Wikinews:Water cooler/technical

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Buzz button

Is there a javascript gadget that allows to check online status and buzz another user - send them a notification that is marked as super important and beeps - like if i called them on skype [but we don't need the call] - could this be implemented as gadget which users can enable on opt in basis? I think this could be useful to get attention of an author or reviewer more quickly. It was added to msn like in 1999, it would popup the window in front of all windows and annoy the user. (If it's abused we can always restrict access.) Gryllida (talk) 15:00, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Mark up??

OK -- I'm confused. I am trying to mark up my articles, so a reference jumps over to Wikipedia. However, when I enter (for example), {{w|Michelle Obama}} it jumps to WN - NOT Wikipedia. What gives??--Bddpaux (talk) 15:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Bddpaux: Just a heads-up that I edited your comment and I hope that better represents what you were trying to show. Unlike many of our sister projects, the template {{w}} defaults to a local link if it exists and only then goes to Wikipedia if it doesn't. See Template:W/doc for some details. There are tracking categories here for local versus non-local links. If you want to make a link that you are certain will go to Wikipedia, you can make it in the form of [[:w:Michelle Obama|Michelle Obama]]. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

This helps! Thanks!--Bddpaux (talk) 18:58, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

❤ Gryllida (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

"17 February 2025" issue?

Hello, I'm new here. I think found a bug; on categories with articles that were not posted recently, such as Category:Apple Inc. the publish date is February 17th, 2025, unregardless of the actual publish date. I don't know how this would be fixed because I don't know how it "grabs" the date. loserhead (talk) 15:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Archiving??

I am confused on archiving my Talk page (it is getting TOO LONG!) -- I have created multiple archive pages, but the BOX (over to the right).....how do I 'grow' the numbers? e.g. 2,3,4 -- etc.?--Bddpaux (talk) 16:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Maybe try adding a new archive page. The template page says "The list will update itself when new archives are added." Maybe that should read; 'The list will update itself when new archive pages are added.' —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 17:53, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Padlock

I've said before: Just because I'm a reporter/Reviewer/Admin doesn't mean I'm a wiki foo ninja. I am always learning -- that is why I keep so many darn personal sand boxes. To that end: What is the little padlock that appears down by the source links? How does it get there?--Bddpaux (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Can you give an example? I don't see it on any stories and I also checked on two different skins. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:48, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, look at all the source links on this article: There is a tiny padlock by each source link. --Bddpaux (talk) 19:36, 2 April 2025 (UTC)https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/U.S._Senator_Cory_Booker_delivers_marathon_speech_on_floor_of_US_Senate

I did not seem to notice anything. It is possible that you are mentioning the bullet points (•)? If so, they are triggered by the "*" symbol before each source. Asked42 (talk) 20:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I cannot reproduce this. I don't want to be pedantic, but since you expressed that you're maybe not the most tech-savvy person: my operating system is a Linux distribution and I used Firefox and Brave, which are two different browsers that have different rendering engines and I checked both of them in MonoBook and Vector (two different skins) in both desktop and mobile. (whew). Do you know your operating system and browser? 99% of the time, if you see a padlock next to a link, it means either 1.) that said link is going to a secure website that uses https:// at the beginning of the URI instead of http:// and the padlock is letting you know that this connection is secure or 2.) a padlock can sometimes mean that the content you are linking to has a subscription paywall. My guess is that it's the former. In case you don't know what any of that means, the padlock is a good thing and it should be there on all links to websites. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:31, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

email me a screenshot Gryllida (talk) 11:57, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

A convoluted mess of un-sighted changes

I was working through un-sighted changes today and found the article "NASA revises asteroid 2024 YR4 threat, near-zero chance of Earth impact" to have a convoluted mess of un-sighted changes that I am unsure how to unravel. None of the content changes to the article were sighted within 24 hours of being published and therefore need to be rejected. However, I think because the article has now been archived, it may not be a straight-forward thing to reject them without affecting the archive done by Leaderbot. When I try to reject all edits up to Leaderbots' first edit, I receive the error: "Cannot undo these changes because further pending edits changed the same areas."

I have also tried to reject Leaderbot's first edit[1] (which would reject all previous, unsighted edits as well) without luck. The edits that can be accepted are those that are category changes, vandalism reverts, and the addition of archive URLs. The content changes and image addition were not sighted within 24 hours and therefore should be rejected.

Maybe an admin will need to reject all unsighted changes then manually make the necessary category and template changes, to include the archiving process, re-add archive urls, and self-sight those changes. Any suggestions? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 15:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Done Gryllida (talk) 22:38, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Proposal to modify '{{abandoned/msg}}' template

To replace it with contents of User:Gryllida/abandonedmsg, as I have added dates the article and its talk were last modified. Is this OK? If no objections or suggestions, I will implement the edit in a few days. Regards, -- Gryllida (talk) 23:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Example is shown at top of the User:Gryllida page. Gryllida (talk) 23:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

pings

Why did

User talk:GryllidaTester3 this page ping me but

User:GryllidaTester3 this one didn't?

They both included a wikilink to my name.

cc @Leaderboard @Asked42

Thanks Gryllida (talk) 01:50, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Might be due to how the Echo extension works (i.e, might not work on userspace), but I'm not entirely sure. Leaderboard (talk) 05:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Leaderboard,

Thank you for your reply.

I'm asking in context of getting Echo notifications for new articles:

• To the interested users when a new article is created from the 'new article' template (Template:New page). I was hoping adding a user's wikilinked name to it, hidden, would sort that out. Now I don't understand how to do this properly, except probably with a python script which checks the recent changes each 5 minutes. The list of interested users is at User:Gryllida/Notifications/New/Developing/Immediate.
• There is another set of users listed at User:Gryllida/Notifications/New/Review intended to be sent out either weekly or immediately (I haven't decided yet), with the contents of something similar to User:Gryllida/Newsroom included in the message.

For sending messages to talk pages it would be something similar to this message which was done manually. The page I could use to deliver the messages is Special:MassMessage.

For sending notifications via Echo only there is no built in way that I know of. I kind of run out of ideas how to automate this without a script that posts a long list of interested users' wikilinked usernames onto the article talk page?

If we decide to use a script, it would be good to publish its source, and host it at Toolforge, where one tool can be accessed by multiple maintainers in case one of them is away and is not available to look after the tool.

If possible, it would be good if there was something that can be built into the wiki so that a separate login is not needed to edit the tool.

Many thanks. Gryllida (talk) 05:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Try using a bot on a page that is on a different namespace, for instance? The bot edits can be hidden using the bot/flood flag, after all. Leaderboard (talk) 06:43, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Only messages that include a proper signature (with four ~~~~) will ping an editor. If there is no signature on the message, no ping will be sent. For more details, w:Help:Fixing failed pings. -- Asked42 (talk) 08:16, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

To enable pings in user namespaces, maybe we can use the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word? I'm not sure whether it will work or not. -- Asked42 (talk) 08:27, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

This worked. I got the ping.

User:Gryllida/testing32 didn't work. :-( Gryllida (talk) 09:52, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: This might be because we have to use '@' before the username to ping someone. Also, we need to use four tildes (~~~~) to sign the message. I pinged you on User:Gryllida/testing32, did you receive it? --Asked42 (talk) 12:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Yup I got it thanks, I will test this out in a bit Gryllida (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Feeds and collaboration

Hi Gryllida (talk) 11:26, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

If you use an rss reader, please share your rss feed reader name and platform (linux, windows, android, ios, mac) here. I would like to write some documentation about rss feed readers usage to get notified of new drafts and am looking for testers. Regards, Gryllida (talk) 11:29, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

PeP

Could someone please go through the list, or tell me how to do it without checking manually, of Reviewers and Administrators and list the time they were last active. I am thinking of taking some action wrt WN:PeP Thanks Gryllida (talk) 12:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)