Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2018/March

Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
See https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html. &mdash;Jerome Potts (talk) 23:34, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually, this here is where i stumbled upon it. There is a discussion going on. &mdash;Jerome Potts (talk) 23:41, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Jerome Potts. Thanks for bringing this up here.
 * Unfortunately the block happened on February 28, more than three days ago. WN:Fresh suggests it may already be not a "new" event. The only recent event that I can see is that the linked pglaf document was last updated today (but I don't know what new information has been added). This could pass as "reporting on a story where new information about the event comes to light days later", but then we would need to know precisely what information was added. If so, see a quick overview of article structure and then click here to get started:


 * Alternatively, if it is difficult to find specifically what new information became available, freshness may be restored using original reporting; if you have questions that could be asked to a relevant party, an accredited reporter may deliver them to the relevant party via a wikinewsie.org email address. I am not sure what information could be obtained this way. For me personally, without prior background knowledge or experience reporting similar events, it could be interesting to know
 * Who were gutenberg's primary users in Germany that were affected. (If you are German perhaps you know this offhand?)
 * Also what specific technology mechanism was used to block the access (DNS, firewall, etc).
 * Whom is Gutenberg filing the appeal with.
 * Who provided the English translation of the Court judgment.
 * Whether the plaintiff is happy with the block.
 * Why does the plaintiff refuse to engage with the US court system which Gutenberg says is the appropriate venue for the lawsuit.
 * --Gryllida (talk) 23:54, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Actually, it sounds like Germany (via a court order) blocked access to Project Gutenberg. It's important to get those details right. --SVTCobra 02:35, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion to modify mass message signature
This page contains signature of mass message (example). I'm proposing that we uncomment it, by replacing the content



with this


 * -- User:$1 ($2, using the list at $3)

This change would make it more clear who sent the 'mass message', which is useful to make it easier to contact them, I think?

--Gryllida (talk) 05:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Sounds like an improvement, to me. --Pi zero (talk) 11:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10
 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 make longer edit summaries.

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page.
 * On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (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 6 March at 19:30 (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 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
 * You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

پاکستان کی جمہوریت
جمہوریت سچائ سامنے لاتی ہے-پاکستان میں اس کا یہ رخ نہ صرف یہ کہ کمزور تر ہے بلکہ اس کے لیے ابتدائ کام بھں سیاسی و سماجی سائنسدانوں نے نہیں کیا ہے


 * I am sorry, but Wikinews cannot fix Pakistan's democracy. It is outside of the project's scope. --SVTCobra 16:40, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

News cycle (was: Review of revision 4389192 [Not ready])
Copied from an article talk page:

[...] If the sequence of sentences in the lede was the reason for this drive-by failing review, I have re-ordered them and put it in the title. Thus, I am going to resubmit for review. --SVTCobra 16:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help! De Wikischim (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The wording is now problematic; the first sentence reads like coming into the middle of a conversation. Not sure (without actually engaging in a review) whether that can be fixed by a reviewer.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:42, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like STV Cobra has now tried to solve this too. By the way, is this again such a big issue that it must prevent the article as such from being published? Anyway, if it won't be approved by one of the reviewers here before tomorrow morning, you can just delete the whole article immediately as it will by then have become "stale" according to the criteria for that here. De Wikischim (talk) 21:27, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is becoming clear that we are going to have to have a discussion about the Wikinews news cycle. Things that happen in the evening and don't get reported until the next day have already lost a full day against our ticking clock. Similarly, things that happen on the US West coast are nearly as badly disadvantaged when compared to things that happen in East Asia. --SVTCobra 21:50, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's a very good idea to have such a discussion, indeed. (Just realize how many new steady contributors you could attract here by making the admission policy on this point somewhat less strict.) De Wikischim (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No thanks. Any attempt publishing old content is total waste of time because news has to be new. We aren’t encyclopaedia to publish old article. Our work is not just to write articles but for others to look at us, and read a reliable source for news. Re deletion — there is no one single author to request “author request” deletion. •–• 22:39, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed a large part of the work here is the timing at the time of creation. The event could have been submitted for review Thursday morning the 8th. Instead Samee started it on the 9th and wrote a short version, you yourself expanded it and submitted for review only on the 10th (submitted for review 01:01, 10 March 2018), and a reviewer was able to pick it up only by '19:51, 11 March 2018', three days away from the focal event. If only Samee started it a day earlier, and if only someone expanded it immediately after Samee stopped editing...
 * Perhaps we need more eyeballs on the developing stories, to quickly expand short added stories and submit them for review. There's a dozen of people around who have the skill to bring the article to a readily publishable state, but somehow do not always get it in time. Argh.
 * I'd suggest everyone to visit WN:Newsroom or RecentChanges at least 2-3 times a day in case you can expand a story so that it is ready to publish while still current. --Gryllida (talk) 23:09, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's true we've tried, historically, to advise contributors to submit on either the same day as the event or the day after, allowing maximal time for the review process. For some reason we seem to have a number of folks around lately making a valiant (but imho doomed) effort to write news articles collaboratively, which, from long experience here, does not work under ordinary circumstances &mdash; amongst other things collaboration takes a huge hit in efficiency, when we already need to be more efficient.  Another difficulty is that we rely on each contributor improving as briskly as they, as individuals, are able, and it seems folks who collaborate may sometimes tend to improve more slowly.  Of course we want to build semi-automated assistants to make writing articles more efficient... but I admit, looking at reviewers already struggling to keep up, I'm inclined to put my effort into making review more efficient before putting effort into making writing more efficient.  In the long run, I expect writing assistants to reduce difficulty of the average review by a little, which will be all to the good, but I still expect writing assistants to increase total demand for review, and therefore I put my effort first into empowering reviewers to handle the added load. --Pi zero (talk) 23:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. However, it didn't seem like Samee was able to finish the writing. In this case taking over the writing would have made sense. (For most articles in the developing category which are untouched for more than an hour, this in fact could be worthwhile. See:

Everything else: Effectively the fisheries and Denmark stories are rotting and are free for anyone to take over, whereas the sanctuary state lawsuit story was eaten by slow start already. It is my hypothesis that Quick starting valuable articles by taking over them (as opposed to collaborative editing in which the authors take turns) may be a worthwhile activity. --Gryllida (talk) 00:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * edible worms prepared story
 * 89 something no context not news
 * US Navajo lawsuit prepared story
 * To be clear, this needs to be complemented by encouraging the authors to finish and submit for review quickly themselves. However, that takes time to build (less with some, more with others) and starting from their drafts rather than from scratch may help to engage them in writing (better than leaving their drafts abandoned). --Gryllida (talk) 00:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sound reasoning. --Pi zero (talk) 00:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * When I said we should have a discussion about our news cycle, I did not mean for it to take place here. This talk page has a limited life span as we have already hit March 12 UTC. --SVTCobra 00:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * copied it to the misc water cooler. --Gryllida (talk) 02:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of that distinction here between taking over a draft and collaboration. I did save one story that someone had started: United States: Jet loses engine cover over Pacific en route to Honolulu from San Francisco. But telling that it's been abandoned before the end of the first (UTC) day presents a problem, especially since jumping in and taking over someone else's story seems really pushy. I didn't even look at the story on the Washington State train crash until too late, for that reason: someone else started the story I'd planned to state, that was that, I thought, until a second person started working on it. (I also disagreed with a reviewer about the day of the focal event in North Korea launches intercontinental ballistic missile, claims its range includes all of the continental US; I was probably wrong, but I suspect East Asian time vs. UTC played a role in that quick fail.) Yngvadottir (talk) 04:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a difficulty with "taking over" an article, yes. Come to think, on Wikibooks &mdash; where a given book often has at most one active contributor at a time, over a period of years &mdash; there is a common behavioral pattern of adopting a book, and generally one does that cautiously and it takes a week or two to be sure you aren't about to step on someone else's toes; which just goes to show, it'd be socially awkward to do the equivalent at the speed required by the news cycle.  I recall occasions when one veteran Wikinewsie took over an article from another veteran Wikinewsie; I'm pretty sure that involved the two of them communicating on IRC in real time to agree to the trade-off (and a deferential note in an edit summary). In the long run, I think, we will want to put our energy on the writing-assistant side into helping an individual complete an article rather than into helping with the much more chancy activity of collaborative writing (though, as I've remarked, I see assisting reviewers as a... not higher, but more immediate, priority). --Pi zero (talk) 11:49, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-11
 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
 * 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons.
 * Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made.
 * Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be [ tagged] for review.
 * Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab.

Problems
 * The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC).

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week.
 * It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users.
 * Octicons-tools.svg A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (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 13 March at 19:30 (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 14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

ProPublica continues their explainers
Overcoming bias: https://www.propublica.org/article/ask-ppil-on-bias-in-journalism —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-12
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg There is no Editing team meeting this week.
 * 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 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days.
 * In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-13
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate.
 * TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (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 27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg 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 one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details.
 * Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * FYI: "Message sent by User:Johan (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors&oldid=17870513"
 * --Gryllida (talk) 21:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)