Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2017/September

Empty "Opinions/Comments" subpages
Seems that a lot of "Opinions"/"Comments:" subpages of published articles have been created with banners. However, most of them are lacking comments or opinions. I don't need to provide examples, do I? What to do with them? --George Ho (talk) 07:29, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that if they don't have comments after [x] days, then they should probably be deleted. Certainly, users can provide feedback on a news event from four years ago but no one is going to see it. Having a redlink will probably discourage any of those discussions. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, one of my long-term projects is creating such pages for those archived articles that don't have them. There is no expiration date on discussion of an archived article.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:22, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * This is easily done if you want. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:17, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Tbh I'd rather not do it by bot. You know me, I have a thing about the human touch; various special concerns come up in specific cases.  The one that comes to mind is that, occasionally, the reason an article doesn't have a comments page is that the article got moved and the user doing it somehow forgot to move the comments page with it; then one has to figure out exactly what happened and carefully move the comments page to rejoin the article page, fixing any multiple redirects.  Getting that wrong could result in an article with two comments pages; and I have doubts that LQT would even make it possible to merge two such LQT groupings; I'd be afraid to try, as LQT can severely mess things up, and I'd rather not have to devote resources to trying. Btw I also like to be sure, while I'm at it, that the article has a haveyoursay template (or one of the seldom-used alternatives); and if it does already have haveyoursay, I give the article a null edit after creating the comments page.  I track all this stuff using Whatlinkshere for haveyoursay and its subtemplate haveyoursay/missing/link; the latter produces a list of pages that use haveyoursay but don't have a comments page, and after creating the comments page a null edit gets the article off that list.  In principle, articles that don't transclude haveyoursay should have it added, but since there are hundreds of pages on the missing-link list I've never gotten around to that further administrative task.  --Pi zero (talk) 12:16, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
 * But that would be a trivially-easy problem to solve with a semi-automatic editor as well... —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:10, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, it seems in theory it should be straightforward to do with semi-automation. To be clear on how all these pieces fit together:  I mean to make such things easy in practice to do via wiki markup.  I've got most-or-all of the primitive wiki-markup elements needed; but I always knew there would be a later phase of development, in which I'd have to learn idioms for using the primitives, and I've been fascinated to discover this is much more true than I'd quite realized.  Since I've got enough of the primitives operational, I've found that actually coordinating them to perform a high-level operation, even a seemingly straightforward one, can be extraordinarily difficult.  The solution I have in mind is one of those things that can seem obvious once one has it in mind.  I always meant to build semi-automation to help with difficult tasks, and it turns out that building semi-automation is a difficult task, so I mean to build a semi-automated meta-assistant, to help with building and maintaining semi-automation.  No small design challenge, to thoroughly embrace flexibility so it doesn't limit what can be done with it.  --Pi zero (talk) 22:22, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

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

Tech News: 2017-36
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * We are asking Tech News readers five questions to make the newsletter better. You can answer the questions here. We are grateful for every reply we get.

Recent changes
 * The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around.

Problems
 * Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "" in your preferences and see if it helps.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can see a presentation about and discuss the new Technical Committee on 5 September at 17:30 (UTC). There will be a presentation on YouTube and a discussion in  on Freenode. You can use the web chat.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  22:14, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal/technical: BlockerBot
It has been more than fifteen months since I requested admin rights to fight vandals and spammers. They come, they vandal, and they get blocked. One common patter can be observed that most of the helpline vandals are active when Pi zero is afk. Also to note, many usernames hint they might be the work of same user because most of the names had a Hindu origin, and some, Muslim -- indicating it is a good chance they operate during day time in India. While this is just as assumption, many a times, there is no admin available -- I ping Tom Morris on Twitter, i drop a message on IRC hoping an admin sees it when they are on-wiki, I leave talk page messages, or even request global blocks. But until they are blocked -- they are free to do anything they want -- though revision check prevents the damage. So, there should be a bot, which can block editors temporarily until an admin is available. Editors, who can be trusted for requesting the block can only request the bot to block someone. The bot would send a notification to admins on the project project, and if any admin sees it, they can clear the notification, and choose if there is a need for permanent blockage, or whatever. The thing is -- granting anyone admin rights just to fight vandalism might not be okay, and it is possible for a vandal to abuse editing rights while no admin is on the site -- but some editors might be -- and they can prevent vandals. acagastya PING ME! 10:54, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * gpy could announce block and speedy deletion requests on live chat to ease the task for people who do not have the wiki open in a separate tab right now? --Gryllida (talk, chat) 11:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If open in a tab, the wiki could show banners or do html5 notifications when a new speedy deletion or block request is added? --Gryllida (talk, chat) 11:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-37
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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

Problems
 * Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead.

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

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

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-38
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them.
 * Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed.

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

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

Future changes
 * We are replacing Tidy on Wikimedia wikis. Editors need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors. Some wikis have already switched. If your wiki would like to switch to the new format now, you can file a task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with +  or  +  when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs.
 * Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow.

Changes later this week
 * You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences.
 * Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).

Meetings Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.


 * The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
 * You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)