carefully placing categories in the header, only to realize much too late that for the sake of HotCat that isn’t where they should be. Are you planning to do some sort of mass maintenance operation to shift categories out of the headers at some point, or planning to make HotCat access the header? If so, then I won’t bother going through and fixing all my pages. Levana Taylor (talk) 07:29, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: I hadn't planned to do so. Whilst I disagreed with the methodology when it was introduced, I don't go against a consensus, and current practice. If you have works that you would like me to run a bot through, I can.

Do I understand you correctly, there was a consensus to place the categories in the header, in spite of the fact that HotCat can't handle it? That would be weird because HotCat is really useful. Levana Taylor (talk) 15:27, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Probable long s replacements

• A Letter from a Noble-Man Abroad, to his Friend in England
• An Admonition against Profane and Common Swearing

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 14:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Tell you what you want?

https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Index_transcluded/doc&oldid=prev&diff=9627381 ? Ndashes are spaced and mdashes are not (e.g. w:en:WP:DASH) and MediaWiki markup is better than raw HTML (e.g. w:en:Help:HTML in wikitext). I didn't expect either of these statements to be controversial. What is the problem? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Mate, <code> is markup, not raw html, and we have it in so many places including in our edittools and you want to pop into one place and apply a principle that doesn't exist. (FWIW your link is information, and provides no recommendation that you so promoted.) Oh, and hang me, I had spaces around my emdashes. If you had removed the spaces, then I may have left it, but no, you converted to endash. I didn't know that having it that way was so controversial. Simply unnecessary changes. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Fixed the link. "But most HTML can be included by using equivalent wiki markup or templates; these are generally preferred within articles, as they are sometimes simpler for most editors and less intrusive in the editing window". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:57, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I read the page, and that is an opinion for articles at English Wikipedia. It is not a recommendation for here, and <code is markup, not raw html, it isn't even html.

So you are making changes that suit you and have no context whatever to any actual improvement, and you will fight for the right to do it. The use of {{code}} here is absolutely minimal, and the use of <code> and other similar markup is quite extensive, so please don't pull the false "it is better", most especially in one of the most obscure maintenance templates that is set up by me, and pretty much only used by me. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:02, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Code is an HTML tag: not sure what you mean. Why do you insist on having inaccesible pseud-headers, directly-inserted HTML instead a template, and spaced mdashes? Isn't that just "making changes that suit you and have no context whatever to any actual improvement"? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Find a different ditch in which to fight, you are farnarkling in places that simply do not need to be undertaken; you are applying rules that do not apply here. We allow its use and it is in our edittools. That editing change is unneeded and unnecessary editing, so just take a hike. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Filter 38

Hi, the filter seems to allow on-going edits to User Talk: space. I recommend that, for this filter, that gets blocked also. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:37, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I am working on a killer, targeted and specific, though with a little wriggle room. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks for your efforts. -Pete (talk) 23:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Recent deletions

Your deletion of A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities and Bengal Celebrities was unambiguously out of process. There clearly was meaningful content for both of those pages. CSD G1 is for test edits, vandalism, gibberish and the like. It is not for "best not to transclude at this time". In addition to that, there clearly is a work to link to in both cases. The fact it is in the process of being proofread is not the same thing as "no work to link to".

I am completely fed up of being plagued and pestered with endless objections, criticism and obstruction by you, especially when it appears that you are the only person who objects, and your objections appear to be questionable. I think this has reached a point where it appears that all forward progress on content is imminently about to become impossible. James500 (talk) 04:18, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

@James500: The community has had repeated conversations about the simple transclusion and abandonment of a few pages of work. WS:PD is full of those conversations and how it just looks ugly, and misrepresents what we have available. The community adopted the practice of listing of pages with {{small scan link}} and projects to assist with the transcript process, and linking to works for visibility. We also allowed portal pages to build similar content pages, see help:Namespaces.

Build a body of pages and significant pages, and then we can transclude, not a few trophy pages. And before you "at" me, I spent significant time running a bot through dozens of Index: pages for you as you wanted to work on them. Nada. It seems that you are more concentrating on building root pages with no content, and the community doesn't need that facadism, it is pretty valueless, and we don't need more incomplete, abandoned works.

If I am being accused of pushing a higher standard, and not having hundreds of abandoned heads of work, then GUILTY. If I am accused of pushing you to produce higher quality that benefits this community, then GUILTY. If you are people are accusing me of having us to comply with our consensus for standards then GUILTY. The standard that we walk past is the standard that we accept. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:34, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

My immediate concern was that pages should not be speedy deleted unless they actually meet the speedy deletion criteria. I was under the impression that speedy deletion of pages not meeting those criteria was considered a misuse of admin tools. I also had some substantive concerns: The deletion of such pages removes them from relevant categories, making it extremely difficult to find things. The page and index in question had not been abandoned (the pages had only just been created). The body of page namespace material seemed to me to be significant (one of the indexes already had forty proofread pages, not "a few pages"). I was not consulted or offered any opportunity to improve the pages/indexes in question. You did not specify how much material you want there to be for transclusion to happen (how many pages exactly is "a body of pages"? what number?). You keep asserting the existence of consensus without linking to or clearly identifying any policy, guideline or discussion that establishes the existence of that consensus. (I do not think I can reasonably be expected to trawl from finish to start through the archives of WS:PD; some actual examples of deletion discussions would be helpful; an old RfC would be better; a guideline would be better still).

As regards Notes and Queries, you told me that you would upload the OCR text into the page namespace. You have not completed that. You have not uploaded any of the OCR text for nearly two months, for reasons you have not disclosed to me. If I had created the page namespace pages manually myself, the whole thing would probably be done by now, instead of being less than half done. I did some improvements to Notes and Queries (for example, I typed up some of the the pages for which the OCR text was wholly missing). That is not "nada". I have not forgotten about Notes and Queries, and I have always had every intention of correcting all the OCR pages. Just because I paused briefly while doing something else does not mean that I am never going to correct those pages. It means that I was multi-tasking.

As regards the 'root' pages, the intention was always to proofread all of them. Since the number of such publications within scope was relatively small, I felt it was an attainable short term objective (bear in mind that I can make more than twenty thousand manual edits a month (probably a record), and I am not the only editor). I thought it would be more efficient to upload them en bloc and then proofread them en bloc. James500 (talk) 19:25, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

You transcluded two works at the same time which was a few bare pages in each. The works have been in the Index: namespace since July 2015 with little work done on them, so they were at best moribund, at worst abandoned. I deleted with the commentary "there is no work here to link to, best not to transclude at this time".

I have no issue with them being transcluded when there is some content. And I won't be digging out diffs about the conversations, they have happened often enough, and I have no reason to lie about it. There have been numbers of people over the years who come and undertaken facadism. We have others who come and copy and paste shit OCR, etc. We have the Index:/Page: namespaces for the preparation of works aligned with scans, and when we have suitable content from a work that gives value then we can transcribe it. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:32, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

For one of those works, there is forty pages of proofread content to transclude. You say that you are happy to transclude "when there is some content". If forty pages of proofread content is not enough, how much content do you want? How many pages? Or do you want the entire work to be proofread from start to finish? I have no idea because what you have said to me is not clear.

If you do not produce diffs or other links to the conversations, I am afraid I cannot assume that your description of those conversations is accurate. You clearly have very strong personal opinions about "facadism" etc and you have made too many factually inaccurate statements already. If you really want to invoke these conversations when other editors question your actions, the least you should do is collect links to them in an essay like the common outcomes essay on enWP.

If someone tells you that they are completely fed up with hearing objections from you, it is not helpful to immediately respond with even more new objections. The most likely result of that kind of response is that the other person will retire from the project because they fear that your objections are liable to escalate forever. James500 (talk) 16:34, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I have pointed you to the existing practice undertaken by the community. I have explained what we do in the various namespaces. At this time you are not generating transcriptions of proofread work, you are building a variety of head pages that have no substance below the root page, sometimes not even valuable head pages aligned with content of the main namespace.

We wish for moribund transcriptions to be worked upon in the Index:/Page: namespace, and where there is something significant and suitable to be transcluded, then we transclude. That is not a binary switch, and numbers of factors can come into what and when we start to transclude, though think of some value more than a title page. What reader comes here and view a title page? They are here for the work's subpages. There are here for quality transcriptions, if they just want an image or facsimile page, or rubbish OCR, they would be at archive.org. That isn't our purpose. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:59, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I can see that you are continuing to abuse CSD G1 by continuing to delete pages that manifestly have meaningful content. Let me make this very clear to you: the only legitimate process for seeking the deletion of those pages is WS:PD. Not speedy deletion. What you are doing has become exceptionally disruptive. James500 (talk) 21:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

For the avoidance of doubt, I am in the process of correcting the pages of Notes and Queries right now. I also corrected page namespace pages of other publications at the time you erroneously accuse me of doing nothing but "building a variety of head pages". Please do not claim that I am "not generating transcriptions of proofread work" at this time, because that is simply not true. James500 (talk) 22:07, 6 October 2019 (UTC) Further, I am not building a variety of head pages "at this time". I have not created any "head pages" since you started deleting them. That is not "at this time". I would like you to altogether refrain from making factually inaccurate claims about me. James500 (talk) 23:09, 6 October 2019 (UTC) The allegation of "facadism" you made in the edit summary when deleting Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography was an unambiguous personal attack. James500 (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

My apologies if you thought that I was making a personal attack, it was not my intent. Can I encourage you to create Wikisource:WikiProject Literary journals or something similar to link together all those interesting literary journals. I did something similar for Wikisource:WikiProject Biographical dictionaries a while back to try and highlight those biographical compilations that were available for transcription, and to talk about common approaches. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-41

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

Recent changes

• The abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit. [127]

Problems

• There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [128]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
• The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
• There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
• Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

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

15:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-42

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

Recent changes

• You can now use more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [129]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [130]
• In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

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

23:33, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Global templates

Hi!

You are one of the main contributors to templates (and to a lot of other things) in Wikisource.

I wrote a little something about how templates could get better: mw:User:Amire80/Global templates draft spec/TLDR.

There's also a (much) longer version here, if you have the time: mw:User:Amire80/Global templates draft spec.

I'd love to know what do you think about it.

Thanks! :) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:56, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-43

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

Recent changes

• The API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [131]

Problems

• There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [132]
• The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [133]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
• Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.

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

14:27, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Ping

m:Community Wishlist Survey 2020/Wikisource is officially open. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Dictionary_of_Indian_Biography

Hi. I have added all sections to the work in subject. Section naming is intended to be same as page name, to ease automatic Main ns page creation. I have tried to be as consistent as possible in capitalization, format, etc. I have listed them in Dictionary_of_Indian_Biography/Sandbox. If you would like to review them, you can change them directly in the work, I can recreate Sandbox automatically.

If you do not have remarks, let me know and I can start to create pages in Main ns. I was thinking to use this format:

{{header
 | title = [[../]]
 | author = Charles Edward Buckland
 | translator =
 | section = Strange, James Charles Stuart
 | previous = [[../Shepherd, W. J./]]
 | next = [[../Subbyar, S. Shungra/]]
 | notes =
}}


<div class="leftoutdent" {{ts|mc}}>
{{#tag:pages||index=Dictionary of Indian Biography.djvu|include=486|onlysection=Strange, James Charles Stuart}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Strange, James Charles Stuart}}
</div>

Cheers.Mpaa (talk) 22:03, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but please don't at this stage, in the early part of the works there have been too many errors in the proofreading to automate, so I was correcting along the journey, and creating the WD items at the same time, and the names are not suitably familiar to me to eyeball. That said, the approach with these biographical works is to match the entry name with the section name for that consistency in section/sort/title. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:50, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

the approach with these biographical works is to match the entry name with the section name for that consistency in section/sort/title -> That's what I did. Typos are possible, anyhow I'll leave it up to you then. If you need help in mass transclusion once you have proofread, let me know, tools are in place.Mpaa (talk) 12:32, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-44

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

Recent changes

• You can post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
• Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist. [134][135]
• You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
• OOUI now allows using px (pixels) instead of em (em) for some specific cases. [136][137]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January. [138]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg* to mw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.

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

16:11, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hi, you did a bit of housekeeping on a file I had worked on (thanks), but I think the outcome is slightly less than optimal. I think a slight tweak would avoid the problem...let me know if this makes sense?

I see that you moved this file:

File:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu-85.png

to

File:William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders).png

on Commons, and then you deleted the local copy. This makes sense, I understand why you did it. However, you didn't change the link on the page:

Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/85

I think there's an elegant way to avoid this -- if you were to reverse the order of the steps you took (i.e., first delete, then move), I think Commons would offer to automatically change links when you move the file. -Pete (talk) 23:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

p.s. To anticipate a possible rebuttal... The reason I did not change the file name prior to moving it to Commons is because I have that right on Commons, not on Wikisource. -Pete (talk) 23:16, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I was distracted by goings-on around me , and just moved the wrong one. As I did delete locally prior to moving the Commons file, the links should have caught up, and the global links at Commons were showing okay, so not certain why it didn't (and I was still dealing with goings-on unfortunately).

To note that the expectation with {{raw page scan}} was that they were never going to be moved to Commons as they needed to be properly cleaned, trimmed, etc., they were always just expected to be a good quality image pulled from the scan which could be the basis of work, rather than scraping the (lesser quality) image from archive.org. The text of the template is worded in that respect. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:03, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

OK, no big deal for a one-off, that all makes sense. Thanks for explaining that about {{raw page scan}}, I didn't realize. It's not something I use much anymore anyhow; I was using it because for a while, I had not found a good way to find the individual images at Internet Archive, or to convert JP2 to PNG; so I was using @Hesperian:'s bot to take care of that part. Now that I have figured that stuff out better, it's more efficient for me to do the conversions and uploads myself...and cleaner as far as generating cruft on Wikisource that later needs deleting, too. (I do still use the template on occasion with scans I don't expect to get to for a while, but I'll try to minimize that now that I understand its intended purpose better.) -Pete (talk) 03:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Now that I understand this better, I think the source of the problem may be that [[ping|HesperianBot}} may be in error, in using the {{raw page scan}} template on file pages. The whole point of the bot is that it uploads high quality original scans from the Internet Archive, which is distinct from the purpose of the template (which, as you describe, typically pulls in the low quality preview from a DJVU file, so the reader has something to look at.) Maybe the best thing would be to adjust the way that HesperianBot tags files? (Personally, I no longer use it, primarily because the lack of PD tags makes the transfer to Commons cumbersome; easier to just download the JP2 files directly from the Archive myself.) But the bot is still active, and there are plenty of Wikisource pages it can and does improve on a regular basis. Is this analysis correct, Billinghurst? -Pete (talk) 23:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

No. The bot pulled in high quality scans from the JP files. Compared with the user approach of us (still?) just expanding the viewable pages at IA, and doing an image save. So the template is correct.

If someone has the skills to write a script to have Wikisourcebot do that on a more regular basis, then that sounds like a winner now that Hesperian is less active in the image capture. Hesperian's efforts are from a long time ago before WMF gave us a more usable bot infrastructure. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:22, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Yes, Hesperian told me some time ago that the bot is something they run manually on their own server. Do you think it would be worthwhile to request that the code be released under a free license, and migrated to the toollabs? I do not personally have the skills to either write or migrate that kind of code, nor would I know who to ask. But I expect it would be easier for somebody with the proper skills to start with the existing code, if Hesperian makes it available, than to start from scratch. I'd be happy to make that request, but I don't want to do it unless there's good reason to believe it would lead somewhere useful. -Pete (talk) 20:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-45

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

Recent changes

• At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites. [139]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip to set a different default block length for IP editors. [140]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-46

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

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

22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

File:Seattle population graph.PNG

Why did you mark this with {{do not move to Commons}}? --Xover (talk) 06:37, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Due to its "parent" work. Trying to {{information}} it, and have it maintained at Commons, was not a risk I was prepared to try and manage. Easier to just keep it local. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:39, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't follow. What's the issue with the parent work, and why would having it on Commons be problematic? --Xover (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Old licensing here, and I simply don't trust Commons to not delete it, so I labelled it to just stay here. It isn't as though it is going to be used elsewhere at Commons. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:46, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

source for U.S. pseudonyms

The American William Cushing compiled multiple volumes of dictionaries of pseudonyms; here is what Hathi Trust has by him. Levana Taylor (talk) 22:52, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Happy to pull in one of the Second Series and apply the text layer. Have a preference from search to see which has the last worse OCR?

There are two different works by Cushing: the Intitials and Pseudonyms, which is a dictionary of pseudonyms in two parts, 1st and 2nd series; and the Anonyms, which is the reverse dictionary of works matched with their authors, and I think it has some works that aren’t in the others. They’re all a challenge for OCR, that’s for sure! At a quick look, this one seems about as good as any for the 1st series, and this one for the 2nd series. For some reason IA doesn’t have the Anonyms, but Hathi Trust and Google do. Levana Taylor (talk) 03:44, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: Ah, two series, rather than editions. Silly me. Both are in place and nearly finished the text layers. Now, my access to HT was pretty crap last time I tried, ang GB doesn't show me full text versions. If we want to do the same then we are going to need to find someone with HT access who can download a full version to poke into IA for processing. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:55, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I can go to the university library and run Google’s scan through ABBYY FineReader. What format should I provide the output in, so it can be used here? --Levana Taylor (talk) 06:53, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

If you can get the PDF through HT, then it can be uploaded to Internet Archive, and IA's system will do its magic, and we can then download it to Commons with IA-upload bot, and get the djvu that way. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:49, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I can't get the Hathi trust PDF but it's just the same scan as you can download from Google. A poor scan. I ran a few pages through ABBYY FineReader and the results were discouraging no matter how I adjusted the settings. Levana Taylor (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguating Author:Augustus Allen Hayes

I put Author:Augustus Allen Hayes at Author:Augustus Allen Hayes (1837-1892) because w:en:Augustus Allen Hayes is an entirely different person who also wrote stuff; I don't know if that will be a problem, or how soon, but it certainly could be.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:10, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Being a different person at enWP … <shrug> … that happens in many cases, our means of disambiguation is different. It is pretty much a non-issue as enWP's {{wikisource author}} uses WD for link management, so matters little these days. If we get another author of the same name, we move back over the redirect which is still in place. Any name-duplicating author will be (xxxx-yyyy) on same methodology, and the basic page holds the disambiguation page, so no issue for us. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:52, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the centralauth database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [141]

Changes later this week

• You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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20:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

horizontal TOC Templates request

Salutations, Billinghurst!

I have a long TOC at Translation:Likutei_Halakhot/Orach_Chayim/Part_One_Daily_Devotions/Early_Rising that I would like to make horizontal. The Wikipedia templates listed at w:Template:Horizontal_TOC namely {{horizontal TOC}}, {{horizontal TOC|nonum=yes}} etc. do not work here. Could those be made available here? Thanks! Nissimnanach (talk) 13:39, 21 November 2019 (UTC)Nissimnanach

Please take to WS:S as this should be a community decision, rather than mine. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-48

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

Changes later this week

• The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [142]
• Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [143]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [144]

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

16:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-49

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

Recent changes

• Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [145]
• The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns "" (empty string). When you read a page it returns "-" (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [146]

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16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Fray Juan de Torquemada

"Fray" is his title (Friar, Brother). It's not part of his name. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:35, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I will fix it, though no need to be left until now. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:03, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh, you did it. Good-o. My Spanish religious is near zero. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:05, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Please do pass the message onto the original contributor. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:06, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

I expect they simply copied the name from the English Wikipedia. I assume the title "Fray" was used in the page title to distinguish him from the Cardinal of the same name. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:22, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-50

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [147]
• There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [148]

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16:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

a template as a tool of uniformity

If you restore the template, I can use it until the project is completed. Once the pages are all uniform and acceptable, the template use can be sub-stringed and then the template destroyed.

Further, any changes that you deem fitting can be made to the template (before it gets set into type) and when I know that the template will be destroyed, I can add those versions to it and make this task much much more easy.

Please consider restoring the template and undoing everything except your name changes. I really don't like unnecessary string replacement and pasting. I really do like uniformity and completeness.

I am not sure what you like.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

These are version pages and version pages will never be uniform, well, beyond all using template:versions. If you are looking to substitute "templates" then they don't need to do it from the template: namespace. Simply create a subpage in your user ns, and substitute it when you apply it. It is what I do with user:billinghurst/sandbox3 -> usage: {{subst:user:billinghurst/sandbox3|''previous link''|''next link''|111}}. The template namespace is not a place to build templates for temporary use and later substituting. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:34, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Theater / Theaters

If there are items worth keeping as pertaining to "Theater" (buildings) I would create a Category:Theaters for them. The plural clearly pertains to the buildings and their function, and not to Category:Drama, which is a synonym of "Theater" in the abstract sense. "Category:Theater" is therefore ambiguous as a name; it could refer to all drama in general, or to specific buildings for the purpose of staging dramas, showing films, or the playing of music. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Sure, that is why I added it to the singular, and not created the plural. I am presuming that Theater/Threatre is the concept, not the building. To my understanding drama != theatre, though not an area where I claim any expertise, and happy for others to work out that minutiae. — billinghurst sDrewth

From what I could tell "Theatre" is the preferred term in the UK and "Drama" the preferred term in US library cataloging. "Drama" is the term used in the Library of Congress cataloging, and hence the term I adopted for Portals here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:23, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

To me ... "drama" is a subset of "theater". — billinghurst sDrewth 04:35, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Both terms have more than one sense in English, so neither will be a perfect fit for everyone's conceptions. I'm sure the catalogers for the Library of Congress faced the same issue. We had a lengthy debate on Wiktionary over whether words like "three" and "fifth" were numbers or numerals for much the same reason. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:41, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

As long as it makes sense as we explain it, so the punter understands, and it is findable, and we have redirects, I really don't care. Usually I just look to what enWP/WD/Commons has done, and if it semi-reasonable, then I will follow, as it is linking that way. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:52, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-51

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

Problems

• The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [149]
• Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [150]

Changes later this week

• You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [151]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [152]

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

00:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-52

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 6 January 2020.

Recent changes

• All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can use setlang in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [153]

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

20:04, 23 December 2019 (UTC)