Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous
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January 2019 |
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [1]
- Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [2]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Article on Mitch Murray, Songwriter
I’m hoping someone can help me. My Wikipedia page, edited - I believe- by Derek Bullamore - has a very basic piece of incorrect information due to a mistaken entry in the London Gazette, nearly a month ago, when I was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
I changed my legal name by Deed Poll in 1968 from Lionel Michael Stitcher to Mitch Murray, and my CBE honour is actually in the name of Mitch Murray, not my birth name. I have the original Change Of Name Deed and this was supplied to the Cabinet Office at the time I accepted the award. They tell me they supplied the correct information to the Gazette, but somehow the wrong information was printed.
I am quite happy to supply a copy of the Deed to whoever wishes to see it I will also arrange for the London Gazette to confirm the correct name, Mitch Murray CBE, which is now on file officially.
I understand why whoever edited my page did so, using the entry in the London Gazette, but the name Lionel Michael Stitcher has not been my legal name for 51 years, and I am happy to prove this and verify it with documentation and backup from the Gazette or the Cabinet Office.
I am finding the incorrect entry a complication to my professional ‘brand’ - much worse than the wrong ‘Spouse’ entry (we were actually Divorced in 1980).
Could someone please help me with this problem?
Many thanks
Mitch Murray CBE (honest)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.151.149.35 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
- The appropriate first place to raise this concern is the talk page of the article in question. --Pi zero (talk) 19:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [3]
Problems
- Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [4]
- Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [5]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [6]
- There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [7]
- Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [8]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
- The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [9]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [10]
- There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [11]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [12]
Changes later this week
- The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called
Abuse filterand has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [13]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
On Somali journalism
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/22/journalism-can-get-you-killed-in-somalia-but-we-are-not-just-poster-children-for-desperation —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:56, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
- The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [14]
Problems
- The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [15]
Changes later this week
- Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [16]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [17][18]
- With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [19][20]
- Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
- The variable
user_wpzerowill be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I'd thought about proposing if we could have the content translation extension enabled, though reading the tool's FAQ page, it seems to only be in development for Wikipedia, any maybe Wikivoyage. It's not clear if it would work out of the box on Wikinews. meta:Content translation group doesn't even consider translations between Wikinewses. Granted, this can be difficult to implement, just considering Wikinews publication policies. Though, I figure enabling something like this could bring life across Wikinewses. —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 03:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
- From what I understand, that translation thing wouldn't be remotely suitable for Wikinews. There have been many efforts at general translation for Wikinews, all of which failed miserably. Translation between Wikinews projects can only be individual-article acts by individual Wikinewsies; which does happen, on various occasions. The incompatibilities between policies/philosophies of different Wikinews projects hugely complicate the problem of translation already made acute by the time frames and extreme quality-demands involved. --Pi zero (talk) 03:29, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Press pass!
Although I've reported on a number of events and have done loads of interviews, this weekend I will be covering the Texas Haunters Convention (in Dallas) as a BONAFIDE member of the press!! I've never used/had a genuine Press Pass before! Its going to be a cool event! --Bddpaux (talk) 15:59, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
- Great! Look forward to you reports. Have a good and productive time. Cheers, --SVTCobra 08:34, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [21]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
State of the project...
I made a good faith effort to contribute here, about a decade ago.
In Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/Archive/18#Compliance with Wikinews:Etiquette and the following section, I left my warning that I thought wikinews was a troubled project.
So, what is the state of the project? Was an attempt ever made to be more welcoming? Have contributions dried up?
What happened with Bureaucrat Brian McNeil? He seems to have retired. He warned me I would be banned if I kept asking questions. I thought my questions had been civil, pertinent, and appropriate. So, it was his bullying that drove me from this project.
My sympathy to him and his family, if he stopped contributing here due to ill-health. But, can I ask if the incivility I experienced was later more widely recognized? Did he end up losing some of his status bits? Geo Swan (talk) 20:14, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
- We welcome folks who come here with positive attitudes, which in my experience is most of them; those who come here with disruptive intent, we invite to leave expeditiously, and often they claim en.wn is a hostile place though, of course, they brought with them the hostility they found here. Brianmc often dealt with the disruptive elements in order to let the rest of us get on with news production. --Pi zero (talk) 21:15, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, attempt to be more welcoming has been made. Some effort to this end are transparent and are detailed on the water cooler, and on my user page.
- This does not exclude usage of phrases like "you royally screwed the start" (ref). They are a criticism of an action and not a person. I do not find them incivil and I am not sure why someone else would. Gryllida (talk) 21:28, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
- I don't see a problem with Brian's comments. He may have been too harsh at times, but I am sure he had the best of intentions. I can understand some people get a little "picky" when they get told things they don't like, I don't blame them. But in my years here I never felt unwelcome; it was a permanent learning. I think we all won something. If people don't give Wikinews a chance, hardly they could get to understand its goal. --Diego Grez Cañete (talk) 03:45, 5 August 2019 (UTC)