Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous

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Interesting listen/read on investigative journalism[edit]

From the excellent ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/podcast/item/the-breakthrough-how-a-small-news-outlet-brought-down-the-state-hero. I've never listened to audio from them before but they're just as good at it as they are at the written word. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:18, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-34[edit]

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 test the new Timeless skin on the test wiki and mediawiki.org. You can turn it on in your preferences. You can report bugs in Phabricator. It will come to more wikis soon. [1][2]
  • Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [3]
  • If a table has several columns you can often choose which column you want to use to sort the table. This has not worked for some columns for readers who have used Firefox or Safari. This has now been fixed. [4]
  • The RelatedArticles extension has shown related pages on Wikivoyages. You will now see the related pages at the end of the article together with an image. Previously the links were in the sidebar. Wikis that want this extension can request it on Phabricator.

Changes later this week

  • Videos will now be played in the WebM format in all browsers. Previously some browsers used Ogg Theora (.ogv). If you use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge you may see slower playback speed at high resolutions. Instead we will get better quality and smaller file size. You can still upload video as Ogg files. They are automatically converted to WebM. This doesn't affect Ogg audio files. [5]
  • The default font in the edit window will change for some users this week. Instead of using the browser default, it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [6]
  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Empty "Opinions/Comments" subpages[edit]

Seems that a lot of "Opinions"/"Comments:" subpages of published articles have been created with banners. However, most of them are lacking comments or opinions. I don't need to provide examples, do I? What to do with them? --George Ho (talk) 07:29, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that if they don't have comments after [x] days, then they should probably be deleted. Certainly, users can provide feedback on a news event from four years ago but no one is going to see it. Having a redlink will probably discourage any of those discussions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
On the contrary, one of my long-term projects is creating such pages for those archived articles that don't have them. There is no expiration date on discussion of an archived article. --Pi zero (talk) 21:22, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
@Pi zero: This is easily done if you want. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:17, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
@Koavf: Tbh I'd rather not do it by bot. You know me, I have a thing about the human touch; various special concerns come up in specific cases. The one that comes to mind is that, occasionally, the reason an article doesn't have a comments page is that the article got moved and the user doing it somehow forgot to move the comments page with it; then one has to figure out exactly what happened and carefully move the comments page to rejoin the article page, fixing any multiple redirects. Getting that wrong could result in an article with two comments pages; and I have doubts that LQT would even make it possible to merge two such LQT groupings; I'd be afraid to try, as LQT can severely mess things up, and I'd rather not have to devote resources to trying.

Btw I also like to be sure, while I'm at it, that the article has a {{haveyoursay}} template (or one of the seldom-used alternatives); and if it does already have {{haveyoursay}}, I give the article a null edit after creating the comments page. I track all this stuff using Whatlinkshere for {{haveyoursay}} and its subtemplate {{haveyoursay/missing/link}}; the latter produces a list of pages that use {{haveyoursay}} but don't have a comments page, and after creating the comments page a null edit gets the article off that list. In principle, articles that don't transclude {{haveyoursay}} should have it added, but since there are hundreds of pages on the missing-link list I've never gotten around to that further administrative task. --Pi zero (talk) 12:16, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pi zero: But that would be a trivially-easy problem to solve with a semi-automatic editor as well... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:10, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
@Koavf: Yes, it seems in theory it should be straightforward to do with semi-automation. To be clear on how all these pieces fit together: I mean to make such things easy in practice to do via wiki markup. I've got most-or-all of the primitive wiki-markup elements needed; but I always knew there would be a later phase of development, in which I'd have to learn idioms for using the primitives, and I've been fascinated to discover this is much more true than I'd quite realized. Since I've got enough of the primitives operational, I've found that actually coordinating them to perform a high-level operation, even a seemingly straightforward one, can be extraordinarily difficult. The solution I have in mind is one of those things that can seem obvious once one has it in mind. I always meant to build semi-automation to help with difficult tasks, and it turns out that building semi-automation is a difficult task, so I mean to build a semi-automated meta-assistant, to help with building and maintaining semi-automation. No small design challenge, to thoroughly embrace flexibility so it doesn't limit what can be done with it. --Pi zero (talk) 22:22, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-35[edit]

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

  • Syntax highlighting is now a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It will come to right-to-left wikis later. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. [7][8]
  • You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can turn this off or choose to get an email notification in your preferences. You can also turn on to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. [9]

Problems

  • Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that use Wikidata. This has now been fixed and no new pages will get this problem. You still need to fix pages that were broken before and still show the error message. You can see how on this page. [10]

Changes later this week

  • You can block users from sending you notifications. [11]
  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • In the future you will have global preferences. This means you could set something in your preferences to work in the same way on all wikis. You will not be forced to use global preferences. The developers are now asking if editors need exceptions. This is where you want to use global settings on almost all wikis, but have some wikis where you want it to work in a different way. If you want this you need to tell the developers now. You can do so on the talk page. [12]
  • New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [13]
  • Octicons-tools.svg The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 in September 2017. Wikis can ask on Phabricator to get it early, so they can help find and solve problems now.

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

22:09, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Germane thread on en.wp about writing on news events[edit]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)&oldid=798423730#Creation_of_articles_on_criminal_events_particularly_claimed_links_to_terrorism_and_similar_incidents —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:11, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-36[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around. [14][15]

Problems

  • Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in your preferences and see if it helps. [16]

Changes later this week

  • New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [17]
  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).

Meetings

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

22:14, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal/technical: BlockerBot[edit]

It has been more than fifteen months since I requested admin rights to fight vandals and spammers. They come, they vandal, and they get blocked. One common patter can be observed that most of the helpline vandals are active when Pi zero is afk. Also to note, many usernames hint they might be the work of same user because most of the names had a Hindu origin, and some, Muslim -- indicating it is a good chance they operate during day time in India. While this is just as assumption, many a times, there is no admin available -- I ping Tom Morris on Twitter, i drop a message on IRC hoping an admin sees it when they are on-wiki, I leave talk page messages, or even request global blocks. But until they are blocked -- they are free to do anything they want -- though revision check prevents the damage. So, there should be a bot, which can block editors temporarily until an admin is available. Editors, who can be trusted for requesting the block can only request the bot to block someone. The bot would send a notification to admins on the project project, and if any admin sees it, they can clear the notification, and choose if there is a need for permanent blockage, or whatever. The thing is -- granting anyone admin rights just to fight vandalism might not be okay, and it is possible for a vandal to abuse editing rights while no admin is on the site -- but some editors might be -- and they can prevent vandals.
acagastya PING ME! 10:54, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

gpy could announce block and speedy deletion requests on live chat to ease the task for people who do not have the wiki open in a separate tab right now? --Gryllida (talk, chat) 11:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
If open in a tab, the wiki could show banners or do html5 notifications when a new speedy deletion or block request is added? --Gryllida (talk, chat) 11:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-37[edit]

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 get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [19]
  • The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [20]
  • The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: tidy-whitespace-bug. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [21]

Problems

Changes later this week

  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
  • Octicons-tools.svg OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.

Meetings

  • Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
  • New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences. [23]

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

19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-38[edit]

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

  • Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

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