User talk:Billinghurst/2020

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2020, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion.

Bot/Gadget

Just looking at Index:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu as a single example, I don't understand why Wikisource doesn’t have a bot automatically crawl all the pages and at least mark them red-status/notProofread, so that they are "better than nothing" and don't break the work which transcludes them? Obviously, even more than an answer why not, I'd love to hear that it's going to happen very soon. Lemuritus (talk)c 21:44, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-02

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

Changes later this week

• When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [1]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).

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21:20, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-03

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 no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [2]
• Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [3]

Changes later this week

• Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Allow only autoconfirmed users and Allow only administrators. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [4]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).

Future changes

• Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [5]
• You can use <ref follow="…"> to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [6]

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Re: Category:Chinese emperors

Before my first move, the naming pattern was inconsistent. Some included "Emperor", some not but using wrong names.

After discussion, my last move was to move them to real and full personal names (surname + given name, as in their original surname-first order) without titles.

Now, why did you move them back to some wrong names? They are grammatically wrong, non-human names, or actually including title?

Han dynasty (surname Liu)

• Author:Gaozu (temple "name", actually title) of Han
• Author:Wen (adjective) of Han (Emperor Wen was his title), wrong in grammar
• Author:Wu (adjective) of Han (Emperor Wu was his title), wrong in grammar

Ming dynasty (surname Zhu)

• Author:Chongzhen (era name, not human name)
• Author:Zhu Yuanzhang (CORRECT personal name)

Qin dynasty (surname Ying)

• Author:Qin Shi Huang (= "Qin First Emperor", a title)

Qing dynasty (surname Aisin Gioro)

• Author:Guangxu (era name, not human name)
• Author:Jiaqing (era name, not human name)
• Author:Kangxi (era name, not human name)
• Author:Shunzhi (era name, not human name)
• Author:Tongzhi (era name, not human name)
• Author:Wenzong (temple "name", actually title) of Qing

Tang dynasty (surname Li)

• Author:Li Yuan (CORRECT personal name)
• Author:Wuzong (temple "name", actually title) of Tang
• Author:Xuanzong (temple "name", actually title) of Tang

Wei dynasty (surname Cao)

• Author:Cao Rui (CORRECT personal name)

Yuan dynasty (surname Borjigin)

• Author:Ghengis Khan (Khan is a title)
• Author:Kublai Khan (Khan is a title)

Didn't/Don't you agree to move them to real personal full names without titles?

Wenku-organism (talk) 03:32, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

 Comment I have returned those moved to stable names that reflect the broad name usage at Wikidata:.

I was fixing broken page moves and had the opportunity to look at what names were being used across the Wikimedia wikis. While you may have a point about the naming being incorrect here, then we will also find it is similarly incorrect at many many Wikimedia sites. In the end we may as well be consistently inaccurate.

At English Wikisource our page names in the author: namespace we don't use titles, so the pages are at these consistent and tacitly agreed names, without the titles. Moving them to names independent of all the other wikis based on the opinion of one person is not an unwise approach.

If you wish to address the naming of all these pages, then please start a conversation at wikisource:Scriptorium and seek the consensus of the community for your approach. For now, I don't believe that the renaming process that you started should be continued without that consensus — billinghurst sDrewth 04:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Need for discussion?

Billinghurst, if this edit summary is meant to indicate a genuine interest for deliberation, I'd suggest you make a better effort to articulate your thoughts, in a venue that permits a response. If it's just meant as passive-aggressive snark, that's your right I suppose, and I'll just continue to ignore such comments. -Pete (talk) 22:41, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: What sort of comment would you like when one stumbles on something like that? How does such an incomplete untranscribed set of pages then transcluded into a work like that portray to the general user? What does it say about the quality of the work that we produce? What is the point of transcribing 500 pages into one long page? If you need me to come and tell you that ... You are hardly an unaware person. Why should any member of the community need to say anything? — billinghurst sDrewth 10:45, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

IMO, it's a clear improvement on this page, which somebody felt was worth putting on the Internet (and I agree). -Pete (talk) 18:20, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the python2 tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [7]
• The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [8]
• You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.

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19:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Ignore-ance is bliss

That might indeed be a good idea. Your frustration appears to be spilling over, and there's really no reason to aggravate it. Rhetorically speaking: what skin off your nose is it if someone chooses to contribute in an area you don't particularly care about yourself, or that cares about different aspects of the project? There's a fundamental difference between saying "There's no need to worry about this" and "You should not care about this thing that you clearly care about". --Xover (talk) 12:28, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05

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

Problems

• Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [9][10]
• Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [11]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.

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18:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Request for deletion

In December 2019 I marked my created page An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Preface to Gospels and Acts with a Db-author and then a Db-move (though I may have used the wrong syntax). I created the page but then realised I could not delete the page which it was intended to replace - Preface to Volume Five, and needed to move that page instead. If I'm wrong about what I'm trying to do, please help me. PeterR2 (talk) 21:15, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@PeterR2: Not exactly following. If you wish for it to be deleted, then please use {{sdelete}} on the page. If you think that it has some semblance of needing to exist, then please convert it to a redirect. We are usually liberal with redirects if there is any semblance, and this means if there is some reference somewhere to that chapter, or that part of a title. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:35, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

What I am aiming at is for An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Preface to Volume 5 to redirect to An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Preface to Gospels and Acts as there is in fact no Preface to Volume 5 or Volume 6, rather Vol 5 has a preface covering the whole of Vol 5 and part of Vol 6, and Vol 6 has a preface part way through to the remainder of Vol 6. I've removed the speedy delete tags on the Preface to Gospels and Acts, as well as correcting the section title. Please could you do the redirect for me, as you suggested.PeterR2 (talk) 03:43, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 10:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06

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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).

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20:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Translation:Exhortation of Wuhan Public Security Bureau Wuchang Branch Zhongnan Road Street Police Station

Hi, I found that you deleted Translation:Exhortation of Wuhan Public Security Bureau Wuchang Branch Zhongnan Road Street Police Station. The reason given in edit summary was "WS:CSD G5 - Beyond scope". But this file is a translation of zh:武汉市公安局武昌分局中南路街派出所训诫书, a legal document to Li Wenliang issued by a police department of China, which is in public domain according to the law of China. I think that it is a "documentary source" that is allowed to be included in Wikisource per Wikisource:What Wikisource includes, and can be put in Category:Legal documents. It would be great if you could undelete it, or at least give it a chance to go through the formal process of proposed deletion, not speedy deletion. Thank you for your consideration. --Neo-Jay (talk) 09:00, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Please see the note on the contributor's page on how to progress. That a work is a legal document is not sufficient in itself. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:07, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I have requested an undeletion at Wikisource:Proposed deletions. Best regards. --Neo-Jay (talk) 09:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-07

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

• There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [12]

Problems

• There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [13]

Changes later this week

• The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [14]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

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19:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

• Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [15][16]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).

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16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

PD-1923

I didn't think that {{PD-1923}} took a parameter, but you have added one. I am also not sure what that parameter is supposed to represent, since we do not know the date of death for the artist Agnes Lambert.

In any case the author of the book's text was Richard Stanton Lambert, who died in 1981, and this later date should overrule the earlier one, if the earlier date is valid. It looks like Xover added the date parameter, but I've no idea where he got it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:18, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Hmm? What'd I add where? --Xover (talk) 16:39, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. I can't spot it now. Maybe it was Billinghurst who added it after all, and I just clicked the wrong set of dots for the diffs. A 1973 date has shown up in many of these images, but there is no indication of the source or reason for the date. Presumably, it is meant to be the date of death of the artist, but I can find no such date anywhere. And if it is meant to be the date of death of the artist, that information should be documented at Wikidata, and my comment on each image about the date of death being unknown ought to be removed. But at this point, the death date is unknown, as far as I have been able to determine. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:47, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Someone had it in the template. Anyway, details on author talk page for you. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Does the data you provided which says "Registration Date: Dec. Q. 1973" indicate that she died in Dec 1973? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:15, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

If you're interested in researching some obscure poets

I've compiled a list of contributors to Newes from the Dead here. I've tried to find information about as many of them as I could, but there are a number that I could find little to no information about. I know you are good at researching authors, so if you're interested it might be a little challenge for you. PS they are (almost) all Oxford students, and have entries in Alumni Oxonienses which I see you have contributed to, so this may be within your area of interest regardless. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:17, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Miss Overton

Can I call on your superior records research skills? If the 1861 story "Our First Curate" by Miss Overton is semi-autobiographical, its author might be the eldest of the three daughters of Charles Overton (the DNB entry says there were 3). Two younger daughters, too young to have written the story, are Margaret Amelia O. and Harriet Jane O. There is also a christening record for a Mary Georgina Overton, daughter of Charles & Amelia, 12 October 1835; the problem is that I can’t find any trace of her after that. Can you find evidence, either that she definitely died before 1861, or that she was still alive and unmarried in that year? Levana Taylor (talk) 07:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: 1841 census shows three sons (Samuel 4, Charles 2, William 6w), so that would suggest any female births before that are most likely deceased by 1841; Mary Georgina died Harrogate, 11/12m in 1836. 1851 census shows three children (Edm T 7, J B S (m) 5, M A (f) 3. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:12, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Scratch that hypothesis then. Levana Taylor (talk) 11:31, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

@Levana Taylor: 1868 Crockford's shows two Overtons, Charles, and John b. 1790s, and he is showing in 1861 census as single. The piece of writing talks about younger sister Rose, and older sister Sarah. I cannot see a Rose/Rosa Overton in the north of England.

Suggest checking https://theclergydatabase.org.uk up to 1837 for other Overtons possibly in the area, otherwise we may need to get into non-conformists. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:39, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

FreeBMD doesn't show anything likely for a Rose birth to 1861, no like marriage to 1881, and no likely death to 1920. Can look at Everton, etc. Any evidence that the names are changed to protect the innocent? — billinghurst sDrewth 11:50, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Charles had 3 brothers in the ministry and none of them married. The Overtons were quite an ecclesiastical family, Charles’s father being a well-known evangelical, and several of Charles’s sons too. But the more I look, the more I think that "Our First Curate" is just fiction. Not going to find the author that way. And there must be a dozen or more of Miss Overtons with a little education. Levana Taylor (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

Problems

• Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [17]

Changes later this week

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [18]
• When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [19]
• On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [20]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [21]
• There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
• wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [22]

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00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

References in Studies in Irish History, 1649–1775

I would recommend using an individual {{reflist}} with the refs= parameter in the footnote of each page, and, in the notes section, use a combined template (similar to how multi-page page music is given, e. g. here). I have done that initially on the first page of the article on Charles II. here. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:29, 6 March 2020 (UTC).

@TE(æ)A,ea.: Thanks for your thoughts, though I will be utilising version of Template:Authority reference and then not transclude these page directly, and let the refs play out normally. (I was having a play with alternates to see what suited.)I have utilised that methodology neatly in A Compendium of Irish Biography / Template:IrishBio ref. The reason for the use of this methology is so that it only needs to be proofread once and against the text, and it is done in situ. It also allows proper concatenation of multiple used references. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea.: Here is an example of how it presents: main ns transclusion and page ns and ref page — billinghurst sDrewth 11:51, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

• There is a new search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [23][24][25]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
• The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [26]

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17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

A question about capitals

Hello. I want to create a page of this text, but English capitals are very secret for me. Could you please give an advice? A Translation of all the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Quotations which occur in Blackstone's Commentaries? etc? A Translation of all the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Quotations which Occur in Blackstone's Commentaries? Ratte (talk) 14:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ratte: tl;dr A translation of all the Greek, Latin, Italian and French quotations which occur in Blackstone's Commentaries on the laws of England would be the current accepted standard of today's librarians for today. It is based on the capitalisation on the lead word, and proper nouns thereafter.

There is no universally correct answer for all of time. Titles and case has been changing over hundreds of years, and has natural variations depending on authors, publishers, and cataloguers depending on location. Create redirects for the variations of the root title that you find to the root title (though not for chapters). We prepare for whatever various publishers have used in their works since the work was published. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:49, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Ratte (talk) 09:22, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Youtube whitelist request

I just posted a transcript of a 'live stream' interview with a US politician campaigning for president: Bernie Sanders fireside chat - 14 March 2020. A video of the interview was subsequently posted by his campaign on Youtube. I looked but they did not seem to post the video anywhere else (at least officially).

I would like to include a link to the interview, if this is appropriate please add it to the whitelist. The URL in question is, without the header, youtube.com/watch?v=tTpoijmgDFk.

Since I am here I'll also mention that as a noob I would appreciate any suggestions you have for improving my contributions here. Thanks! Dennis the Peasant (talk) 04:04, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dennis the Peasant: This work is subject to a deletion discussion for copyright violcation, please put this request and all relevant components into that discussion. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:53, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [27]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes

• If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [28][29]
• You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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21:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955

As you can see in Preliminary 1. of the Act "the" is not part of the name of the act under the law. The title of the act is specified as Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

You may or may not be aware of Westminster-type legislation. That is the short title section, not the title of the legislation, which is at the head of the page. Short name is the accepted title for citation so it is uniquely identified. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:48, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

w:Short and long titles explains it nicely. Can I recommend against starting a paragraph/sentence with "As you can see"? Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:51, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

And please move it back, and maybe consult first rather than start an edit war. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the title as it was originally. If you believe we should make long titles standard as a community, please start that discussion. Frankly, titles like House of Lords Act 1999 are preferable to An Act to restrict membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons; and for connected purposes. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:57, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Did you check the Wikipedia article for the act? You'll find that the long title is "An Act to amend and codify the law relating to marriage". Your version with "The" is neither the long title nor the short title. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Did you look in Indian Acts to see how they refer to other Acts? Did you look in legislation and gazettes to the names used?

• https://harsamay.gov.in/PDF/The_Criminal_Law_(Amendment)_ACT_2013.pdf
• https://bombayhighcourt.nic.in/libweb/actc/yearwise/2009/2009.05.pdf
• https://wcd.nic.in/sites/default/files/jjact-2011pm.pdf
• http://www.delhihighcourt.nic.in/library/acts_bills_rules_regulations/The%20service%20condition%20of%20high%20court%20judges%20act%202009.doc

They all use printed titles rather than the short titles for their reference to their Acts. If you think that we should use the short titles, rather than the printed titles, then please make that argument not start some new thing.

Other jurisdictions do more closely match short titles and printed titles, eg.

• https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/in-force/acts/aboriginal-lands-act-1970/034
• https://content.legislation.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/c14db06c-ee53-3924-8f92-6da83676aed2_17-51aa004%20authorised.pdf
• https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00441

though India has been using and continues to use THE in their printed titles. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:34, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

None of that explains why you want to use an altered form of the short title, instead of the long title or the short title. Without a rationale to move the page from where it was created, I am leaving it where the creator put it. To criticize me for putting it back without discussion, when you moved it without discussion, is hypocrisy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:39, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Mistaken action on redaction

Leaving aside that I do not believe you reasonably found consensus there at all and I question you deciding this after you participated in the discussion, your reasons for closing the proposed deletion the way you did are in error. The quote is indeed Paul's own quote. He had submitted a written question for the impeachment managers to be read out by the Chief Justice during the impeachment's Q&A portion of the proceedings. That question was not read out and this happened very publicly during the proceedings that were broadcast all over the world. A big part of Paul's speech is explaining why he asked the question, why he believes the reasons given for not asking the question were invalid, and why he thinks the whole mentality around the issue is dangerous.

I went ahead and restored the quote, only redacting the names and redacted where those same names reappeared. While I would still like to contest your decision as I do not think it was appropriate, the decision to remove the whole quote shows you took a decision on this without properly understanding the document and its contents by excluding the most historically relevant portion. Even now, with the redaction, it favors a negative historical view of Paul and arguably defames him by suggesting he did something improper. I see no basis in policy for your action and no one made a credible assertion of a policy violation or a Terms of Use violation. This is a public domain document of undeniable historical significance that you are censoring to prejudice people against a living person on an important historical issue. Please reconsider your close.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 03:15, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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

Problems

• Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
• There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [30][31]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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

17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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

Recent changes

• The beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [32]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [33]
• There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [34]

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

17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Boa noite (to you)

Hoping all is well. I am trying to ease back into WS once again as I have returned from Portugal. Two years was as two days, but what a two days! Be safe, be well... Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:19, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: welcome back to wherever your new/next home/quarantine zone is situated. Surely it isn't 2 years, you're kidding. Life is the same #notthesame. Life happens, and occasionally I interact with it on the 3-D spectrums of passivity/disdain/football. <shrug> Presuming that you are well, and glad to hear from you. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Same #notthesame can be good. Same here. Just a couple months short of two years. I got back a day before craziness began this side of the world, and woke from a dream. Temp living situation for now, but anywhere is home still. Stay well! Londonjackbooks (talk) 09:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Page moves

At what point does the English Wikisource allow Users to move pages? I know that some projects require Uers to have made a certain number of edits, or receive autopatroller rights, or other limitations. What are the requirements, if any, here on the English Wikisource before someone can Move pages? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:58, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed per special:listgrouprights, looking at the "move" right. Autoconfirmed depends on what the wiki has set at https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/InitialiseSettings.php.txt, where it is the combination of wgAutoConfirmAge and wgAutoConfirmCount and we are on default for both (as not otherwise mentioned.

'wgAutoConfirmAge'
	'default' => 4 * 3600 * 24, // 4 days to pass isNewbie()
'wgAutoConfirmCount'  
	'default' => 0,

Some wikis may have made variations to group rights from defaults for any sort of thing, and that would be found in that same init file, though I hadn't heard that move rights were removed from autoconfirmed in cases. You'd have to check in "groupOverrides" to see which which had differences, generally it is closed wikis, and commons for movefiles, etc. (read away!) — billinghurst sDrewth 01:25, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Transclusion

Question: Is there some benefit to using {{#tag:pages||index= ... }} over <pages index= ... /> or are they completely equivalent in all ways? I've noticed that you're now using the former, but all of our pages recommend the latter. Our Help pages do not describe the method you're using, so I'm hoping to understand and perhaps update some of those pages, since we now have a large influx of new librarians working here.

Also is the double piping required when using the former? And for what reason, if so? Is there a place that describes the syntax of this method, either here or elsewhere? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:52, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: tl;dr … It makes no difference to the output. This methodology allows for subst:itution within the tag

Long explanation …

{{#tag:pages||index={{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}.djvu|include=|onlysection={{subst:SUBPAGENAME}}}}

which will otherwise fail in mediawiki generated tags (though interestingly does not fail within html tags due to an order of operations things). If tag could be substituted again, however, it comes out <pages ...></pages> and that can be as confusing against our recommendations and no real benefited. This also allows me to generate these codes from my sidebar (see user:billinghurst/common.js)

The reason for the | | is that there is no content being called see mw:Help:Magic words. We

{{#tag:tagname | Your content goes here |attribute1=value1 |attribute2=value2 }}
<tagname attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2">Your content goes here</tagname>

if we did it for a ref/reference then

{{#tag:ref| hello I live inside a reference tag |name=sillyref |group=groupsillyref }}

example of a ref using #tag ^{[groupsillyref 1]} then similarly generate the <references /> output

{{#tag:references||group=groupsillyref }}

1. hello I live inside a reference tag

And yes I do ref tags that way at times, though I do substitute the ref tag as it becomes a little more complex with pipes and follow, etc., so make that easier for the community. FWIW you may have noticed that the pipe trick for [[Author:William Shakespeare|]] similarly fails with ref tags, same reasoning and again this is a means to defeat that inadequacy. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:05, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit

You had looked in recently at Index:Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit.djvu, so I thought I'd note it's 'done'.

One of my pet 'irks' is the elimination of vertical spacing as found in the original texts. If you'll compare the fourth story, where I've put in a little extra space before each 'Chapter XX', with the third story, where the 'Chapter XX' is jammed up directly under the previous text, you might admit it is a bit nicer to have the vertical separation. Otherwise it looks like we're trying to save paper...

Also, I have a thing about noting the patterns of mistakes generated by scanning a particular work. And sure enough, even after being extremely careful, using search I found several instances of this scan's common mistakes. Had to use insource:/mg / and the like to find these. Do other people check themselves this way?

Note some questions at [35] [36] [37]

Note also the surprising discovery of dotless-I [38] and then later again found another using search [39] . How often do dotless-I's show up? Lots in 'Page' space... e.g. "FRANCISXAvıER", but haven't seen any unexplained in Main space yet. Shenme (talk) 02:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

@Shenme: if think that an extra hard return belongs at the start of the chapter as you indicated above, then do it. I set that extra space in my transclusions, though typically leave other people's. I will comment that there is a difference in the Firefox and Chrome presentations. The replacement exercise was just that, I didn't make a decision on that person's setting of the distance.

We ask that if spacing is added in the Page: namespace that people utilise the header section, not use the body. My only look at the work was to check the transclusion status of the pages, not check the work particularly, and that is where I noticed the forced formatting, and my subsequent modifications to {{default layout}}. I cannot say that I dipped into the text, or the transcription. That the particular user has not undertaken quality proofreading is not a surprise to me, they are not the best proofreader around, and it has been noted by the community.

With regard to scans, yes, there are particular OCR packages of particular scans that repeatedly make the same or similar mistakes in their process. I am currently doing Index:Thom's Irish who's who.djvu which has that, and I account for that using Pathoschild's m:TemplateScript app, and code text replacements in my clean up scripts (see user:billinghurst/common.js. I cannot say that I have noticed dotless i previously, and weird that a foreign character set was part of the OCR (but oh well), I am guessing that it is not typically an i for ı (horrid pun) and the OCR typically does a word check; whereas if there is an h, it can see li / lı, etc. These typically would get noticed and corrected by proofreaders and maybe not even notice that the i is dotless, and just fix it. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:10, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Illustrator links

I updated {{Illustrator}} to use red links because you added the template to Category:Works with non-existent author pages. It's rather unweildy to rectify works with nonexistent author pages when the work doesn't actually link to the author pages. If the template should not use redlinks, can we at least remove the template from the maintenance category? Maybe set up a subcategory for this particular case? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:22, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I added it as someone asked for it to be added. I have just been copy and pasting the name to a separate page. If you want them tipped to a separate category, okay with me. If I remember the long ago conversation when I wanted to create the template … no more redlinks, and illustrators were hard to identify. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

Problems

• There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [40]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [41]

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

19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Author:Abdullah II

Is this page displaying an error for you? There are fewer of such pages since I've manually repaired many. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:11, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: No error for me. Did you purge that module page? — billinghurst sDrewth 16:14, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

No, it's showing an error for me right now. Most of those where I've found errors I've either already manually fixed, or they've "fixed themselves" (or possibly someone else has). I've no idea how many pages and how many users are experiencing this problem, but as you saw in the Scriptorium, I'm not the only person seeing these errors. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:16, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I think that you have a locally cached file, or something like that, that is causing the errors. I don't think that everyone is seeing the issue as if it was the case there would be more complaints, and others would see them. I would see them, but I am not. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:39, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Sp1nd01 is seeing the same error, as posted in the Scriptorium (Seeing: File:Lua error). It can't be my cache because I'm seeing the problem on a computer that I've never used to access Wikisource, and clearing my cache does not solve the problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:22, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Sp1nd01 saw it, then didn't see it. The problematic module page that was created empty, is now deleted, and yes the underlying problem did exist for some minutes. Without continued reports of it being a problem I am not throwing resources at it, as at this point it is only you reporting an ongoing issue and that sounds local somehow in the circumstance. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:58, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

• You can now use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [42]
• You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [43]
• You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
• When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [44]
• There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [45]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [46][47][48]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [49]
• The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
• For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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

15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Medium blacklist and abusefilter

Hi,

The discussion on the Scriptorium is going everywhere and nowhere. I had an idea and was wondering if it would be a good one or not. Wouldn't it be better for everyone to remove Medium from the blacklist and to move it to an abusefilter. I think it would be more efficient as it would block spambot but allow user like Andy to still add the link. I guess it would be a win-win, what do you think?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 15:03, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi. medium.com is in abuse filters (global-69). The link that Andy wants is whitelisted. The process for getting whitelisting is pretty simple … put a clear request and a valid use reason why it should be whitelisted, it would be a one or two minute exercise. I am not following the particular conversation at Scriptorium. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:14, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Ok strange but thanks. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 13:03, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

• The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [50]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [51]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [52]
• The font in the diffs will change. [53]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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

18:44, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Problem with my account

Apologize for bothering you but something is wrong with my account User:Ineuw. You may have read 'Show Preview' and 'Show_changes' results displayed in bottom of page. (Also attached an image.) This is a problem only with the account because now I am logged in as IneuwPublic and everything works properly. — IneuwPublic talk 18:45, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Just your preferences. Answered at WS:S — billinghurst sDrewth 01:26, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19

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

• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [54]
• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [55]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [56]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).

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

16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

A reminder

Ahoy, Billinghurst. Please remind me what we are and are not doing with disambiguation pages... We are not creating disambiguation pages for similarly-titled works (different content) by the same author, correct (e.g., Immortal (Coates))? We simply add each work to the general disambiguation page (Immortal)?... But versions page creation with works by the same author is permitted, yes (e.g., Ab Humo (Coates))? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 19:21, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Hi ho. Hope that your returns are finding good grounding. Disambiguation pages are like sounding works by name or by reference that point you to the work; versions pages are essentially the same work by an author. The best way to think of this is from the linking side. A specific link to a work in our main namespace should point to a work or versions page, all our links from the Page: ns should be to specific work/versions, never to a disambiguation page. Ipso facto if we have a Page: ns link to a disambiguation page, that links needs to be disambiguated and point elsewhere. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:07, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the perspective. Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Author:Raden Adjeng Kartini

"Raden Adjeng" is a noble title for married women. The Wikipedia article is at w:Kartini. I assume we're still dropping titles from author names? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Sure, care to fix it. I need to stop being distracted. — billinghurst sDrewth 18:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 19:06, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Missing file - Index:June-2018-Barr-Memo-to-DOJ-Muellers-Obstruction.pdf

@Kathleen.wright5: Where has the above file gone? I ask this because I validated it in April 2019. kathleen wright5 (talk) 11:44, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kathleen.wright5: Thanks, it was speedy deleted at Commons. I have temporarily undeleted it at Commons, and now moved the pdf here for WS:CV discussion of the file and the work. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:46, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

OK --kathleen wright5 (talk) 12:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Mind is a myth.

Hello there. I'm Jorge. I am in the process of traducing UG to french, to make it available to Frenchies that don't read English. I am not used to the Wiki system, and I am rather surprised by the" result" so what I did last was to upload the french traduction just ahead of the English one, thinking that someone would fix that. At list the fist chapter in now online. I am working on the others, from Martinica. (I am a French sailor, on my boat.) Take care. Jorgede (talk) 23:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi Jorgede. English Wikisource reproduces English-language texts alone. I think that you are looking for French Wikisource, please pop over there, as they do French-language texts, and check in with the Scriptorium for help. All our Wikisource sites will require citations of the source of the text. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:26, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

Recent changes

• Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [57]

Problems

• Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [58]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [59][60]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [61]

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

20:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [62][63]

Problems

• There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [64]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [65][66]

Changes later this week

• The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [67]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [68]
• Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [69]
• Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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

17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Concern about a past issue flaring up again

Hi Billinghurst,

The page Senator Rand Paul Blasts YouTube for Censorship After Floor Speech is Removed‎ seems like a blatant attempt to circumvent your redaction of sensitive material on Senator Paul on Impeachment of President Trump (which, by the way, someone unredacted before I reverted it).

I would assume the same concerns raised before still apply now, so can the appropriate action be taken to remove the sensitive material from revision history on both of these pages? DraconicDark (talk) 22:09, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

+1 for this please. I just had to add this page to the edit filter at enWP because an IP added it as a piped link. See also [70]. I think these radactions should be protected. JzG (talk) 08:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Your message

I have read the message you sent me. Please tell me exactly what you want me to do. James500 (talk) 05:32, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

James500 If you are going to do reams of text layers applications, that policy indicates that one should use a bot account, and put the proposal to the community. Please don't kill recent changes.

I am still waiting to see you proofread rather than continue this habit of adding text layers. If we wanted to add zillions of text layers, we could do it ourselves with bots. Have you considered that we don't and that it is purposeful? — billinghurst sDrewth 10:23, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

That policy says nothing about manual edits or recent changes. Creating pages manually does not involve any automated or semi-automated processes, and is done, as the word "manually" implies, under constant human supervision because a human being is the one doing it.

Both I and others have corrected and proofread some of the pages. The proofreading done by others would, in many cases, not have happened without me. The community has added text layers both manually and with bots such as LA2-bot, InductiveBot, TarmstroBot and Wikisource-bot.

I have received messages and echo notifications from many editors thanking me for my efforts. No-one apart from you is expressing any interest in the fact that the edits are done manually.

I do not believe that there is a problem with recent changes. That line of reasoning would imply that we are not allowed to have the same number of editors as Wikipedia, which is an unacceptable proposition. Wikipedia has a whole range of tools for selectively monitoring recent changes (see w:WP:OLDSCHOOL and w:WP:RCP). Some of them appear to be capable of excluding edits from users on a whitelist. I do not understand why you cannot use one of those.

I would like to have access to robot running the standard pywikipedia djvutext.py, as it would save me the time and effort involved in creating pages manually, allowing me to spend more time correcting pages, but I have no idea how to go about getting one.

I am not the one who created a massive backlog of index pages. James500 (talk) 18:36, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Having now more closely examined Special:RecentChanges, I see that it has a large number of filters. You should not have any difficulty filtering out my edits using those filters. If you are having problems, you are not using the filters correctly. Further, Special:ActiveUsers provides all recent changes made by each user. You cannot have difficulty using that. It is clear to me that my edits cannot possibly be having any significant effect on recent changes. James500 (talk) 15:17, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Can I continue to create the pages manually without fear of further interference from you? Do you have any intention of helping me to get a robot to create the pages? James500 (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I have discussed this with Peteforsyth and Charles Matthews. They both agree that the bot policy does not apply to any of the edits I have made, does not prohibit me from continuing to manually create the page namespace pages in the manner I have been creating them, and does not require the pages to be created by a bot instead of manually. James500 (talk) 22:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Annotations again

Hi Billinghurst! I saw your thunk/unthunk but was going to ping you anyway. I am trying to navigate WS:ANN and keep everyone happy but it's more proscriptive than prescriptive -- in particular, I don't see that it gives any guidance on how clean texts and annotated texts should be sorted on author pages. Maybe we can work together on getting Author:Stephen Arnold Douglas right on both ends, and then I can reverse engineer that and clarify the policy. Although... it's not a policy yet, which is another strange thing. I started a thread at Wikisource talk:Annotations about that a week or so ago, but it's pretty quiet. I didn't dig very far into the history, maybe everyone just got bored and it languished? -- Kendrick7 (talk) 13:05, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it showed up in the Abuselog with the title on the first line, and the parenthetical on the second, and I simply missed the parenthetical. On the author page it typically would be * raw work, ** annotated work. With regard to WT:Annotations I doubt that there are many watchers as it isn't particularly of interest to many, more focused on the original works. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:11, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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

• The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [71]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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

14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Zoologist

Hi Billinghurst,

thanks for your comment on my work on The Zoologist a short time ago. I started to make vol 3 a sub-page: The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899). I will do that for the other volumes as well. So far I understand. But now the next step. How can I arrange the articles? Could you perhaps show me the best way to handle this for some of the first articles of volume 3? I tried to look at PSM, but I don't really understand the syntax of the header. --Dick Bos (talk) 13:18, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

@Dick Bos: apologies for the tardy response. RL busy. {{article link}} has a fair bit of flexibility and typically we have set it to be used to align however the work has been set to cascade. As journal editors are quirky by design, it is a little hard to express how it should be, you are most likely to know it works in its cascade. Templates using "article link" may give you some guidance to examples in place. Typically we would do TITLE / VOLUME / SUBDIVISION / ARTICLE. Sometimes we are watching for gotchas, like recurring article components and trying to separate them in the SUBDIVISION space without having to disambiguate at article level. There is no perfect. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:16, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

• There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [72]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [73][74][75]
• The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [76]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [77]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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

22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikisource:Annotations

Hello! Question for you regarding the process for formally establishing policies around here these days. I noticed that a couple years ago you promoted Wikisource:Wikilinks to be a "policy" after it had been a proposal for a long time. Do you remember if any particular discussion or prerequisite steps took place before you did that? I'm wondering about what needs to be done in order to promote Wikisource:Annotations, for one. Thanks! Spangineer (háblame) 13:46, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@Spangineer: I consider Wikisource:Annotations to be a policy/guidance page. I would think that a statement at WS:S to that effect and your intend to make edits to remove uncertainty would declare it so; we have been using that page forever. Wikilinks has been enforced that way, and I have no memory what I did with it whenever. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Strange characters resolved

Hai Billinghurst, Thank you for resolving the problem with the strange characters. Next time, I'll drop a question on the talk page as you suggested! WeeJeeVee (talk) 13:56, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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

• Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [78]
• Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [79]
• There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [80][81]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [82]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [83]

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

21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Abraham Lincoln: His Life

I only very recently saw your comment here. The original layout I created was intended to match the formatting of the original work, with the quote to the left of the biographical paragraphs. Having viewed it as such, I believe your system would display better on mobile-width screens. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC).

Thanks. I have converted over. I understand that initial thought about the reproduction. It is the discussion that has occurred on multiple occasions, and it while it would have been cool to have that perfection, it just gets too ugly. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:48, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Redirect

You just deleted The Condor/2 (2)/Prominent Californian Ornithologists. III. A. M. Shields, a redirect which is still in use. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:13, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I have placed a {{dated soft redirect}}. It is not usual for us to link repair user namespace. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

If you don't want to fix their use in the user namespace when you break them, then please don't break them in the first place. Redirects are cheap, and perform a useful function; there is no need to delete them in any case. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:06, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I was telling you the local process, and that which I undertook. As said, we maintain redirects at the top levels, not typically at subpages. Nothing more or less. This isn't the place to debate our policy/practice. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

Recent changes

• Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

• There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [84]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [85]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [86]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [87]

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

21:37, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

The Condor

I just noticed that you had deleted most of the unused redirection sub-pages here—thanks! I didn’t want to have to mark all of them by hand. Could you also move The Condor/24 (6) to The Condor/Volume 24/Number 6, with its sub-pages? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:51, 15 June 2020 (UTC).

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 21:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [88]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [89]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [90]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [91]

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

18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [92]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [93]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Mixed Up Indexes

Hello!

Would you please be able to help me with a few indexes which have got mixed up - the title matches the correct scan but the URL and the Index information have been mixed up between these three and I'm not sure how to fix it?

Index:Bessy Bell & Mary Gray (2).pdf --> Index:Bessy Bell & Mary Gray.pdf

Index:Stories of Bewick and Graham.pdf --> Index:Stories of Bewick and Graham (1823).pdf

Index:Short account of the origin and progress of the cholera morbus.pdf --> same

Thank you! --Annalang13 (talk) 11:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Annalang13: Done the shuffling. It needed an admin. Note the new variations. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:00, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Your edit on DomEnc template

Hello, Billinghurst! Could you please explan this your edit which you did in my project Domestic Encyclopædia, and for which edit you made comment: use of additional projects was grandfathered for EB1911 though not wishing to be continued for other projects; and no more disclaimer? P. S. I decided to not explain to you right now why I decided to ask this question only now, except mentioning that I was frustrated, and even angry and (frankly) hateful, on that your edit. --Nigmont (talk) 02:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what was unclear. We don't do that schema for modern templates based on {{header}}. Please follow the modern scheme. If you believe that a work falls outside the current schema, then feel free to open a discussion at WS:S so we can arrive at a community consensus. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Also noting that if you have different years, are you talking about different editions or are you talking about serial publication of volumes over numbers of years. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:35, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

First, what is the "modern scheme" — where it is described? Point me out, please — where I might read it. Also point me out to rules / policies where it is declared as mandatory, or at least to discussion where some consensus established — that only "modern scheme" is allowed in the English Wikisource, and all other schemes are prohibited and must be abandoned.

"Not sure what was unclear." — if you wanted to say "I don't understand what is unclear to you": well, I make a try to explain. You said in the comment of that edit: "use of additional projects was grandfathered for EB1911 though not wishing to be continued for other projects;". The statement in such form sounds unclear and vague to me (first: I don't understand who are the people who "not wishing" — that's only you who are not wishing, or all others of the Wikisource also not wishing?) If you really minded "use of additional projects (i.e. parameter "other_projects") is strictly prohibited by all the community and rules and policies of the Wikisource", then such statement seems to be not true. First, additional projects are used not only for EB1911 but some other Encyclopedias — see templates Template:AmCyc, Template:NIE, Template:NSRW, Template:EB1922, Template:Appletons', etc. So, the "other_projects" parameter is allowed for many other projects, not only EB1911 — why is it forbidden for Domestic Encyclopedia then? Second: I worked on the Domestic Encyclopedia about a year or more before your edit, and that template existed in that form (with "other_projects" and other params) during all that time, and during all that time nobody made an attempt to change the template or warn me that I violated policies by putting "other_projects" to use. And I extensively used that parameter in many articles of DomEnc, and nobody protested against it, until you intruded and removed substantial piece of the code from template, without making any attempt to let me know why you did that (not mentioning that such removal put all my work of filling of those parameter in water, and you even don't worry about that). The fact that for so long time (a year) nobody interrupted my activity there also contradicts your assertion and proves it to be wrong.

Also you said "feel free to open a discussion at WS:S so we can arrive at a community consensus." — though currently I believe that you are wrong and that the "modern scheme" is actually not required as mandatory by consensus, and so far it's you who must start discussion to make other schemes to be forbidden, nevertheless I am ready to start that discussion myself. But at first I want to know grounds for your assertions, so I await for your information about "modern scheme" and why you proclaim it to be the only one which is permitted.

And your last question: "are you talking about different editions or are you talking about serial publication of volumes over numbers of years" — I don't understand why are you asking that. The template Template:DomEnc, your edit on which raised this discussion, is for all editions of that encyclopedia, regardless of years, isn't it? Or may be you minded something other which I don't understand? --Nigmont (talk) 20:52, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@Nigmont: Oh please, come off it. We show the way that modern works are done for compilation works, and they are plentiful, and much more modern that show how we set out works, and it is not that way. We utilise both author and portal namespaces for listing works—links to author namespace through direct links or parameter "related_author" and through portal parameter to portal namespace. There we respectively can list the additions once.

You are trying to use an old discarded methodology, and one that is prone for incompleteness and of completely limited scope. Yes it does still exist on old old works, but on works where we are active, it is grandfather'd for new EB1911 articles. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:49, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Billinghurst, I'm sorry for answering so late (I was busy in previous days). Also I bring my apologizes if I write a bit aggressively. I don't want to bite anyone, really, I just want to get more understanding about the right ways how the things should be done in the English Wikisource, and I want to get proper explanations.

Nevertheless and unfortunately, your comment above explains almost nothing why "other_projects" parameter is prohibited and why it don't fit to "modern methodology" and "modern scheme". And as I understand, you refuse to give me proper and true answer to this question. Alright, I got it — that you don't want to help me. Also you seemingly is trying to say to me, that for the further discussion we must proceed to Scriptorium and discuss the topic with other users there, yes? Alright, I got it, and — okay — I will try to start that discussion there. --Nigmont (talk) 22:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

• The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [94]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [95]
• The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
• Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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

20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

naming subpages in a collection of letters

Hello! You were so kind as to provide me with a thoughtful explanation why the tales were better under individual titles and not numbers in Folk Tales from Tibet. Today I have a totally different thing and I am confused. What would be the proper way to name subpages here? This is a 3-volume collection of letters (or fragments of them), ordered by date, divided into chapters by year, from Queen Victoria as well as addressed to her. The Contents list the subjects of the letters, but I am not sure if there are enough subjects for every individual letter. Can you please give some advice on the subpage naming there? --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 21:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Tar-ba-gan: How are the works known and how are they referred? By a number or a name? When searching? When they are added to Wikidata? For individual tales they are their own independent components, so we give them their names.

In the QV letters work, we would use chapter numbers "Chapter 13" as they would be referenced that way. The chapter is a construct just to make the set out of the work easier. One could say that in terms of WD, that one is less likely to add the chapters as entities. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Chapter numbers are important. But what if I want to put every letter on an individual page? --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 10:03, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

It has chapters, so not certain why we would want to break up how the author constructed the work. One can do internal links and separations on a page. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, reason one, there are subjects of every letter listed under every chapter. Reason two, if letters have their separate subpages, they can have their own categories. My interest in these letters stems from the fact that there are a number of letters (and not chapters) concerning the Russian Tsar Nicholas I. It would be easy to have a category "Nicholas I" or "History of Russia" and the list on his own page. The Tsar's own letters, in French, are included too, and they probably require a separate treatment. I feel they are more likely to be translated if there are subpages for them. And, he is not the only author there. There are letters to QV from a variety of British politicians included. They are more likely to be noticed if there are subpages for them. Else, we get chapters with a great number of authors. --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 15:15, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

If you believe that chapters need further breakdown, then I would suggest that they be subpages to the chapters, rather than replacing chapters. There are always cases why we move away from a standard, though always look to reproduce the work as published. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:26, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice! I will make them subpages. Chapters are also the years, so they are more than formal chapters. --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 19:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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

• Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [96]

Problems

• Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [97][98]

Changes later this week

• Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [99]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [100][101][102][103]

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

16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

https://dnbtools.toolforge.org/dnb_wikisource.php

https://dnbtools.toolforge.org/dnb_wikisource.php needs services turned back on. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:21, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

=> wikitech:user talk:Magnus Manske

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 12:09, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Filter 40

Regarding Special:AbuseFilter/40. Can you explain in more detail what this is trying to achieve? I read abusefilter syntax well enough to see what it does technically, but I'm not entirely clear on what its ultimate goal is. Perhaps a couple of examples of things it is intended to prevent, and a couple of what it is not designed to prevent and/or is designed to actively permit?

I'm guessing that it's intended as a speedbump rather than a road block: trying to cut down on unthinking export to Commons without doing proper cleanup first, but that it's not really trying to completely prevent it.

The context is that I'm trying to figure out if there are adjustments we can make that would achieve the same end without at the same time preventing things that are needed for an efficient workflow for some special cases; either by tweaking this edit filter, or by employing one of the other tools we have at our disposal. --Xover (talk) 07:02, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Don't fuss it. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Not fussing; I'm just trying to find ways we can iteratively and incrementally improve our setup to reduce needless friction for contributors. For example, I've added {{raw page scan}} and Category:Raw page scans for missing images to the FileImporter blacklist so that files with one of these present can no longer be imported to Commons. That should prevent a lot of unthinking transwikiing of such files without cleanup. Perhaps if I better understood the specific goals of that filter I could come up with other or adjusted ways to achieve them without the unwanted side-effects of the filter as it stands. --Xover (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Turned it off, don't fuss it. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:32, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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

Recent changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems

• There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [104]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [105]
• Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [106]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [107]

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

19:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

checker

Should be fixed now, sorry about that. legoktm (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thanks for all that you do to generously support the Wikisource communities, it is really appreciated. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:24, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Something quirky going on

• Y Index:King James and the Egyptian robbers, or, The court cave of Fife (1).pdf => https://checker.toolforge.org/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:King_James_and_the_Egyptian_robbers,_or,_The_court_cave_of_Fife_(1).pdf
• N Index:Captain Wedderburn's courtship (4).pdf => [108]
  • N ISE if you plug in "Captain Wedderburn's courtship (4).pdf" to https://checker.toolforge.org/?db=enwikisource_p&title=
• N Index:Tax'd dogs' garland.pdf

— billinghurst sDrewth 23:53, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

resolved — billinghurst sDrewth 15:33, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Removing page labels

Hello Billinghurst, I noticed that you sometimes simplify pagelists by removing page labels for non-sequenced pages, for example [109]. This seems odd to me since it runs counter to the instructions given at Help:Index pages#Parameters, and also makes the Indexes harder to navigate. What are your thoughts on this? Kaldari (talk) 15:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that you will find that I generally apply page numbering as per the published work, not generated labels, and the skipped page numbering in a work. In the identified work, yes, I did put generic en-dashes in place.

Naming that way is pretty much pointless and detrimental once the pages are transcluded. Those labels when transcluded are just silly, each of those is blinding obviously on the transcluded page, look ugly in their display as a presentation and provide no useful anchors. It doesn't run counter to the broad instruction on the page. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:30, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. That makes sense to me. If you have the inclination, it would be good to change some of the instructions under "General recommendations for labeling pages" at Help:Index pages#Parameters. Otherwise, editors will continue to add these labels to their transcriptions. Kaldari (talk) 16:42, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I am past arguing, and just into fixing. Hacking through half the bloat and the senseless and thoughtless that people add is beyond me. Even when you have examples everyone else's ideas are always more brilliant. I will gently go through and tidy works and author pages to be neat and tidy when I stumble across them. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:49, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

My profound thanks to you for moving Knaves of Diamonds. I'm sorry for the bother. -McGhiever (talk) 19:58, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@McGhiever: No issue, not a usual request, fiddly, not difficult. DON'T WANT TO WASTE GOOD WORK. :-) — billinghurst sDrewth 23:13, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Removing wikilinking of places & obscure minerals?

On Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_20.djvu/280, I noticed you removed my wikilinks to two towns and a (very obscure) name for w:cinnebar. Those seemed useful and neutral to me -- could you say more about why you thought them inappropriate? JesseW (talk) 22:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Didn't know that you did those links. Please see Wikisource:Wikilinks for our linking approach. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I am familiar with it (and just reviewed it again). I added the links based on my reading of the following: "Links to Wikimedia-project pages are acceptable and considered to be annotations. ... Heavier wikilinking may also be more appropriate in reference works, such as dictionaries ... With older works, wikilinks may be more appropriate". Could you clarify what part of Wikisource:Wikilinks you see as discouraging the links I added? JesseW (talk) 23:56, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

enWS is a minimalist off-site linking wiki, and only links when there is true value to adding a link, not based on a "just because" or "neutral advantage". We don't link towns, countries, etc. what is the value of that link? Where does that stop and start with our works, though a chapter of all of our works, what is the value of linking places just because there is a target article at enWP? How does will that work in a consistent fashion? Should a link like that be local, or should it be to enWP? How does a link to Wigan in 16thC work equate to a link to Wigan in a 21stC work? Linking like enWP is not our go, so we look for high value links that increase knowledge, and don't treat our readers as being unable to run basic searches.

Compare these two works Highways and Byways in Sussex/Chapter 26 and Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey/Supplement/Kent and see where I believe that there is the value in the linking. We do not want a sea of blue links. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Also noting that we have seen issues with our static linking, so not to mention link rot. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:20, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

OK, thank you -- that does explain your concerns about the location links. I was hesitant about the difference in time, too. But regarding the obscure name for the mineral -- that one really does seem relevant and useful. It's difficult to search for (I tried), and provides useful context in understanding the passage (knowing what treatment is being suggested). JesseW (talk) 16:54, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@JesseW: If you think that it is central to the article, or important for the understanding of the article, then feel welcome to add it back. Typically if it is definitional, I would add a link to wiktionary rather than to WP, as I consider it pop-out, pop-back. If it requires that greater understanding then WP is fine, though they may not come back. 🤷‍♂️ If you think that the wikilinks guidance is not sufficiently guiding, then please suggest changes. Trying to get uniformity of linking and trying to express the difference between WP and WS (wikisource:For Wikipedians is always a challenge. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:55, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Great, sounds good. I'll make sure there's a good definition at wikt:æthiops mineral, and consider whether it's important enough. Thanks for the discussion and suggested considerations! JesseW (talk) 01:19, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31

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

Recent changes

• The Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [110]
• The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
• On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

• The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [111][112]
• Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [113]
• Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [114]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).

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

13:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32

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

Problems

• All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [115]
• Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [116]
• There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [117]
• A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [118]

Changes later this week

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [119]
• Users' global.js and global.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [120]
• In the MonoBook skin, the searchGoButton identifier is now searchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27.
• Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses counter to prevent large archives was changed. [121]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).

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

15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33

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

• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [122]

Problems

• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [123]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [124][125]

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

16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34

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

Recent changes

• If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an undo tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [126]
• The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [127]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 August. It will be on all wikis from 20 August (calendar).

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [128][129]

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

20:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Revision history of "Author talk:John Jeffrey"

@Inductiveload: Just discovered Author:John_Jeffrey. Personally important to me regarding reference to "Danish literature"; i.e., I suspect IDUB to have had consensus blacklisting any reference to S. Kierkegaard, my favorite author and most prolific Danish author of 19th century. By the data documented, it would appear to me that the wikisource & wikidata could be clarified to include YOB 1822 instead of (?–1872). Regarding this DOB factoid, is my reasoning deficient? Klarm768 (talk) 09:18, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Done not even sure why I didn't do it at the time. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 05:11, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-35

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

Changes later this week

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

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

17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Henry Clay

Please see Special:WhatLinksHere/Author:Henry Clay to understand why I am now asking you to revert your move of my recent creation, Author:Henry Clay (fl. c. 1767-1817). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:12, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I have relocated the other links, so they are out of the way. Feel free to use either the original link or the redirected target. We don't need to move it back until it is needed. The beauty of our schema. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:32, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-36

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

Problems

• This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [130][131]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

20:11, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Template:U

Please revert this change. It caused Template:U to drawn upon a different template than it should. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 18:35, 1 September 2020 (UTC).

Ugh, damn collateral damage of an import. Thanks for pointing it out. Sometime I really hate mediawiki. — billinghurst sDrewth 18:48, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37

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

Changes later this week

• Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere. [132]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
• All MediaWiki API modules will now use watchlist instead of watch. This was inconsistent before. [133]

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
• OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change. [134]
• The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users. [135][136]
• Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
• Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a .menu class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can use nav ul instead. .vectorTabs and .vectorMenu will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.

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

15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38

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

Problems

• The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [137][138]

Changes later this week

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

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

16:19, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [139][140]

Changes later this week

• The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [141]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).

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

21:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Please undelete a page

Hello. Could you please undelete this page. Thanks in advance. Ratte (talk) 11:00, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40

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

Recent changes

• Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [142]
• Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [143]

Problems

• Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [144]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
• The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
• In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [145]
• You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
• You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

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

21:24, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Index:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu has been validated and fully transcluded

I thought you'd like to know the above has been validated and fully transcluded. --kathleen wright5 (talk) 13:42, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikilivres is back

Wikilivres is back at http://www.wikilivres.org/wiki as of October 2020 --kathleen wright5 (talk) 12:59, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

The original site is now an Amazon book review site --kathleen wright5 (talk) 13:18, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41

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

• There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
• You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [146]

Problems

• There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [147]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [148]
• Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
• Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [149]

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [150]

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

16:25, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1830)

I notice that a while back a user moved a number of unsourced hymns to be sub-pages of this work. You reverted this action stating that the hymns in question might not be from this edition. I want to give you a heads up that I am moving the hymns back into this edition—but only after verifying that the content is the same as that published in this edition. It is faster and easier than creating the new identical version and then going through a deletion process (or even speedy deleting as redundant) the identical but unsourced older versions, as I am sure you can understand. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:53, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42

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

Problems

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [151][152][153]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [154][155]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [156]

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

15:24, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [157]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [158]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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

16:31, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

 Comment @Samwilson: User:Samwilson/FullScreenEditing.js is on the list — billinghurst sDrewth 12:49, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned pages

Hi, when you marked the Greek language pages on Index:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu they all became orphaned and have ended up as a large group on Special:LonelyPages. This is obviously undesirable and is why the instructions for the pagelist command on Help:Index pages says that this is an unacceptable practice on enWS. (GOIII wrote that bit.) Any ideas for a practical solution? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:26, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: I can delete the lonely pages. I would have thought that the instructions should say mark them that way so they are not created and edited. BS that it is not an acceptable practice IMNSHO it is exactly the practice to undertake. I don't understand why GOIII would have thought it was the means to progress. Am I missing something? — billinghurst sDrewth 12:38, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I can extract them into a file first in case they are wanted to be taken to elWS and exploded there. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:47, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

A different problem

Hi, the file for Index:How Women Can Help In Political Work.pdf got deleted on Commons (Commons:Deletion requests/File:How Women Can Help In Political Work.pdf) back in June without any discussion <sigh>. It's left all the linked Pagespace pages in limbo. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:34, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: repatriated here. We can work on author page whenever. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:34, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Index:Chinese Speaker (E. Morgan, 1916).djvu nomenclature

Dear Billinghurst, I have just found that one of my projects has the same numerical addresses for chapters as those you told me about before, but in this particular projec, transclusion thas hardly even started. Some of the original section names are rather verbose though. What is your recommendation? Is it OK to have lengthy chapter names? TIA, --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 22:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Tar-ba-gan: from a quick check I would be ignoring the part names, and doing something like

• /The Commonwealth
• /Education
• /Social Reform
• /Morality and Religion
• /Economics
• /The Public Press
• /Naval ...
• /Edicts
• /Administrative ...
• /Untranslated Passages
• /Annotation and Vocabulary
• /Philological Matters

...

This retains the sections as published, but does not push down to levels of subpage hierarchy for us, it just has simple approach. It also still allows us to put the chapters as published into wikidata as subjects. I wouldn't be drilling down to the subsections of the chapters in my pages set out, they can be anchors if needed. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:55, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Set a cronjob to purge Category:Pages with missing files

Run it manually to see what it removes, then probably set it to run weekly. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:29, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [159]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [160]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [161]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [162]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [163]

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

17:38, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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

• You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [164]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [165]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [166]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [167]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [168]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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16:09, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

WD merge?

• Ahoy Billinghurst. Question. Poems That Every Child Should Know/The Wreck of the Hesperus was created without having first been the result of a move from The Wreck of the Hesperus. I believe that WD items Q7776274 and Q56583872 should be merged. I read Help:Merge at WD, but I could use a gentle reminder on how best to do this. And whether a merge is what is necessary. I am rusty. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:59, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: No those don't get merged, one is the conceptual d:Q7776274, and the other is the physical d:Q56583872. As a hint, if we had a versions page, that would be aligned with the conceptual. The conceptual have "has edition" links, and the edition has "edition of" links. Explained at d:Wikidata:Books — billinghurst sDrewth 23:11, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Ok... Thinking... Can I switch the enWS placement from one item at WD to the other? Would that cause the WP article link to appear on "The Wreck" page here at WS (my initial concern)? Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:19, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Or, do I add the WP info ino the header info of the WS poem page instead? (I will read about all you wrote above, I promise. I just want to take care of my "initial concern" first before I move on to creating more pages...). Forgive my scattered-brain method of inquiry. I know a light will turn on eventually. Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:35, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that you will find that the interwiki link appears to WP in the side margin. The other option is to try to add | wikipedia = {{import enwiki}} and that will inhale the link. My plan is to have this to be automated, but not yet done. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:51, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Great. I will explore. Apologies if I have interrupted your flow :) Thanks much, Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:56, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

A WFH-day. <shrug> Success for those is on a spectrum. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Fix transcluded TIWW with apostrophes

Need to copy DEFAULTSORT text through to | onlyinclude = (output of text grab).

Done (well doing) — billinghurst sDrewth 06:29, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Transcriptions of 2020 DNC and RNC speeches

I transcribed the speeches myself (as opposed to copy and pasting them). Is this still a copyright violation? --Numberguy6 (talk) 04:37, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

@Numberguy6: The issue is not the transcription but the authorship. Transcription does not give you copyright, copyright is about the intellectual property of the thinking. You are not author, or reputed authors of the speeches given. Our scope is shown at Wikisource:What Wikisource includes and the eligible tags are Help:Copyright tags. That someone gives a speech does not put it into the public domain for us to host unless the author specifically puts it within our scope. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:27, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [169]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [170][171]

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15:50, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

Recent changes

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [172][173]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [174]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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15:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

A Compendium of Irish Biography/Torna

There should be a series of references below Authorities shouldn't there? For me it's currently blank. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:49, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I see the one authority listed. Looks okay to me. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Editors and politicians

I was searching for an author (who turned out to be more of an editor) and found a nameism (I don't know what to call it). I was wondering if you might look into it?

The name I was searching for was "A. Meserole" who was the editor of Selections from the Spectator and found Archibald M. Bliss.

It's not a life or death thing, but an annoyance festering in the back of my gray matter and I thought of you for solving it. Thanks! --RaboKarbakian (talk) 18:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian: Are you meaning pseudonym or pen-name? Hard to know whether it is that use of a pseudonym or the name of a brother-in-law without looking more widely at the works written in that space. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

research to do

Author:James Gainsborough Fotheringham and to fix up wd on Oxon. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 02:51, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

Recent changes

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [175]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [176]

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17:19, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Author:Charles Harington Harington

twitter request for some research on this person. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:54, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [177][178]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [179]

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17:45, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

redirects and spelling

@Billinghurst: Tales of a Traveler vs. Tales of a Traveller? I think the redirect is in the wrong direction. Truly, I thought it was my mistake as my spelling skills have been going downhill since 8th grade but it wasn't. I have included the 1824 title page for ease in your perusal of my claim. Can it be made right either by me or one more qualified? --RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:38, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Done probably right as it was originally an English language work, though as we had an American edition, can see why it was there. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:06, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [180][181]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [182][183]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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16:15, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [184]

Changes later this week

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

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21:34, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Author:Jahan

Where are you getting that Shah is title and Jehan is name? "Shah Jehan" is his regnal name, meaning "king of the world" (shah = king; jehan = world). Now you have rendered the name as "Jehan" or "World", which was not his name at all. Hrishikes (talk) 11:51, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Please feel free to move it to his real name to fit in with our naming philosophy. Nowhere else do we use regal terms. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:11, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

His real name was "Shahab-ud-din Muhammad Khurram". His regal title was "Badshah" (emperor), and regnal name was "Shah Jehan". All the Mughal emperors took regnal names and gave up their original names on ascending the throne. Hrishikes (talk) 12:48, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

🤷‍♂️ We don't do titles as the base, they are the redirects. People published under a range of names--pre-title, post-title, changing title, pen-name, married name, etc.--so we picked real names and the rest to be redirects. In the early days we had hell all problems with duplicates, and this just stopped all arguments that were occurring at enWP around which name, and also around disambiguation. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:23, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, it is not a title. It is regnal name. The title was Badshah (emperor), which is different from Shah (king). And we do use regnal names (e.g. see under Author:Henry), papal names, monastic names (e.g., Vivekananda, Nivedita) etc. as author names, instead of real names. If you think that shah, because of its dictionary meaning, is a title and should not be used in author names, then the same problem exists with Martin Luther King. For your info, we also use educational degrees as surnames, in place of the real one (e.g. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar). Hrishikes (talk) 04:01, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Hrishikes: The guidance is to not do titles. No pope, king, queen, duke, earl, etc. To have a name that covers their life, not a part of it. If you are seeing things outside of the guidance, then fix them, please don't point them to me. If you think that the guidance needs variation then put it to the community rather than come and tell me. Give me solutions, not tell me problems. It is too big a job for one person, and then that person is also seen as the grinch. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:17, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Again and again you are hammering on the issue of title, although there is no title in that author name. Hrishikes (talk) 01:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

<shrug> Shah has been used as a title previously, and would see "King of the World" or "Shah Jehan" as a title, but I am not wanting to quibble or pick a fight. Be it a title, be it descriptive, a regnal name, a nickname, etc. that is not a name that they have used for their life, then we have been avoiding it is how we have set up the guidance. Again, I am not looking for a fight, just solutions. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:46, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

It is not a title; irrespective of meaning. And there is no name describes that person from birth to death. Major portion of his life was spent under the regnal name, so using it is the "solution". Hrishikes (talk) 01:58, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [185]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [186]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [187]

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20:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Translation:Fatherland Front Bulgaria for Macedonia

Regarding your revert: [188]. I already did that two weeks ago, waited enough time to gather all possible opinions and here you can see the result: Wikisource:Copyright_discussions#Translation:Fatherland_Front_Bulgaria_for_Macedonia. I also did this second nomination as I was advised by TE(æ)A,ea.. Is there something else that I must do? --StanProg (talk) 00:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@StanProg: If you logged it WS:CV then the appropriate tag to be placed after the header of the work is {{copyvio}}. If you were advised to place a speedy delete then you were poorly advised; speedy delete for a long-held work will never happen. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I added the copivio template with the anchor parameter filled with a link to the discussion. Should I propose it as well at Proposed deletions or there's another procedure for such copyright violations? --StanProg (talk) 00:32, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

No, it is one or the other and WS:CV is the more appropriate. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:35, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@StanProg: Two weeks is a minimum time. The discussion at WS:CV will remain open until an admin gets around to closing it, and the outcome (consensus) of the discussion will be determined at that time. If the consensus is that it should be deleted, the closing admin will effectuate that as part of closing the discussion.

Speedy deletion under CSD§G6 is only for blatant copyright violations (think someone uploading the new Harry Potter book), not for cases where there could conceivably (even if improbably) be some factor that leads to keeping the work. For example, the type of text in question here can be subject to any number of legal exceptions in various jurisdictions that may interact with US copyright in strange ways. A full community discussion at WS:CV ensures we find any such if there are any to be found, in a way a single admin assessing a speedy request cannot be reasonably be expected to do.

If you think of community discussion at WS:CV as the Supreme Court, and admins processing speedy requests as the janitor, you'll have a better picture of what the respective mandates are. --Xover (talk) 09:14, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

timely delivered documents

This used to be on a mozilla web site, but it doesn't matter who has it (I suggest downloading your own copy for personal use) utf-8 entities.

Guess what I would like in return?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:26, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Suggest that you add it to one of the help pages for ready reference. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:21, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure! That is a good start. That is something I could probably tap out on this device while I wait for the car battery so I can use my computer when I use my computer.

I am here for your blessings for that but also because you use the words "good practices" and "style guide" the most that I know of. I was thinking about {{ae}}, {{fl}}, {{oe}}, etc. I mentioned them before but got nothing definitive. It is a good practice.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 03:40, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Not certain I understand the question. 1) and 3) are true characters should be used, though preferably substituted. I haven't run my bot through their usage for a while. :-( If that is your request, then just ask that as an open question. Otherwise you are beating around the bush for your intent. Whereas 2) is deprecated and should not be used, just use fl. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:08, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I changed {{ae}} to reflect what I was and have been asking. I am sorry, it is a long conversation and it seemed obvious to me. Honest and sincere.

@RaboKarbakian: I am going to revert this as humans prefer reading chars instead of html, once substituted.Mpaa (talk) 15:56, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mpaa: I don't like changing templates everyone uses. Sorry. The argument though is not a good one. Does ws export to text? Does that mean no templates? I am used to writing for browsers and have the words "good practice" used to tell me the reason I have to do things differently. I don't war with idiots or with the overly competent or with anyone in between (which would be me).--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:07, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian:: FYI æ and æ are exactly equivalent. The Wikisource HTML is explicitly UTF-8, there is no ambiguity in just using æ. In fact Google discourages the use of the entities in general, unless they can interfere with HTML itself (mostly < and &) or invisible characters like &nbsp;. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:18, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I like google. In fact, without google there would only be Microsoft (bing), and google has put fonts online for @font to use. But my ereader is not chromd or is it whatever internet explorer calls itself lately or is it a mozilla product. An offline reader is not to be compared with a web browser, as "people" see them. But writing html (xml, really, because epub and mobi each use a variant of html) as if you are writing for a browser with the old limitations (like a limited font set) is just better for all people, all browser products, and me, not liking how monotone fonts render the aelig.

The coversation I had about this, almost 20 years ago (a confession about how this is not so important for current web browsers) was in the middle of a larger convers. about escaped vs. hex. On 6 and 8 Gig. hard drives. Equal to current ereaders. How big are the Notofu fonts? That is a font set that is dedicated to not having any of those "character not found" glyphs (called tofo, according to the font description). I claim that the esape language is actually better for hunting and pecking (typing) also, because can you tell the difference between hyphen, minus sign, ndash, mdash, etc.?

I love fonts. If my eyes could slobber and belch with happiness they would when I look at fonts. I want my next ereader to display SVG fonts for fancy smancy title pages. I want utf-8 to be all in ascii. I apologize to the world for typewriters and computers and therefore ascii starting in the USA. A country that does just fine with a 26 character set, not that this is in anyway responsible for our previous speed in the development of technology. Keeping it simple....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

And further, {{aelig}} redirect to there and similar templates for the rest of the entity set -- and a nice table (or other) for people to look them up for use. And, the special characters in the editor gadgets. Especially those, so everywhere, entities instead of font for these non-kbd, and relatively new characters. --RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I was surprised when fl worked....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:57, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

It was retained so page histories work, it should not be used. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:05, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

What is wrong with fl, exactly? I was poking around your archives looking for that flower ☙ and couldn't find it. I noticed that I am kind of an ass sometimes. Sorry. Also, I don't really know what the difference between unicodd and utf-8.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:44, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

It is typographic rather than w:alphabetic. — billinghurst sDrewth 20:28, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Meaning it is not grammar but a device used by typesetters to make texts easier to read? That it was good enough at what it did that printers used to melt metal and pour it into a mold so they could use it to print text that was easier for "people" to read? How do grammarists allow serif then? They are not alphabetical?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 22:14, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh! For search! What about {{SIC}}?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 23:18, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

No. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

If not for search, then what for? --RaboKarbakian (talk) 00:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Your bot

@Billinghurst: Your bot should adhere to good practices....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:00, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

meaning? — billinghurst sDrewth 14:04, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Can you please stay out of "my" style guide? I know that there is no "my" here, but I am giving that to my mom on Monday. A late Christmas gift. And it has ndashes where they should be, etc. You can wait and not war with me over this one thing?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 22:22, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian: Links please (edits, diffs, pages). Please don't vaguely wave at my bot and say I don't like its actions. Specificity helps, please don't expect me to wade through its 20k+ recent edits. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:46, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Local styles

Could you please answer the questions on my talk page? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 15:22, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 00:46, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Volume number in DMM

Hi, it was a deliberate decision on my part not to include the volume number back when I set up the DMM headers, per my reasoning articulated on Wikisource talk:WikiProject DMM the last time someone tried to add it in. I haven't changed my thinking since then. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 00:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: Happy to pull it out of the display (I have already unwikilinked) though they are present as a parameter so I can get them into Wikidata as a data field—having then as parameter makes it way easier to differentiate and it is explicit to the reference; see Girelli Aguilar, Signora (Q104538562). I thought that once I added it as a parameter that I may as display it. I am not doing more than that, definitely not adding a hierarchical layer. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:56, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Re the other points you made in your directed discussion, do see my raised points in WS:S at the moment about getting rid of project disclaimers, other projects and aligning WP links to existing styles. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:59, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh, Wikidata. That thing off to one side that I'm vaguely aware of and mostly ignore as it's not a part of my workflow. Re the WP links: fine, but I'll still occasionally wikilink inside a DMM article when there are multiple topics within the one article. I do need to get back onto completing DMM. I got up to Schubert and stalled on the long tables of works at the end of the article. Once through that there's only about 1,000 pages to go. Will be some delays in getting the music snippets done, thanks to WMF (Tim Starling) hiding Lilypond processing for the past six months. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: You don't have to change a thing that you are doing, nothing should change for you, everything will work as before. That is the purpose of the exercise. Once we get each of these articles into WD, and then linked to their subject items, then we can do some more automated linking where you haven't linked, plus other things. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:10, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Removing licenses from subpages

I had gathered that if the subpage is a work in its own right, i.e. a short story, it gets a PD tag? I believe that many if not all of the stories in The Achievements of Luther Trant were also published elsewhere in magazines. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:53, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

We work on the root page of publication to cover the appropriate license, the purpose is to show that the work is out of copyright. If it is published in another work, and we reproduce that work, then it will have the appropriate license. Would you expect us to have a license on every subpage of a biographical work. We have often added copyright tags on subpages serial works as they have that level of difference. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:59, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

First-time descriptions of a genus or a species are often used alone. Biologists cite them everytime they refer to that taxon.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 05:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

RK, I think that you need to have a look at the relevance of your additions to conversations. And do not add to this, just reflect. This page is not here for your general chats. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:51, 31 December 2020 (UTC)