Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2023/September

looking for a co-maintainer for welcome-a-bit
as linked at my personal user page there is 'welcome a bit' program that delivers notes of new drafts or new submissions to review queue or new published articles (As the user chooses) to either their email or their on-wiki personal talk page (As the user chooses) in selected categories by topic (eg a certain region, or topic, or can choose all)

These notifications help with engaging a contributor in writing, authoring, reviewing, proofreading, or simply reading news stories in their topic of interest.

This worked successfully before, but on-wiki the main issue was the personal talk pages became cluttered and users did not clean them up (despite a user script available to archive a section in one click) so at their request I took them off the list.

Looking for someone who can help with


 * implementing a code that somehow allows users to add and remove topics
 * before this code is implemented, users will need to request all changes manually (note the 'config' for this is stored on-wiki via a tracking category and wiki markup content of the said pages)
 * someone will need to do these changes manually, following talk page of the welcome-a-bit wiki user account from which the bot posts
 * organize the bot to be run in the wikimedia cloud shell (formerly toolforge) i can help you get started with this and can help you look after it, but looks like I cannot do it alone due to work commitments and family commitments that cause me to mostly disappear from the wiki for weeks or months at a time
 * program a new feature, automatic archival of talk page messages, maybe after they are read (as with the new NOTIFICATIONS feature now the bot may be able to do this, which it previously couldn't as it didn't know whether the message it left was read or not)
 * note the software is programmed with Perl, and knowledge of Mediawiki API will be expected
 * I am happy to guide about this for about one hour a week at 6pm Sydney time via IRC chat, or some other time if this time is not suitable
 * once it's running someone to query existing active reviewers and ask for their preferences for notifications

Please let me know if there are some gaps in the explanation above, happy to elaborate on any of these points. Once there is a volunteer or several, I expect to provide around 80% of guidance initially until it reduces to maybe about 10%, and continue to be available on ongoing basis.

Many thanks. Gryllida (talk) 02:04, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

E-mail (now I'm not kidding)
I've felt a bit dejected about things around here recently...... I don't want to feel that way. I'm a dinosaur here -- I've been around this project for roughly 14 years. Us having 'official' email is an important thing. Helps with our legitimacy as a news organization. Acagastya has largely vanished, but holds the keys to the kingdom in terms of our email. I am thinking about setting up a brand new email system for us (web mail, of course).....which would cost a few bucks (not much, but the good ones cost a little bit of $). I'm not sure EVERYONE can have a private email box/address... we'll have to see -- but I can start off by paying for a couple of boxes and see where that goes. Thoughts? Oh, and: we have got to get some new reporters around here.--Bddpaux (talk) 20:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)


 * For the lo-hanging fruit: yes, it's definitely imperative to get more reporters. This project is a borderline failure. As for the email address, it's not obvious to me that anyone would respect "wikinews@wikinews.actual" versus "wikinews@protonmail.com". —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I had other-ish plans. And, I'm not being snarky, I'm not motivated enough to be snarky... but calling this project a 'failure' (a term that has become en vogue around here recently) is problematic, in my opinion. Some good things have happened here over the past 20-odd years. But, admidst it all: I've really lost the wind in my sails in terms of this project... I just don't know what this place is anymore.--Bddpaux (talk) 16:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I certainly believe in the project, or else I wouldn't continue posting original reporting here, but for whatever reason, it's not working. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Temporary accounts for unregistered editors
Read this in your language • • Please tell other users about these changes



In 2024, editors who have not registered an account will automatically begin using temporary accounts. These editors are sometimes called "IP editors" because the IP address is displayed in the page history.

The Trust and Safety Product team gave a presentation at Wikimania about this change. You can watch it on YouTube.

There is more information at m:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)) 02:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)