User talk:Courcelles/Archive 106

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Wikidata weekly summary #82

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The Signpost: 30 October 2013

Help

please put Kim Bum page as protection and check the history by --Sunuraju (talk) 05:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Courcelles is on holiday, Sunuraju, so he's not likely to be able to help you with time-sensitive issues. If you think an article needs to be protected, the best place to ask is Requests for Page Protection. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:ACE

As one of six sitting arbitrators whose terms are expiring, have you decided whether you will be running for re-election? 50.45.158.239 (talk) 05:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #83

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #84

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #85

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

Nomination for deletion of Template:In popular culture

Template:In popular culture has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Trackinfo (talk) 07:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Flow Newsletter - November 14

Hi. This is a brief note to let you know about an update to the Main FAQ (the addition of a large table of Components of the discussion system), and also to specifically request your feedback on two items: our sandbox release plan, and a draft of the new contributors survey. We look forward to reading your input on these or other topics - Flow can only get better with your ideas! –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

Tom Dalgliesh

Courcelles, I was able to do some work on User:BOZ/Tom Dalgliesh on Friday - how is it looking so far? BOZ (talk) 06:22, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Well, the personal and early life sections need sourced, and another two or so different sources wouldn't go amiss. Courcelles 21:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

blocking

Hi, I noticed that you blocked User:Vegas Bound 2014 and G5'd his contributions. Great! Having put him up for SPI here [1], I was wondering which is the actual blocked/banned master? Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 23:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Sympathies regarding your upcoming surgery

Having lost a big chunk of the summer and fall to a surgery, I sympathize. I hope your eye surgeries go smoothly and your recovery swiftly. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC) &Thanks. Courcelles 05:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Even without being in a similar condition, I wish you both good recovery, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:04, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Get well soon. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Other blocking

Hi,

I notice you just blocked ScoringGoals14 and I was just wondering why. I posited that this user was a sock during a deletion discussion, but never really found any proof. is this why he/she was blocked? Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 12:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Yep, sock. It was one of the 11 accounts I mentioned in the section above. Courcelles 17:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

Radicalization Watch Project and Radicalisation Project

Hi, I am a French wiki user and I am not used to WP:EN. I saw that you deleted the article Radicalization Watch Project, and it seems that the article was later recreated as Radicalisation Project, what is the standard procedure in that case? I think the article Radicalisation Project should either be deleted, or renamed in Radicalization Watch Project. Regards -- Xavxav (talk) 10:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

  • The original deletion was a WP:PROD, which emans it would have been restored at any time if a user had asked for it to be. That said, a recreation qualifies, so I'm going to kick the new article over to AFD in hopes of getting a more sticky result. Courcelles 15:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Finnbay

Hello, Courcelles. I spoke to Gogo Dodo on recreating Finnbay due to new sources and info (cause they exposed Time magazine's buff on news item and nokia's f... you message on twitter) I think it should be archived on wikipedia.

Gogo Dodo suggested me to talk to you and create a deletion/review message which I did. It would be good to relist them. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2013_November_29 Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Campsite55 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #86

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 21:42, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for helping clean up some of the Evlekis mess. Alas, when a sock pointedly makes a mix of good and bad edits, blanket reverts can cause fallout! bobrayner (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Articles for creation Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello, Courcelles:

WikiProject AFC is holding a two month long Backlog Elimination Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles. The drive is running from December 1st, 2013 – January 31st, 2014.

Awards will be given out for all reviewers participating in the drive in the form of barnstars at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 2400 articles, so start reviewing articles! Visit the drive's page and help out!

A new version of our AfC helper script has been released! It includes many bug fixes, new improvements and features, code enhancements, and more. If you want to see a full list of changes, visit the changelog. Please report bugs and feature requests there, too! Thanks. EdwardsBot (talk) 09:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) at 09:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

Blocked IPs

There is a serious backlog of about 20K individual IPs that are blocked without expiration. I have broken the IPs into groups of 5000: m:User:とある白い猫/English Wikipedia open proxy candidates. So they are effectively blocked until time ends. This creates considerable potential collateral damage as the owners of IPs tend to be not very consistent. Some of these IPs are on dynamic ranges which results in arbitrary blocks of good users. Vast majority of the blocks go back years all the way to 2004 - some were preemptively blocked. Nowadays even open proxies normally do not get indefinite blocks.

The problem is that no single admin wants to review this many IPs and very few have the technical capability to review. Such a technical review would be non-trivial for individual IPs which in my humble opinion would be a complete waste of time. I feel ArbCom could step in and provide criteria for bulk action. A bulk unblock of all indefinite blocks (with exceptions if the specific single IP unblocks are contested) before - say - 2010 would be a good start.

Open proxies tend to be better handled at meta as open proxies are a global problem for all wikis.

-- A Certain White Cat chi? 11:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

  • I don;t think anyone would do a wholesale unblock here, the odds are we would just swim in vandalism for months as various sockmasters used all the ancient OP's. To accurately check these would be an easy thousand man-hours of work, And the only result I see is that more people would have to do more work to clean up form the now-unblocked, nown problem IP's. That's the three reasons you're not getting any progress on this 1) few admins really care enough to do the work at all; 2) it is indiscriminate thousand-hour task list; and 3) many people don't see how we would be better off afterwards. We're well set up to review these blocks as they are challenged, not at all to do 20,000 at once. Courcelles

Wikimedia NYC Meetup- "Queens Open History Edit-a-Thon" at Queens Library! Friday December 6

Queens Library
 Please join Queens Open History Edit-a-Thon on December 6, 2013!
Everyone gather at Queens Library to further Wikipedia's local outreach
for borough articles on the history and the communities.
Drop-ins welcome 10am-7pm!--Pharos (talk) ~~~~~

01:09, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Article Creation named Ashok Sundari request

Hi, I want to create a article named "Ashok Sundari" , but before creating the page i got the information that a page with a similar name has been deleted and therefore i need to take request from you whether i can create the page again with same name. I cannot view the contents of the deleted page,the page which i am planning to create is related to hinduism. Please help me whether the page can be created again. I will be careful keeping in mind Wikipedia's guidelines while creating article. Thanking you for your co-operation. Work2win (talk) 21:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your speedy reply. Work2win (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I have edited the page. The page has very less supported citations and content in the internet. I have tried to edit it as best as i can. You can review it and see if it still can be created. Thanking for your co-operation. Work2win (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

  • I'd say get your draft the way you want it, and take it to either WP:AFC or WP:DRV for review. Courcelles 01:08, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Would you be happy with my proposal here? I wrote that before seeing your comments above but I'd hope that I can be trusted to do the right thing by now. - Sitush (talk) 12:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Sitush, if at any point you're happy for that draft to return to mainspace, just do so, I trust your judgment. Courcelles 15:41, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #87

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 21:22, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi t | c 15:07, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Far from Heaven accolades

Hey. I hope you're well. I just wanted to check if it was still okay to continue working on User:Courcelles/List of accolades received by Far from Heaven in your userspace? I've recently been trying to finish some of the (many) projects that I've started and I'd quite like the challenge of trying to track down sources and info for that list. - JuneGloom Talk 01:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Knock yourself out. I'll try to pitch in as I can. (I had totally forgotten about this one!) Courcelles 05:54, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I hadn't quite forgotten about it, but something else always seemed to come up before I had chance to get back to it. I did a little work on the list yesterday and then immediately got sidetracked when I realised that the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography didn't have an article. So, I'm working on one at the moment. - JuneGloom Talk 21:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Anushka Sen

Hello Courcelles, I'm just letting you know that I removed protection and recreated the article Anushka Sen, partly per request on my talk page and partly because now (after she appeared in several notable TV shows and in the Indian media) she looks like a notable and sought after actress. Please let me know if you have any objections. Thank you. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:41, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

  • My protecting was against socking, and, well, you're not a sock ;) Still would be worth monitoring for socking, even though we haven't heard from the particular sockmaster in a good while now. Courcelles 07:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
  • And I see you have a very quick AFD to deal with. That should be interesting, though I don't care one way or the other about the outcome. Courcelles 07:59, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm watching it so no worries. Yes, the AfD may be interesting as it is hard to say whether to keep or delete ... it depends on interpretation of our rules and on general view of what is suitable encyclopedic content and what is not. Reputable encyclopedias of actors in my country (I'm Czech) normally list people with achievements similar to Anushka's - that's why I recreated it and !voted to keep it. We will see. No hard feelings and ... thanks for your response. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:08, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar
For the lightning quick unprotection of Borderline (band). Hasteur (talk) 21:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #88

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 December 2013

Ping

ygm.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 18:49, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

Help needed

Hi, I just logged in an incident on ANI. Check this [2]. I feel that the action by the admin in discussion was harsh, sudden and one sided. Whilst I wait for the discussion on ANI to progress, I am placing a request to you if you can review this independently and give me your feedback. Cheers AKS

  • My experience with ANI says you'll get plenty of opinions without spamming all the arbitrators, who tend to stay out of the ANI daily fray incase things end up at arbitration down the line. Courcelles 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #89

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Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 13:12, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Merry Christmas! :-)

Happy Yuletides!

Merry Yuletides to you! (And a happy new year!)


~TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hi Courcelles, Wishing you a very Happy and Wonderful Merry Christmas! Hope you are having a great time with family and friends :-) Best wishes. ~TheGeneralUser (talk) 22:58, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

  • And to you, Christmas was fun, indeed. Courcelles 00:25, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

The Barnstar of Integrity
Thank you for your tireless work at Articles for deletion and for your service on the Arbitration Committee. The project is in your debt. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks. ArbCom is an... interesting experience. Courcelles 15:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
    I apparently missed the election. I will admit that I am sorry to see you not run again, but I am empathetic. I wish you well, and hope you are enjoying the Christmas season : ) - jc37 07:13, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
    Thanks. I haven't seen you around for a while, it's nice to see you again. Courcelles 00:37, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Block review

Hi Courcelles. We are looking at indef IP blocks over at WT:OP. There is only one of yours to review at the moment: 68.70.27.96 (talk · contribs · block log) May I safely assume that, following review, your response will be to suggest leaving it blocked? Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:57, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Yeah, that's been static for years on the same sockmaster. Courcelles 16:31, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
    Interesting. Thank you very much. Feel free to help out with the fun at WT:OP if you ever have time, otherwise, if not before, see you 10 years :) -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:37, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #90

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:48, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

AfD "Mozart was a red"

This article was never listed on the Murray Rothbard talk page where there are several editors who would have beefed it up and/or supported keeping it. Since a couple editors there are busy deleting a lot of material under Austrian Economics General Sanctions, and most have been kept for lack of consensus, I think it's important they know they have to give proper notifications in situations like this. (And the nominating editor has given such notifications in the past.) Should I put it on Wikipedia:Deletion_review?? Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:35, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

  • DRV would be fine. The only notification require3d by the AFD process is to tag the article, and that was done, so I don't see any procedural problems with the AFD. Courcelles 17:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Will have to keep a better eye out if it's not necessary to announce AfD talk pages of related articles. Don't have energy to beef it up for full article anyway. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:00, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Fc

Template:Fc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.. QED237 (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Relisting AfD's

Hi, do you use a script by any chance? It's a rather tedious process and if you have one, I wouldn't mind installing it myself. Cheers, Daniel (talk) 00:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks muchly! Daniel (talk) 02:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Just pinched your AfD closing tool as well - so much more refined than the prehistoric one I was using! :) Daniel (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2014 WikiCup!

Hello Courcelles, and welcome to the 2014 WikiCup! Your submission page can be found here. The competition will begin at midnight tonight (UTC). There have been a few small changes from last year; the rules can be read in full at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring, and the page also includes a summary of changes. One important rule to remember is that only content on which you have completed significant work, and nominated, in 2014 is eligible for points in the competition- the judges will be checking! As ever, this year's competition includes some younger editors. If you are a younger editor, you are certainly welcome, but we have written an advice page at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Advice for younger editors for you. Please do take a look. Any questions should be directed to one of the judges, or left on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will make it to round 2. Good luck! J Milburn (talk · contribs), The ed17 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 17:32, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

For your work on the arbitration committee. NE Ent 00:14, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Welcome back :) --Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 00:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks guys. It was an honour to do that necessary task for two years. Well, still a little left to bring to a conclusion, I guess. Courcelles 06:07, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year Courcelles!

Happy New Year!
Hello Courcelles:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve the encyclopedia for Wikipedia's readers, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, BusterD (talk) 06:09, 1 January 2014 (UTC)



Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2014}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

A personalized New Year greeting

Hope you have a bright 2014! Acalamari 11:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Courcelles, Happy New Year. I saw the reasons why you had to withdraw from the recent ArbCom elections; I hope that you'll be okay and that 2014 won't be difficult for you. Best wishes to you. Acalamari 11:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks, and I hope you enjoy your 2014! Courcelles 18:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #91

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 21:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Deletion review for SiteKiosk

An editor has asked for a deletion review of SiteKiosk. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. BroncoPfefferminz (talk) 08:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Hi, regarding the above, could you please unprotect (see brief discussion at WP:UNPROTECT. Thanks, 86.29.59.246 (talk) 22:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

  • No. I don't see any reason to unprotect that article anytime soon; quite likely, not ever. Courcelles 22:27, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Why not? 86.29.59.246 (talk) 00:19, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Look at the talk page for the last GA review. Specifically, what SlimVirgin said, "Regarding protection, the article has been indefinitely semi-protected since November 2010 (with a brief break for full protection, then back to semi). The reason is that the McCanns have been attacked a lot on the Internet, and every so often someone arrives to imply that they were involved. I don't see that changing in the near future. <snipped> SlimVirgin (talk) 19:47, 22 December 2013 (UTC)" The protection is keeping that exact type of crap away. Courcelles 00:29, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
That "crap" as you describe it occurred back in 2010 when a single sock puppet started being stupid. If it's happened again since then, SP isn't working anyway. You could perhaps unprotect it as a trial. See what happens over a few days. The article is probably wtached by a large number of editors who would quickly fix any problem, and if vandalism does rear its ugly head again, then it's a simple matter to re-protect. The problem with protection on this article is that the subject can quickly come to the fore in the media, as it has done several times since 2007. At such times, when the subject is again a "current event", unregistered users typically provide many useful edits. 86.29.59.246 (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I will not consider unprotecting this article or downgrading to pending changes. Nothing good, absolutely nothing, would come of it. The talk page is available if you would like to make edits; as is the option of registering an account that can be confirmed to do so directly. Courcelles 01:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
It's actually important that people don't respond to all the media reports. Most of them are in the tabloid press only (which with rare exceptions aren't regarded as reliable sources for Wikipedia), and are often very repetitive, presenting old information as new. In addition, there is an ongoing libel trial in Lisbon, which the McCanns initiated against someone they say defamed them. The case is due to reach a conclusion soon, possibly this month; closing arguments are going to be heard next week, I believe. If that case goes against the McCanns, we'll see another wave of anti-McCann sentiment, so semi-protection is even more important now than usual. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:17, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Your choice of version to protect

Hi, Thanks for protecting List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming‎. I noticed you protected a gutted version instead of the stable pre-edit war version. Why?

Our policy at WP:BLPDEL says we first improve content, and only strip it if that proves to be impossible. Again, that is first-improve, and then delete. By protecting a gutted version of the article, it appears you've decided to ignore the "first improve" part of this policy. At the talk page and AFD, several people have said BLP, but no one has won a consensus that a problem even exists.

Several people posted to Black Kite's talk page, or in the AFD page, or in the article talk page, that they thought his choice of version was flawed and was rewarding editors for simply telling ARBCC to f* off, via the process. And just to be clear, what I most care about is good process. Seems your choice of version has inadvertently chosen sides and appears - at least to me - to ignore the "first improve" requirement in the policy and for that matter no consensus that there is even a problem.

Your thoughts? As they say, I'll take my answer "off the air". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

  • As I said above, we don't protect with alleged controversial BLP material out. Black Kite had this right; and I would consider the AFD close will decide whether this should be included or not on broad strokes -- the closing admin, if not deleting the page, should be lifting the protection. When BLP is involved, I just can't accept protecting in such a manner that content can't be removed; and the closure of that AFD (and unprotection) of the page should really be soon. Courcelles 00:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I can't say I see it exactly that way, but it does answer one of my questions above. I wouldn't want to see the padlock become the norm for this article though because of a small minority of editors. That's not how the project is supposed to work.- MrX 00:50, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • No, it isn't. I couldn't see protecting it beyond the AFD for this issue (the blanking of the entire list). Courcelles 01:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

/e-c/

Sorry, I should have noticed the prior section. Thanks for the explanation, though I'm dismayed to learn that by way of unwritten rules one wishing to remove BLP content can simply initiate edit war to win a temporary protection in their favor. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
It actually isn't that unwritten, though. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Henri_Coanda#Consensus is relevant here. If consensus is that having a list like this is not a BLP violation, then, well, continuing to edit war over it would not be advisable. But that consensus doesn't exist at the moment, witht eh ongoing AFD. Courcelles 01:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Technically, I agree now that I know what you have told me. But lo, the poor regular editor! I added the link you gave in the prior thread to the BLP section on semi protection. That would have greatly helped in the situation we are pinging you about, had it been common knowledge. Thanks for your responsiveness, I think we're done here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:41, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

Could you kindly explain this? I'm having a hard time understanding why two admins have locked in a non-consensus, non-status-quo version of this article when not a single BLP argument has stood up to examination. How did you determine consensus for this unusual action? - MrX 00:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Whenever there is an edit war regarding BLP issues, the default is to protect on the version not containing the content. Given the AFD< this content shouldn't be here until that AFD closes; a close other than 'delete' would indicate a consensus to put the content back, but not while the discussion is still open. Courcelles 00:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • @Courcelles: Thanks for the clarification. Would you mind linking to the policy or guideline that supports default BLP content exclusion? Not that I doubt you; I have just never heard of such a thing. Also, you protected the article for additional ten days, but the AfD should conclude later today, if my math is correct.- MrX 00:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • AFD's last for a minimum of seven days, they can be relisted; or just left unclosed while the discussion still seems ongoing. AS to the "keep it out" idea, see the Footnoted Quotes ArbCom case, principle one there is long established consensus, though rarely stated as clearly as it is there. Courcelles 01:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your thoughtful responses Courcelles. Much appreciated.- MrX 01:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You have a new message

Hello, Courcelles. You have new messages at Maile66's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Courcelles, I am messaging you regarding the page you recently deleted titled, "Shodor Education Foundation." The claims raised by "TonyBallioni" regarding deletion were unfounded. The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. is in fact a registered 501(c) organization and fits the criteria defined by WP:NGO. Shodor's activities range nationally through participation in professional development workshops and locally through community outreach and educational workshops. Additionally, Shodor has a collaborative grant with "Pathways" in Europe, as well as auxiliary grants with Columbia and Thailand. Shodor's online curriculum, Interactivate, is used globally by numerous institutions generating millions of page views monthly. Shodor currently operates using multiple federal and state grants, whether through The Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, NSF, Durham County (NC), and more.

The Webby Award that "TonyBallioni" further uses as evidence against Shodor is but one of many awards won throughout the years. Also as a side note, in regards to "pay to enter" that was required of all entrants into the competition. A list of additional awards includes: Business Leader's Women's Extraordinaire Award, Michael C. Jackson Distinguished Service Award, 5-time winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Award, the Business Excellence Award in the Non-Profit Category by the Durham Chamber of Commerce, just to name a few. Also, our interns have gone on to win numerous awards such as taking 1st Place at the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Competition.

I believe his argument is unfounded because it is not clear to me where he gets his evidence from. Finally, in regards to not being found on Google news, he searched for us while we were not actively running any programs. However we can be found multiple times in Google Scholar, which in my opinion, as an Educational Non-profit organization is more important than idle news entries.

Regarding these facts, I propose that the Shodor Education Foundation page be re-instated. This year Shodor will be celebrating its 20th year anniversary.

Ldiala (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)ldiala

  • WP:NGO is a two pronged test, scope of activities and coverage by independent sources. If you could line up a good number of those sources, WP:DRV would be the venue to analyze them for independence and sufficiency. Courcelles 22:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Holy S**t! Did you just wheel-war?

[3] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:07, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

What is a "wheel-war"? .... (later) Wait, nevermind. See WP:WHEEL NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • How could that possibly be wheel warring? BK's protection expired, there was a resumption of the edit war, I re=protected it as the AFD was not yet done, and put it back on the version he had protected and intended to last through the AFD's run. I don't see how that series of events could even be interpreted as wheel-warring... Courcelles 14:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • AS a point of order, i intended my full-protection to last as long a the AFD did. Therefore, I have now restored the pre-AFD6 semi protection. Courcelles 15:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Userfication request

Hello, Courcelles. This deletion was performed in 2007. I have since written the article "Aardwolf (MUD)". Can you userfy the deleted page for me please? There may be some salvageable material. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I've sent you the last revision in an email; I don't really trust the history of that page much (it was written by a sockpuppet of a banned user), and would prefer not to resurrect it until you've determined there was something useful. Courcelles 14:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. (The text actually looks accurate from my knowledge of playing Aardwolf.) I shall ensure that any material used is appropriately referenced. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:10, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Happy to help. Courcelles 19:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #92

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 09:34, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

False Accusation of Sockpuppetry

Hello, I'm User:Leoesb1032. I have been accused of sockpuppetry and I know that I am not. I was before though and when I was they ran my and my socks location to match it. Since you are a checkuser, could you please do this for me again and clear me of charges? It would really help me out. You can leave a response here Thank you. Leoesb1032 (talk) 21:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Data tables

Fair enough. If you say WP:DTAB, it's more specific that just the WP:ACCESS, just saying :) LADY LOTUS • TALK 18:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

  • True, though my ability to remember shortcuts is finite ;) Courcelles 20:55, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
Aint that the truth, so many to remember! But thanks for the tip :) Happy editing! LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
P.S. - Question, is "align=center" required for WP:ACCESS or just the ! cols and ! rows ? LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:47, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
The screen-readers need the col and row scopes; the align commands are just for appearance, they don't matter to the screen-reading software. Courcelles 21:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Gotcha. So you wouldn't be opposed if I removed those yes? LADY LOTUS • TALK 21:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Not at all, though, as I'm sure you know, someone else might; but it would be on stylistic grounds, not accessibility for the blind that they would be objecting. Courcelles 22:04, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #93

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

Talk:Alison Weir

Is there any chance of Talk:Alison Weir ever being unprotected? Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Not at this rate, I don't think; the same exact issue has been going on for four years. Courcelles 05:34, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Nike Total 90 Tracer

I've nominated Nike Total 90 Tracer for deletion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 January 23#Nike Total 90 Tracer. Since you participated in the AfD for this page, you may be interested in commenting there. --BDD (talk) 22:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #94

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

Thanks

Just wanted to say thank you for taking care of the redirect on Organisational change. I did intend to follow up on that but got distracted by overseas travels. I apologize if it seemed like I abandoned the issue having started it. Cheers Andrew (talk) 03:05, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Kafziel's case

Hi Courcelles:

Just a heads up that there are extra FOFs regarding Kafziel - here, here, and here - which have been posted while you've been travelling. Bon continued voyage,  Roger Davies talk 16:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Your vote would be appreciated on the Conduct unbecoming FOF to enable us to close the case.  Roger Davies talk 10:12, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Done. For reasons I just told the list, internet time was MUCH less available than I had anticipated... Courcelles is travelling (talk) 03:36, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #95

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 January newsletter

The 2014 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with, at time of writing, 138 participants. The is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2010. If you are yet to join the competition, don't worry- the judges have agreed to keep the signups open for a few more days. By a wide margin, our current leader is newcomer Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose set of 14 featured pictures, the first FPs of the competition, was worth 490 points. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:

Featured articles, featured lists, featured topics and featured portals are yet to play a part in the competition. The judges have removed a number of submissions which were deemed ineligible. Typically, we aim to see work on a project, followed by a nomination, followed by promotion, this year. We apologise for any disappointment caused by our strict enforcement this year; we're aiming to keep the competition as fair as possible.

Wikipedians interested in friendly competition may be interested to take part in The Core Contest; unlike the WikiCup, The Core Contest is not about audited content, but, like the WikiCup, it is about article improvement; specifically, The Core Contest is about contribution to some of Wikipedia's most important article. Of course, any work done for The Core Contest, if it leads to a DYK, GA or FA, can earn WikiCup points.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 19:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

Reviewer rights

Hello Courcelles. I have an unimportant question to ask you. As I see you're currently out of town, please feel free to delay. :)

This may sound a little silly. I was pretty much inactive on Wikipedia between somewhere around 2009 and the end of 2013. However, on the 18th of June 2010, you have granted me reviewer rights. Now I'm not complaining, as a matter of fact I started putting the rights to use and I'm enjoying the work. However, I wonder how it came to be that you gave me the rights? Unless my memory is playing a trick on me, I've never made a request or asked to get them. Seeing as I've had rollbackers right since before then, I was wondering if that was some sort of action where all users meeting certain criteria were given reviewer right?

I realize this is more than 3 years ago, so if you can't remember, I understand of course. I was just curious. Cheers! ~ | twsx | talkcont | ~ 14:29, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't remember you specifically, I'm sorry to have to admit. Really, reviewer was given out incredibly freely back then, to pretty much everyone who had rollback rights, so your theory is likely the correct one. Courcelles 04:13, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
    • Well, I didn't expect you to remember me personally. ;-) Fair enough, thanks for the info! ~ | twsx | talkcont | ~ 22:31, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics

I am trying to get some reviewers for Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics/archive2. It had an earlier nomination but failed for lack of reviewers. If you could take a few minutes to post even a short review, it would be much appreciated. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Need formatting advice

Re AM list up for FLC, I have been reading WP:DTT, and have concerns about the images and "alt text". Most of the images on that page were not inserted by me, so other than their being on Commons, I have no technical knowledge of them. And I've never uploaded anything to Commons. I've noticed some have the alt text, and many do not. I see nothing in the coding, either in the article or on Commons, to understand where that alt text is coming from. If alt text is required, how do I put it in? It also says "need to be unlinked and have an empty alt text" and I see nothing to unlink. Please advise how I should handle the issue of the images. — Maile (talk) 21:41, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Hmm, Template:Ribbon devices automatically generates alt text for the images that are being displayed using that template. Let me keep looking for the other images. Courcelles 22:19, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Hope you haven't forgotten about this. Also, since you offered to keep an eye on the nomination, please let me know I overlook any suggestions on the nom template that would be a "pass or fail" issue.— Maile (talk) 12:51, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Advice about article.

Because I'm not a Wikipedia editor, I don't know which user should I contact. And because you was last person, which was editing article about Andrey Lavrow (handball goalkeeper), I writing to You. He was not the only one athlete, who won three olympic gold medals for three different countries. He was the only one handball player, who did this. Another athlete, who did this was Aleksandr Karelin (soviet/russian wrestler). I don't want to edit the article, because I have not any experience with that, so I can make unnecessarily mess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.117.224 (talk) 21:45, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #96

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Events/Blogs/Press
    • See the office hours logs at meta
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • See the FOSDEM slides
    • Thiemo joins the Wikidata development team
  • Development
    • More work on badges by Bene*
    • Lots of Lua improvements by hoo (separate announcement with details soon)
    • Created backend Time parsers (yet another necessary step towards doing more in the backend instead of in Java Script in the frontend)
    • Automatic builds created, tested and deployed to beta labs every day!
    • Investigate Elastic Search as possible backend for queries
    • Made Wikibase Query work with our new component structure
  • Monthly Tasks
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 22:37, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-07

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
  • The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
  • You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [9]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [10] [11]
  • The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [12] [13] [14]

Problems

  • On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [15]
  • On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.

Future software changes

  • Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [16] [17]
  • You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [18]
  • You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [19] [20]
  • The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [21]
  • Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [22] [23]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [24]
  • You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [25]
  • You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [26] [27]
  • If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode. [28]
  • Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [29]
  • bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [30]
  • The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [31]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

constellation articles....

Still waiting on some wikiproject input to figure out what to do about the quadrant and RA/Dec fields - if we move to ranges for the latter then it will be a Good Thing I think....incidentally have been doing a bit of a run on constellations and have Tucana at FAC if you feel like taking a look and comparing with Musca etc. I appreciate detailed reviews as these listy-type articles are tricky to get into nice engaging prose....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:35, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks, Musca looks good. Not quite sure what to do, as I imagine if you got consensus for ranges you could cite them in two seconds. (I'm going to be gone 21 Jan to 31 Jan) Courcelles 05:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I am not fussed if it sits for ten days as I think discussion should be comprehensive on these topics and will likely take another week - have a good holiday Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:46, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, back, will look into these discussions tomorrow. Thanks for your patience. Courcelles 05:30, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Heck, just grateful to have any reviewers at this point! cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:49, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Getting consensus at the astronomy wikiproject is like herding cats...sigh actually one sorted other not yet.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:18, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

constellation stalemate nearly sorted...maybe?

Right, the last issue at Musca was the quadrant issue in the infobox - finally some voices have spoken at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomy#Hence_proposal_-_shall_we_remove_it_from_the_constellation_infobox.3F, so if someone wants to look at this and determine whether there is sufficient consensus I can remove from infobox and others as well maybe. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:30, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks again for the Oversight help. Antoshi ☏ ★ 16:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #97

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Reasonator
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Wrote performance tests so we can track performance improvements better
    • Did a code review of all gadgets that are enabled by default in Wikidata. Found and fixed a performance bottleneck.
    • Work on making the interface more responsive, e. g. live preview when editing labels and updating the watchlist star when saving.
    • Started refactoring and fixing issues with automatically created summaries that are, for example, created by bots via API calls.
    • Fixed an issue with OAuth on Wikidata because of permissions
    • Started code review of the code the student team is working on for suggestions
    • Discussed updates to the data model document to be able to update it to the actual implementation
    • Did a technical debt analysis and design review of Wikibase.git, with initial focus on WikibaseLib
    • Got (backend) EntityStore on the way, so we can test API modules without touching the database
    • Further work on TimeParsers move to the backend
  • Monthly Tasks
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 13:24, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Deletion review for 53rd and 6th

An editor has asked for a deletion review of 53rd and 6th. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Valoem talk 15:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Can you also restore the talk page as well? Thanks! Valoem talk 18:36, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

  • There is absolutely nothing relevant there for the DRV. Courcelles 20:25, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-08

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
  • You can now use the list of active users again. [32] [33]
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [34]
  • You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [35]
  • You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [36]

Problems

  • On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [37]
  • On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [38]
  • On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
  • There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
  • On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.

VisualEditor news

  • The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [39]
  • You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [40]
  • Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [41]
  • You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [42] [43] [44]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

José Eduardo dos Santos

You protected José Eduardo dos Santos three years ago. Could you consider unprotecting it? 129.79.34.11 (talk) 18:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #98

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher 13:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on changes to the AfC mailing list

Hello Courcelles! There is a discussion that your input is requested on! I look forward to your comments, thoughts, opinions, criticisms, and questions!

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

This message was composed and sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 18:18, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-09

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

Recent software changes

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to add and edit __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__ in the page settings menu. [47] [48] [49]
  • You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [50] [51]
  • You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [52] [53]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

Info about a CFD discussion

Hello C. I noticed that you added a Screen Actors Guild cat to various articles in Jan. I wanted to make you aware of this [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 September 19]] CFD from last year. As you will see it was decided that the cat only belongs on the article for the show. Sorry about this as I know you did quite a bit of work (re)adding it. Thanks for all you work here at wikip. MarnetteD | Talk 19:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 February newsletter

And so ends the most competitive first round we have ever seen, with 38 points required to qualify for round 2. Last year, 19 points secured a place; before that, 11 (2012) or 8 (2011) were enough. This is both a blessing and a curse. While it shows the vigourous good health of the competition, it also means that we have already lost many worthy competitors. Our top three scorers were:

  1. Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer whose high-quality scans of rare banknotes represent an unusual, interesting and valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Most of Godot's points this round have come from a large set of pictures used in Treasury Note (1890–91).
  2. Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions), a WikiCup veteran and a finalist last year, Adam is also a featured picture specialist, focusing on the restoration of historical images. This month's promotions have included a carefully restored set of artist William Russell Flint's work.
  3. United States WikiRedactor (submissions), another WikiCup newcomer. WikiRedactor has claimed points for good article reviews and good articles relating to pop music, many of which were awarded bonus points. Articles include Sky Ferreira, Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus and "Wrecking Ball" (Miley Cyrus song).

Other competitors of note include:

After such a competitive first round, expect the second round to also be fiercely fought. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2, but please do not update your submission page until March (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 00:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #99

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 18:38, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-10

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
  • When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [60]
  • You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [61] [62]
  • You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [63]
  • The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list. [64]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [65] [66] [67]
  • If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [68]
  • Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [69]
  • VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [70] [71] [72]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [80]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #100

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 15:39, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Bambifan?

Please see The Fox and the Hound's history. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:19, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Brought up at ANI. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:02, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree, the behaviour quacks, the CU results against the last known sock? Not so much. Hmm... Courcelles 04:11, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014

Tech News: 2014-11

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [81] [82]

VisualEditor news

  • It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [83] [84]
  • It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [85]
  • VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [86]
  • We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [87]
  • You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [88] [89] [90]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

File:Madonna - Like a Prayer.jpg

Back in 2012, you protected this file indefinitely by preventing new uploads by non-admins. Note that a user has uploaded File:Madonna, Like a Prayer album cover.png as a replacement of the old JPG file. I don't know why sockpuppets made it necessary to protect the file (but I see that there are lots of log messages for it, such as reuploads and revision deletions). You might wish to check the new file and optionally protect that one too.

The new PNG file has better quality, but also has extra text. It says "a digital recording" on the PNG file but not on the JPG file. I don't know whether this has anything to do with the dispute back in 2012. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:21, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #101

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 22:29, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

Discretionary sanctions 2013 review: Draft v3

Hi. You have commented on Draft v1 or v2 in the Arbitration Committee's 2013 review of the discretionary sanctions system. I thought you'd like to know Draft v3 has now been posted to the main review page. You are very welcome to comment on it on the review talk page. Regards, AGK [•] 00:23, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-12

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
  • You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [96]
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all small wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [97] [98]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014. [99]

VisualEditor news

  • Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [100] [101]
  • Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [102]
  • Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [103]

Future software changes

Problems

  • VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue. [107]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggested edit

Hello Courcelles,

I was going to add this to article Sally Ride but note that it was Locked for editing by you. Perhaps you want to add it, or something similar, as it's a tribute to the former astronaut.

Popular culture Her name appears in the No. 1 hit We didn't start the fire, released by Billy Joel in 1989. The song mentions over 100 milestones in popular culture between 1949 and 1989 and the lyrics relevant to Ride are "Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan, Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide". Simonjon (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 10:18, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #102

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Events/Blogs/Press
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Continued making the UI faster
    • Fixed Wikidata changes not showing up in the watchlist on the client (Wikipedia, etc.) (bugzilla:62149)
    • Decided to turn off the inoperable wikidata.org language subdomains for now to reduce confusion
    • Created initial version of Wikibase Internal Serialization component
    • wbEntity and wbUsedEntities JavaScript variables are now cached in the parser cache
    • Ongoing refactoring to get rid of the previously used numeric ID numbers in favor of prefixed IDs
    • Made wbsearchentities aware of previously unquoted percent characters
    • Put some time into fixing longstanding oddities that made the developers cry from time to time
    • Worked on reducing internal usage of EntityContent, in preparation for redirect support
    • Worked on performance issues with JSON dump generation (hopefully we can start generating dumps soon)
  • Monthly Tasks
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 15:00, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 March 2014

Tech News: 2014-13

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [108] [109]
  • Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [110]
  • You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [111]
  • You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [112]

Future software changes

  • Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
  • You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
  • You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages. [113] [114]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 March 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #103

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 19:05, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-14

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
  • Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
  • CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27. [115] [116]

VisualEditor news

  • Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [117] [118]
  • The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [119]
  • New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [120]
  • VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [121]

Future software changes

  • You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change. [122]
  • CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
  • You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files. [123]
  • Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [124]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Molluscs of South Africa

Hi Courcelles,

You deleted this category at some stage as an empty category. However there are a large number of mollusc species in South Africa, including a significant number of endemics. Would there be any problem with recreating the category?

Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:56, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

  • This is my first time looking at Wikipedia in a few weeks, and I'm still recovering from surgery, but a C1 can just be recreated at anytime as long as there are some articles to be added. This does seem a strange category to have been emptied and C1'ed, unless someone might have moved it to a different spelling? Courcelles 17:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
    • OK, I will look into the options and possible substitutions and recreate if it looks like a good idea. Thanks, and good luck with your recovery. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:03, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 March newsletter

A quick update as we are half way through round two of this year's competition. WikiCup newcomer Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) (Pool E) leads, having produced a massive set of featured pictures for Silver certificate (United States), an article also brought to featured list status. Former finalist Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions) (Pool G) is in second, which he owes mostly to his work with historical images, including a number of images from Urania's Mirror, an article also brought to good status. 2010 champion (Pool C) is third overall, thanks to contributions relating to naval history, including the newly featured Japanese battleship Nagato. Rhodesia Cliftonian (submissions), who currently leads Pool A and is sixth overall, takes the title for the highest scoring individual article of the competition so far, with the top importance featured article Ian Smith.

With 26 people having already scored over 100 points, it is likely that well over 100 points will be needed to secure a place in round 3. Recent years have required 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) and 100 (2010). Remember that only 64 will progress to round 3 at the end of April. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page; if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 22:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Flag of Azerbaijan in 1918

Hi, Courcelles. You protected the Template:Country data Azerbaijan. But the flag of Azerbaijan in 1918 in this template is wrong. The crescent was small and on the middle red field of the flag, not so wide. Whole explanation, sources and images of the flag of 1918 are on the talk page. Could you please correct this mistake? --User:East718 (talk) 18:32, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Hi, Interfase sorry for the delay. Looks like I only tweaked the protection level (lowering it), the actual protection was done by User:East718. I really don't have the eyes right now (and may not for months) to try and sort out small differences in photos. I see you made an edit request that was declined based on "lack of consensus", I'd suggest no one watches template talk pages, and you might get a better result discussing it on the talk page for the article on the flag itself? Courcelles 16:59, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #104

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

April 2014 GA Thanks

On behalf of WP:CHICAGO, I would like to thank you for your editorial contributions to Megan Rapinoe.

This user helped promote Megan Rapinoe to good article status.

.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 April 2014

Tech News: 2014-15

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
  • Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [125]

Future software changes

  • A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [126] [127]
  • All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8. [128]
  • The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [129] [130]
  • You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [131]
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
  • You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language. [132]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of tooth extraction

I personally would only call something contentious if someone raises objection. Bold revert discuss and all that. Lesion 23:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Get well soon.

Membrane-biologist

Hey, it's been a while. Hope you're well. Anyway, you indef'd Membrane-biologist with a {{checkuserblock-account}}; any chance you could post your findings at the SPI? Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:11, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

  • @HJ Mitchell: I didn't know there was an SPI, I caught this off of the ANI last night. That said, Membrane-biologist, BowToPutin, and your three are all  Confirmed matches. Courcelles 15:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #105

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 20:20, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 April 2014

Tech News: 2014-16

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

We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
  • MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [133] [134] [135]
  • Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [136] [137]

VisualEditor news

  • You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [138]
  • The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
  • The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [139] [140]

Future software changes

  • The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [141] [142]
  • Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [143]
  • You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key. [144] [145] [146] [147]
  • Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [148]
  • You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [149] [150]
  • The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [151] [152]
  • An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [153]

Problems

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #106

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 22:36, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Apology note

Hi! I'm not sure if you saw this reply when you suppressed some of my edits to my userspace and left me a message about them. However, I understand that it was a rude response and I apologize for that. I sincerely know that it was certainly not the way to respond to a safety concern. Again, I apologise for that and highly appreciate your concern. Rest assured it won't happen again. :) EmilyREditor (talk) 04:23, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: Protection

Thanks for semiprotecting my page. Is there any reason it can't be indefinite? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

  • WP:PP really, we don't do indef semi's on userpages unless it turns out to be a really long-term problem. At this point, there's no reason to think this vandal will be here in a month, if he is, we can set the next one for longer. (Note that user pages ARE semi'ed indef on request, user talk pages are not, by policy.) Courcelles 05:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
    • I have every reason to believe this person either is or knows the person that prompted the last time my user talk page was protected. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:27, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
    • As a side note, should I request protection for all of the targeted pages at RPP, or would you mind? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:29, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Got the two categories that were ongoing targets, and extended your talk page to three months, as I somewhat misread the protection log. Courcelles 05:45, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) @Roscelese: I just wanted to note that I have seen a users talk page protected long term, on occasion, as long as they create an alternate talk page like this one User talk:TheOldJacobite/Alternate. I hope that you will forgive me for intruding - I just wanted to mention this in case you were unaware of it and if it could help in this situation. Cheers to you both and have a great week on Wiki and off. MarnetteD | Talk 18:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
I was indeed unaware - thanks - but I also don't really see how that helps? If the purpose of not allowing protection of user talk pages is to allow good-faith messages from IPs, then an alternate page would need to be easily found, and thus it would also be easily found by harassers. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:48, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I have expressed my agreement with that position many, many times Roscelese.... the policy here makes no sense at all to me, it just moves the vandalism around. Courcelles 03:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I completely understand you positions. The benefit that I have seen is that readers of your main talk page don't have to see the nonsense including the nasty stuff. I have actually seen the attacks stop in a couple of incidences, The trolls seem to lose steam when they know there stuff will only be seen by one person. Those that do have this alternate page leave a clear message at the top of their talk page directing IPs and unconfirmed editors to the alternate page. But, as I say, it was only a suggestion and it doesn't always work. I hate seeing long time productive editors treated so poorly. I suspect that both of you have dealt with it enough to not let it get to you. best regards and apologies for taking up your time. MarnetteD | Talk 04:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you both once more. There is a point that I have forgotten to make in my prior posts and it speaks more to policy then the post I just made. The original question was "Is there any reason it can't be indefinite?" and Courcelles gave the reasons that the talk page cant be indeffed. My suggestion is the one exception to those rules. Right now Roscelese no IP or newbie can contact you for three months. Yes you have some relief from the trolls but, if they are legit editors, they can't ask you any questions or get any suggestions on how to edit properly. I know there are other outlets for questions to be answered but I wanted to make clear that the alternate talk page isn't so much to do with the vandals, rather it helps legit editors contact you when you talk page is protected. Ah well, again, I have taken up too much of your time so I will sign off and leave you both to your editing. MarnetteD | Talk 05:49, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-17

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

Tech News updates

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [156] [157]
  • Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [158] [159] [160] [161]
  • The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [162]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [163]

VisualEditor news

  • If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [164] [165]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [166] [167]
  • You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [168] [169] [170]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [171]
  • Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [172] [173]
  • The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [174] [175] [176] [177]
  • You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [178] [179]
  • You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [180] [181]
  • It is now proposed to replace Bugzilla, Gerrit and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org. [182]
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [183]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
  • There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [184]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 April 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #107

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 20:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Death Is the Only Answer/GA1

Courcelles, when you get a chance, it's probably time to decide what to do with this one way or the other. Apparently the WikiProject hasn't responded at all, so there won't be a consensus on their part as to whether this four-minute mini-episode is notable. (I do agree with you: the sourcing is weak for a GA, especially independent sourcing.) It's been over six weeks since your most recent post, and nothing has happened in the interim, so I thought it might have escaped you "to do" pile. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the reminder; largely, yeah, this fell off my radar after surgery. I'm going to go close it out now. Courcelles 20:41, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
  • You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [185]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [186]
  • VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [187]
  • VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [188]
  • The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [189]
  • CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [190] [191]
  • You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [192]

Problems

  • For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [193] [194]
  • On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [195] [196]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Quick q

Did you mean to restore talk page access here?--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 19:10, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Oops, no. Sometimes, I do hate that SPI script. Courcelles 19:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
But it makes you so speedy and efficient!--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 19:24, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #108

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

WikiCup 2014 April newsletter

Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's United States ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included Rhodesia Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and Washington, D.C. Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from Canada Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from Minas Gerais Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to Nepal Czar (submissions) and Indiana Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.

192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 17:57, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-19

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
  • The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org. [197]
  • It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool. [198]

VisualEditor news

  • External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [199]
  • The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [200]
  • You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [201]
  • There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [202][203]
  • Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [204] [205]
  • You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [206] [207]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome. [208]
  • You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
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07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Courcelles, my name is Jim Carter coming to you directly, let me tell you why am here, actually I become interested in working with files. And thought of helping out at Category:Wikipedia files requiring renamingy but for that I need file mover rights. So, I thought if you can help me. I already have some userrights here (Reviewer, rollback etc). You can trust me :) many thanks. Jim Carter (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

  • This one gives me a little pause; the guidelines for the flag request some experience with files either here or on Commons, and I just can't find any such evidence on your account. (One edit to the file namespace locally, for example). Is there some experience I am missing, perhaps? Courcelles 18:34, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
Actually I generally upload free files at commons, but while doing those works I became interested in working with files. That is why I thought of working here since English Wikipedia is my home Wiki. Anyways, I will try to work on files here. BTW how many edits on file namespace is required for this flag? Jim Carter (talk) 05:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Commons admins generally look for at least 2,000 local edits and several renaming requests that were completed before granting the flag locally. We don't need anything that high, but 1 file edit here and 61 total edits on Commons just isn't enough to gauge experience, I'm sorry to say. Courcelles 15:40, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Courcelles, I will gain some experience and will come back to you soon. Thank you again. Jim Carter (talk) 06:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 May 2014

Wikidata weekly summary #109

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:01, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
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