This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hello, this is just an archive of my talk page. New threads get archived after 14 days of inactivity. Due to my username change in April, all threads here with my old username have been modified to have my new one. Any remaining ones will be deliberately left, either since the username is the topic issue. FYI, my old username can be deciphered by reading #Name change. So now most messages will have "SHB2000" in it, and not my old one to prevent confusion. This thread also contains messages from my IP talk page as well.
Welcome!
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub. New users are also welcome to post any questions or concerns to the arrivals lounge. If you want some practice editing, please do so on our graffiti wall. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, take a look over some of the differences here. If you want to contribute with information about the place where you live, see Wikivoyage:Welcome, locals.
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Welcome, and thank you for your contributions. I've cropped the banner for Golden Highway. It is actually quite easy to use the Crop Tool, so you might want to try it yourself. You copy the filename of your picture from the commons, set the ratio to 7:1, then re-size the box to select the part of the picture you want to use. A new filename is created, which you can copy before hitting the Upload button. Best regards, Ground Zero (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
Stubs
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
Thank you for starting the Australian Tourist Drive articles. Are you planning to expand these articles? The Grand Pacific Drive article is pretty good, but the other articles don't really provide very much information for travellers. For example, they don't explain why you'd want to drive those routes. They also don't identify what there is to see along the way. I'm not not sure what these articles really do for the reader. I am hoping to see more, as I plan to do a driving trip in Australia in the coming years, and these articles, if they are expanded could be very useful to me. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 03:03, 30 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
Hello. Having looked at your articles, I would recommend filling out the ones you've already started before starting any more. Even the Grand Pacific Drive article doesn't have the route description, which is the most important part of an itinerary. Just look at it this way - the more time you spend on creating new stubs, the less time you've got to improve the articles you've already created. All the best, ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks TravelAroundOz. I've added a map to Grand Pacific Drive. If you've added the wikidata links to destinations in your article, the map is generated automatically when you put this in the article: {{mapframe|zoom=8}}
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
@DaGizza, Ground Zero:Yep, thanks. Off topic, but I've just created a template called {{Uw-vandalism2}} similar to the one on en wiki. Make for people like User:ThePikerWorm (no it's for vandals not just him). Does it need approval?
TAO: With fewer active editors and fewer administrators, the Wikivoyage community has found it necessary to take much faster action with vandals. The Wikipedia approach of being gentle and encouraging them to become constructive editors doesn't work here: we usually move very quickly to shut them down. We have had to deal with several very persistent vandals who are clever at exploiting the system, so we block very quickly, and hide their vandalism from view to discourage them. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 12:59, 1 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Before a new MediaWiki template is put into general use it needs to be discussed and accepted as good or preferably best practice. Until such acceptance, new templates will be tagged {{experimental}}, and should not be added to more than one low-visibility article—so not Paris. (If other editors object to that addition, though, expect it to be removed until a consensus is reached.) If new templates fail to gain community support, they will eventually be deleted.[etc.]
And what are you doing, redirecting your user talk page? I've never seen this done before, and it strikes me as hostile to all other users and smacks of vandalism to me. I would urge you to put this back into your standard user talk page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Formatting
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Hey TAO, I restored my edits on this article. Wikivoyage, like other travel guides, tries to use a consistent style for formatting times and dates, phone numbers, prices, and do on. It makes it easier for the reader to find information quickly. Using a variety of styles, as the article did before I cleaned it up, makes it looks sloppy and unreliable. Wv:tdf sets out one style for countries that use the 24-hour clock (e.g., 09:00-17:00), and one style for countries that use the 12-hour clock (e.g., 9AM-5PM). A destination article should never use both formats, as this one did — it's more confusing for the reader. The talk page for each country article identifies the style we use for that country's articles in a box at the top of the page.
If you disagree with Wikivoyage style, or with the style selected for any country, you can propose changes on the appropriate talk page.
Also, the edits you undid included a bunch of capitalisation, grammar, punctuation and formatting corrections. I have restored the lot of them. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 01:59, 7 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Hi again.
Thanks for your efforts with sending welcome messages, but would you mind leaving that to other users until you get more experience editing? Part of the purpose of such messages is for the new user to have someone to contact if they need any help but don't know how to use or aren't aware other resources like article talk pages, the Pub, Arrivals lounge etc. In this event, it's best for the person who helps them to have at least a few months' experience, otherwise it's likely they won't know the best way to help. There's also no point welcoming users with no editing history on Wikivoyage; we normally wait until either a person has made several edits or until one of their edits requires discussion. You can see a user's contributions by looking in the left sidebar on their user page, or else by searching Special/Contribution:username.
Finally, remember that whenever you post on a talk page, it's important to sign your post by typing four tildes in a row like this: ~~~~. You'd think after 20 years, the Wikimedia Foundation would have devised a way for talk page posts to sign automatically on desktop mode, but unfortunately they haven't.
Also, I'm a bit confused on what to name Alternate Tourist Drive 24. Should I put "(Queensland)" in brackets or not? Not many people will know where it is, unlike 33.
If there's another road called Alternate Tourist Drive 24 somewhere else in the world, then yes add "(Queensland)". But if not, it doesn't matter how obscure the route is, it doesn't need disambiguating.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:56, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
The thing is, I don't know. Tourist Drives are so poorly maintained in all states except NSW, QLD and WA. One thing for sure is that all WA tourist drives are covered on enwiki. Nothing about NSW or QLD. I also don't know about anything in Victoria as it's so poorly maintained that even the signs lead to nowhere there. SHB2000 (talk) 12:05, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. In that case, maybe just assume there isn't another one, as it's quite a specific name. If in the future someone wants to create an article for another unknown "Alternate Tourist Drive 24", a disambiguation can be created then.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:08, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Aggressive archiving
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Didn't I reply to this? 7 days is way too short to even expect people to see a post. I urge you to wait at least 2-3 months before archiving anything. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:01, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
G'day
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Thanks for the Aussie barn compass. Australia is high on my list of places to visit when the world gets back to normal. If you haven't seen this already, I think it would be useful for you: Wikivoyage:Itinerary status shows the criteria for upgrading itinerary articles from stub to outline to usable to guide. Happy editing. Ground Zero (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
"Short articles (less than 3,000 bytes) should usually have no more than 1–2 images, including a map. For longer articles, 1 image per screen (1,000–2,000 bytes) is generally adequate."
I'd read that as 9-18, but 18 sounds like a lot of images. I don't think that would get advisable. We don't want our articles to burn through readers' mobile data. Ground Zero (talk) 12:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Note:This section has my old username for those that are curious. It has been deliberately been left, as the topic is about the username.
Hey, TravelAroundOz (or SHB2000 now). Was just checking w:WP:PERM over at Wikipedia and a little surprised to see you there instead of here. I just noticed the name change -- any particular reason? Just friendly curiosity, hope you're doing well and it wasn't about anything bad. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 07:54, 13 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, SHB2000. It looks like I created a problem, since I didn't wait long enough to hear from you about whether you were going to create more Tourist Drive 1 articles and moved the one in Central New South Wales to just Tourist Drive 1. There are a bunch of roads with the same name in different Australian states, then? It looks like I need to revert that name change and just spell out New South Wales because we don't use abbreviations for states on this site as a matter of style and because we don't expect people from outside a given country to know such abbreviations. Sorry about that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:49, 18 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
I guess that's somewhat similar to how we could have the same numbering for an interstate highway, a federal road, a state road and a county road in any given U.S. state. We don't have roads specifically called tourist roads, though, as far as I know. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:58, 18 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
No, that's an Aussie thing. Infact, Australia still has 8 different numbering systems similar to the US system
i.e.
National Highway
National Route
State Route
Metroads (even though there are only two remaining)
Alphanumeric (similar to Europe)
National Highway Alphanumeric
Tourist Drive/Ways
Detour route (note that whoever edited w:Highways in Australia must've assumed its an alphanumeric even though it really isn't.
There are scenic routes, though they're usually numbered like any other and just marked with extra dotted lines on paper maps, for anyone who still uses those. I can think of one private road that has beautiful scenery and charges a toll, though. It's called the 17-Mile Drive and it's in Carmel, California. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:45, 18 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Man, I should stop complaining about the toll in Toowoomba, a regional city. This is just a road while that's a motorway;) SHB2000 (talk) 20:12, 18 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
An award for you
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Cheers mate, and yes I am hoping to create an article for every major tourist drive in Australia. Just passed my 1000th edit:) SHB2000 (talk) 20:13, 18 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Road travel between Adelaide/Melbourne -- itinerary potential?
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Dropping in a word on your talk page, because you definitely have a lot more experience with the road articles than me. Do you think there's any solid potential for an article on overland travel (possibly including the bus and train routes as well as driving) between Adelaide-Melbourne, and would you be interested in helping out on one? I know it's a bit outside your usual geographic remit, but it's a trip I make regularly and I've been floating the idea of writing on it. Some of the closer-together capital cities, especially for ones outside the southeast bubble, so in my experience road trips and train/bus travel is fairly common. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 05:39, 19 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I don't think we should include that scolding tone in any warnings. IMO, let's just give readers information and trust that they won't be idiots, or that if they are, scolding all readers will if anything produce the opposite effect in them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
G'day SHB, thankfully we haven't been hit that hard. But I appreciate you asking. There have been a few small leaks of water that have gotten inside the home and the back and frontyards are drenched. Hope you are staying safe and dry. What a crazy time the last couple of years have been. First the bushfires/drought, then Covid and now the floods (and of course Covid still isn't over yet). Gizza (roam)07:03, 21 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain.
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work.
Okay, I'll take that for next time as I was unaware of that. It's rather weird how it works as generally outlines are meant to give more information to the reader but it's weird when it comes to Great Alpine Road (incomplete) and these useless articles written by User:EnglishEP (translated) haven't even been modified. Anyway, have a good day and stay safe. Thanks, SHB2000 (talk) 08:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Some very old web browsersdon’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers.
IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams.
Problems
When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem.
Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
You reverted my edit to Innamincka with the edit comment "exception. see the pub for discussion". I don't see it over there. Please explain. --FredTC (talk) 22:21, 3 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
April 7: Data import for Lexemes: how to add a lot of content in your language
April 8: Documentation Q&A
April 8: Leveraging text corpora for curating lexicographical data
April 10: Lingua Libre, how you can record words in your language and use them on Wikidata
Upcoming: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Cliff Landis (Digital Initiatives Librarian, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library) on “GaNCH: Using Wikidata for Georgia's Natural, Cultural, and Historic Organizations' Disaster Response.” April 6th.
Upcoming: LIVE Wikidata editing #39 - YouTube, Facebook, April 10
Wikidata Lexeme Forms now supports additional Breton templates (Source)
User:Nikki/LexemeAddIPA.js userscript adds a link in the header for forms on lexeme pages which opens a dialog for adding IPA statements to forms that do not have any yet.
LexSAOB adds Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB) identifiers to Swedish lexemes in Wikidata.
We continued to make improvements to the Query builder. We worked on adding a footer to the Query Builder (phab:T268643) and showing all relevant columns in the query result (phab:T277646) as well as querying for dates (phab:T272697)
Fixed a bug where Item pages scrolls back to "In more languages" block after every change of DOM (phab:T277999, being deployed to Wikidata later this week)
Continued working on a new grafana graph to track editor numbers split by namespace (phab:T275999)
Finished a small tool to get the ORES quality score for a list of Items. Waiting for deployment to toolforge for broader use now.
Defined remaining work for redirect sitelink exceptions (phab:T278962)
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Again, thanks for participating in this. However, Rodolfo2083 has no contributions, and that username suggests a likelihood of possibly being another sockpuppet of the Telstra guy. I'd suggest waiting a least a couple of posts before welcoming anyone. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:02, 8 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for the late response, I've been out since Tuesday and now have my space key fixed. Thought the telstra guy's sock's are only 2-3 digits. Though I suppose he'd slowly start to change his editing habits/usernames. SHB2000 (talk) 09:53, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
But in any case, there's generally no point in welcoming someone who hasn't even made a single edit. The only time I do that is when their username suggests they are tour agency owners or something, and even then, preemptive advice not to tout or violate other Wikivoyage guidelines is almost never successful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Vaucluse
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Sure. Vaucluse (New South Wales) is unlikely to get its own page for the next four years. Feel free to revert the move. SHB2000 (talk) 12:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
The Eastern Suburbs will probably be too big for its own article and need to be broken down into smaller sections. La Perouse (can NSW have more french names) is sort of an exception as you can't fit all of what's there into the Eastern Suburbs article. SHB2000 (talk) 12:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Looking at a Greater Sydney rail map (yes, I collect train maps of places I'll probably never visit, don't judge me), I'm always struck by the number of place names borrowed seemingly at random from unremarkable towns in and around London - Bexley, Stanmore, Croydon, Lewisham, Richmond... - and wonder how they stack up against the originals.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Agree, it's only the last 20 years where names have been changing to indigenous names. Some hard to pronounce ones as well like Oodnadatta, Kununurra, Wooloomooloo, Kiwirakurra. There's also a bunch of other UK names in NSW like Liverpool, Cardiff (yes, when someone says cardiff, i think of cardiff, nsw and not cardiff, wales), Gloucester, Forster, Goulburn, Griffith, Camden (the origin of our Griffith is from Burley Griffin and not from the UK Griffith), Bathurst, Windsor and to say, there's a lot more than what I've mentioned. SHB2000 (talk) 21:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
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
Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first.
Changes later this week
The citoidAPI will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).
Future changes
PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.
That’s not what I meant. What I meant was whenever I update a template, it replaces subst:#time:Y-m-d with 2021-04-11 or whatever the date is. 82.3.185.1216:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
This Month in GLAM: March 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I thought you were going to bed now. 82.3.185.1213:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Royal Trees, powered by Wikidata is an interactive website that shows royal family trees, for all royal families worldwide. See an example of Philip Duke of Edinburgh.
Started research and collecting material for the work on improvements to the Lexeme UI and prepared the first interviews
Finishing up the work on the first version of the Query Builder. We still need to get the security review before we can deploy it properly. Current state can be tested on the test system.
Finalized the dashboard to see the number of (active/very active) editors split by namespace. See the graphs at the bottom of this dashboard.
Continued working on the remaining pieces needed to fully support editing statements on Senses of a Lexeme (phab:T199896)
This might seem very odd but am I allowed to have two maps in Innamincka. One's for the 1.5km long town centre and the other is for the vast Innamincka. The problem is, they're either too close to each other or too far. Solution: A controversial request for two maps.
Since these are dynamic maps, that's probably not necessary. You can pick a kind of compromise zoom level and let readers click the map to zoom in or out for more location info. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
I would probably add the latitude, longitude and zoom parameters for the mapframe to center map and zoom in on the main area. You can use the width and height parameters to make the dynamic map into a rectangle if so desired. Two maps are probably acceptable but I think one map would suffice. Best wishes! -- Matroc (talk) 05:20, 30 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks guys, I've decided to remove the second map and incorporate both Ikan Kekek's and WhatamIdoing's ideas. Considering that for it to be a proper guide, it'll need 4 maps. (Town centre, greater Innamincka, Birdsville and Moomba) SHB2000 (talk) 09:09, 30 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
Facebook pages
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I agree with your edit here, but only because the hotel has its own website. If a business has no website but has its own Facebook page, we link it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
I doubt it. Commons is the Wiki with the photos, but I'm guessing there's no Wiki with an Instagram page. I could be wrong, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:42, 14 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Making a policy change without discussion and implementing it across a bunch of articles is always a bad idea. I'm sure that you believe you're right — and you very well may be right — but the approach you've taken does kind of say to everyone else that any views they may have on the subject are irrelevant, which leaves a bad taste.
"When copying text from Wikipedia (or any other CC-SA site) you must provide attribution to the original authors. Attribution is generally provided by pasting the URL for the source article version (see below) into the "edit summary" box, and/or you can use the Wikipedia template."
I've been pasting the URL into the edit summary box. The way I read the passage above, this is sufficient. Also using the Wikipedia template is fine to do, but I don't think it is necessary under the policy. Do you disagree? Ground Zero (talk) 01:02, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
What do you mean by "'I would expect admins, at least, to monitor this page.' - But no, only a non admin is monitoring this page"? The page is on the list of pages admins are explicitly asked to monitor, and several admins have commented on the thread above your comment. I haven't commented in the thread as I have little to say for the moment. (Except that: You can disable e-mail from named users, if that's any help.) –LPfi (talk) 06:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Very sorry about ignoring the rest of all the admins. As User:Ikan Kekek said, it's frustrating being constantly attacked. Btw, thanks for the suggestion. I only haven't disabled it incase if User:82.3.185.12 chooses to create an account one day. SHB2000 (talk) 06:45, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
I think there is a value in being able to send and receive e-mail. The preferences item I suggested allows disabling e-mail from a certain user (or a list of users). It does not help against somebody creating new accounts all the time, and non-logged in users cannot send wikimail anyhow. –LPfi (talk) 05:50, 17 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Additionally, I'm not going to disable it because for the 98% of good faith users, I'm not going to ruin it for them because of the 2% minority that ruins and destroys Wikimedia Projects. By disabling it, I'm just letting the vandal/harasser win. SHB2000 (talk) 12:43, 17 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Edit summary
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments3 people in discussion
I think your edit summary here was a bit careless, as you shouldn't want everybody watching latest changes reading that. No problem this time, and I see you changed it for the next test. –LPfi (talk) 08:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
If it weren't, they wouldn't be hidden for non-admins. They are never perfect, and if you know what they catch, they are easier to evade. –LPfi (talk) 08:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
This was also careless and not very kind. Please remember that everyone deserves respect. If everything Antandrus claimed is true, then through no fault of their own mental illness has completely ruined that person's life and has also caused them to inflict a lot of pain on other people.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:06, 18 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yes. That was the prime concern of a friend of mine when I told about the situation. She was worried that he doesn't get the support he would need from the local society – which probably is true, but something we cannot do much about. There are things we have to do here for our readers and to protect ourselves, but let's try not to make it any worse than needed.
SHB2000: I can read what he wrote, at least one message. I suppose you got more or less the same message by e-mail.
Well, in his emails, he said he doesn't have mental health issues, (email me for a copy of that email) and the revision got deleted so I can't access it. SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 22:07, 18 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Upcoming: SPARQL queries live on Twitch and in French by Vigneron, April 20 at 18:00 CEST
Upcoming: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call: Alexandra Wong on experiences and workflows for linking archival collections to Wikidata. There will also be a recap of insights from the recent Canadian archivists’ panel on Wikidata by the University and College Archives Special Interest Section (UCASIS) of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA). Agenda, April 20
Upcoming: Wikipedia Weekley Network - Biodiversity edition: iNaturalist place ID YouTube, Facebook, April 23
Upcoming: LIVE Wikidata editing #41 - YouTube, Facebook, April 24
Upcoming: 25 April - WikidataDays Sessions II, an online editing session dedicated to democracy and political parties, coinciding with the celebration of Freedom Day.
Structured Data on Commons explained, with Andrew Lih, John Cummings and Pharos (Youtube)
Discovering history's notable people (audio). Using Wikidata and Wikipedia as the backbone, this project "construct[s] a new dataset of more than seven million notable individuals across recorded human history".
User:So9q/Gadget-CreateNewEntity.js is a userscript to add a "create new item" link in the dropdown menu for when you want to * add an item to a property, but the item does not exist. (recently modified to support lexemes).
Wikidata Lexeme Forms no longer automatically redirects you to login, so you can now use edit mode to view the forms of a lexeme in the “right” order. Here is an example.
Finished work on the support for editing statements on Senses on Lexemes via the API (phab:T199896)
Got all feature work done on the first version of the Query Builder. It is now awaiting security review.
Statements linking to deleted Lexemes now indicate this similar to statements linking to deleted Items (phab:T277089)
Fixing a bug with misaligned grammatical features after an OOUI update (phab:T278522)
Finished work on the small tools to get the number of constraints violations and ORES scores for a list of Items. Will publish soon.
Did interviews with a few people about how they work around lexicographical data
Selected focus languages for continued work on lexicographical data and Abstract Wikipedia together with Abstract Wikipedia team. The selected ones are Hausa, Igbo, Bengali, Malayalam and Dagbani. You can read more about it in the Abstract Wikipedia newsletter.
Gave input to WMF search platform team for a survey draft around the query service in order to better understand how to move forward with improvements
Just wanted to ask your opinion on creating two armchair articles. Strzelecki Track and Birdsville Track. They can be physically accessed but with one vehicle every 2-3 days. Just wanting to ask whether I should create it based on if a traveller goes and explores it or for armchair travel?
I'd say cover these as itineraries, but what would be the difference in your coverage if it was meant solely for vicarious reading, which is what I think you mean by armchair travel, than if you simply cover it as a practical itinerary? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
I think your article is looking good so far. Maybe the Ashmore and Cartier Island article reads like a joke because it's not written very well and has no information about why someone might want to visit, talks about what isn't there instead of what is, and is even a bit fuzzy on basic accessibility (It would really benefit from adding information provided by the Australian government. I'd suggest not trying to emulate that article. The Track and the few locations along it seem to have some history, so it shouldn't be too fill out as a legitimate travel article. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:41, 22 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon.
If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces.
Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before.
The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I've semi-protected your page (autoconfirmed only) for one week. Please let me know if you'd like it to be lifted before the week has expired, but I'd be reluctant to do so for the remainder of today.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for protecting my talk page. Hopefully this guy shall stop (changed my email address as well) but this doesn't seem like its going to stop for another week. I really don't see why a non autoconfirmed user would have a reason to post here apart from User:82.3.185.12. May also want to protect Vat's talk page as well. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 10:28, 20 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Sweepers' Club Membership Certificate
Thanks for helping sweep old conversations off to relevant talk pages. Like housework, it's often best to do a little every day or every week, but we'd let the page get out of hand. Thanks for helping with the "spring cleaning". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
OK. Thanks for what you have been (and hopefully will be) doing. Just best to keep some things to oneself, or trusted channels. The less those whose edits we don't want know about how we find them, the better. And some of them may be following any on-wiki discussion. –LPfi (talk) 12:47, 21 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
Please don't talk in public about how our abuse filters work. The less trolls, vandals etc. know about them, the better, and whenever you say anything about the filters in public, some of them may be listening. I think this is the third time I am trying to tell this to you. If there is something unclear about it, do ask, but i don't want to have to keep saying this. –LPfi (talk) 22:08, 22 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
The Signpost: 25 April 2021
News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's weekly journal about Wikipedia and Wikimedia
Working with Zotero on WiKidata (in Italian) - YouTube
Tool of the week
User:So9q/AddNewLexemeMenu.js is a userscript that adds a section to the sidebar with links for creating new lexemes.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
WMDE built two tools to help editors get a better understanding of the quality of Wikidata's data in a specific area of interest. Try them out and let us know what you think.
Collaborative translation of Cita is now available on translatewiki.net. Cita is a Wikidata addon that adds citations metadata support to Zotero, using cites work (P2860) information from Wikidata, and enabling users to easily contribute missing data. Cita is currently under development with a WikiCite grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, and presentation workshops will be held on May 27th (Spanish) and May 31st (English). More info and pre-registration here.
RaiseWikibase is a tool for speeding up multilingual knowledge graph construction with Wikibase. Among other features, it can be utilized to create a mini Wikibase instance with Wikidata properties in a few minutes.
wbeditentity now supports editing statements on Senses (phab:T199896)
We added syntax highlighting for viewing Entity Schema pages. There is not syntax highlighting for editing of Entity Schemas yet. (phab:T238831)
Improved the way Lua deals with redirects (phab:T238831)
Worked on making it possible to add a title to the top of a query visualization via a comment in the SPARQL code (phab:T225883)
Discussed how to get persistent storage of constraint violations unstuck as this is a prerequisite to making it easier to analyze and query constraint violations (phab:T214362)
Discussed a high-level plan for how to move forward with checking Wikidata's data against 3rd-party databases
Finished work on version 1 of the Query Builder. Not it is awaiting security review before we can deploy it.
Take a list of cities in your country, add {{Item documentation}} in the talk page and have fun looking at people born in this place ordered by number of sitelinks. You may have some surprises!
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
Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).
@Ground Zero:, Thanks for the message. While I did look at this message before I left, I didn't have time to respond to it. I'm now back, a few days early, seeing the internet almost after a week. Almost forgot how to use my computer and it certainly feels different using it again. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 08:13, 1 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Towns vs. Cities in the UK
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
The definition of a city is weird in the UK. It is a large town, sometimes with a cathedral. However there is also the City of London, built on the site of the Roman town Londinium. So it is normally one of three things:
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
Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Problems
The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug.
Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes.
Changes later this week
Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Future changes
The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead.
Wikinegata is a platform for browsing interesting negations about Wikidata entities. (Overview video)
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Template:Item classification and Template:Item documentation now include more generic queries for classes: it include the number of subclasses, the number of instances, the number of instances by class, the list of instances and the list of most frequent properties for items of this class.
TP organization now includes generic queries for items of class school.
Entity Schemas now have syntax highlighting for viewing (phab:T238831, example)
Reviewing a patch that will make it possible to use templates on d:MediaWiki:Wikibase-SortedProperties. This will for example make it possible to show labels automatically for each Property ID. Thanks, Luca! (phab:T280787)
Evaluated the interviews and other research we did around improvements for lexicographical data
Continuing to work on evaluating and addressing scaling issues of the Query Service
Provided input to a research team working on a potential new and improved Property Suggester
Wikibase: we are completing the final tasks necessary to prepare the Wikibase Spring release and expect to publish new versions of the tarball and Docker images on or before May 15, 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
...nominating me for administrator. I just looked around for a place to leave some kind of closing statement, but maybe there isn't one? Maybe here. I promise not to break anything.:) I have a hunch there may be a bit less trouble now; the obsessed individual tends to go where he is less likely to be recognized. But I will help with any tasks where I can assist. -- Anyway, I just got back from a hiking trip and am about to go on another one. Will look at adminny stuff in a bit. All the best -- Antandrus (talk) 14:25, 5 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Antandrus:, and while now GRP will start calling me a sockpuppet, it's all worth it. You definitely deserve to be an admin, and I hope everything's going good for you in California. Is mandatory masks a thing there? SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 11:26, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Indoors, yes - but it's now pretty much optional outdoors. I've been climbing in the mountains a lot and people aren't wearing masks much. Most of us are vaccinated now. I just bought my first plane tickets since before the pandemic. Time to get out again.
FYI, there's another LTA active - w:WP:LTA/Wikinger - he imitates GRP all the time. Often when GRP is being disruptive, Wikinger shows up to make it worse if he can. There are a couple reliable ways to tell them apart that I won't divulge publicly, but it doesn't really matter since they're both WMF-banned. "All vandals are the same vandal" can be kind of a useful philosophy. Antandrus (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Huh? I'm guessing this is one of those dead letters that's still on the books but never enforced. If so, we shouldn't include it in a serious article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:34, 9 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
It was an old law but yes it was enforced, I learnt it when I was studying law. Still a law that's still in force today but no one really pings or is nitpicky on this law anymore. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 06:18, 10 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).
Future changes
You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.
France report: Journée Wikimédia Culture et numérique 2021; French open content report
Germany report: Northern Exposure for cultural heritage data
India report: Proofread competition on Bengali Wikisource in collaboration with British Library
Indonesia report: Wikisource Competition 2021; Museum Daerah Deli Serdang is now on Commons
Italy report: A Wikipedian in residence at the Civic Museum of Modena: report
Netherlands report: WikiVrijdagen with Atria and IHLIA, Wikimedians in Residence will increase the visibility of media art on Wikipedia, Wikimedia training: shared heritage, Papiamentu and Papiamento: Wikipedia is up and ready to go!
I've also been told by some Australian visitors in London to NEVER order certain 'export' brands of alcoholic beverage if I ever visit Sydney. Perhaps this is something that could be looked into as advice for some articles? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
"I've also been told by some Australian visitors in London to NEVER order certain 'export' brands of alcoholic beverage if I ever visit Sydney" -- would that be Foster's? Sounds like it might be. It's what the rest of the world thinks Australians drink, not what we actually do. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Why did you revert my edit. By doing so, information that was correct is now incorrect. The edit was not done by Brendan John Williams, but it was the only edit on Wikivoyage by Folley5851.
Asked by: FredTC (talk) 06:52, 14 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
A bit of discretion is needed when dealing with the Telstra guy. Most of his edits are very poor quality or factually incorrect and should be reverted on sight, but on the odd occasion he contributes something positive to an article, it's better to keep it, particularly when a third user (in this case FredTC) has confirmed the edit was good. Whether we revert or not has no effect on Telstra's behaviour, so we might as well benefit from his occasional moments of brilliance.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:05, 14 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoidAPI would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first.
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).
Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
A screenshot of "add a link" feature in development in beta.
"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
Community configuration editing form under development
We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
Scaling
Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
You mean with NPOV we would mention the convicted people, ignoring the well-known massacre? One could argue that from the point of History of Justice the conviction process was more important than the event, but the user did nothing to put the listing in such context. Also, I suppose the edit was by a long time acquaintance of ours, using a throw-away account as usual.
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
I hope you could elaborate on this. "A bunch of" is not really helpful, and could be misinterpreted. Several planes every now and then? I doubt. While we want lively writing, information on getting in should be to the point. What I can see there is no information on these planes in Antarctica#Get in or East Antarctica (which refers to the former). –LPfi (talk) 10:45, 21 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
I think Ikan Kekek was referring to me there. I was going back in to soften my comment anyway. I don't wish to squabble with him (or anyone). Responding to a comment like that immediately is not a good idea. I should have take more time to consider my response. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 10:53, 22 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago14 comments5 people in discussion
Please don't use real names of other people. User names and designations used on Meta or en-wp, such as "GRP" are OK if you need to clarify. Often that clarification is indeed not needed. Real names should be treated as confidential unless a user has added it to their user page themselves (and not removed it later), or it is in clearly widespread friendly use (such as some calling names used among regulars). Sometimes a connection might have to be called out, but it seldom needs to be done publicly.
In a general discussion about how to handle LTA, and what tools would help in that context, there is usually no need to specify individuals. Those participating in the discussion usually have enough experience to know the patterns, either from elsewhere or because they have dealt with them here lately. In most discussions among regulars, we very well know whom we are talking about without mentioning any names.
So would BJW be an example of not outing, since it was Telstra's original username.
Also with GRP, one, in one of his harassment emails, he sent his name, and two, have a look at this edit on Wikisource. I've had a look at Antandrus' contributions in all english wikimedia projects, except Wikispecies. Since he's also bad-mouthed me on a couple of websites, attacking me, and continually spams my old email, which I don't use anymore. In some of his vandalistic edits, (cant find any revs) he's even outed his own name. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 11:37, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
You can remove this comment and rev del this if you want, but here's some revisions that may give you an idea of how his name is public. . While GRP hasn't been vandalising Wikivoyage for a month now, I doubt this will be the case when the protection expires tomorrow. But can you remove the protection a day earlier, I'm sort of sick and tired of trying to maintain two talk pages, if only 82 creates an account. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 11:45, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
BJW would probably be OK. A user name is not confidential information, unless you have outed yourself with one name (such as many do for their photos on Commons) while keeping your identity secret with another. I do think Antandrus says too much. Telling ones name to you is not making the information public. If I tell you mine, it's confidential information, and although he might not have a plan on what to say and not to say, we should treat any personal details that weren't common knowledge from before as privileged. This includes things that can be dug up from public logs and page histories.
I am sorry that you get all this harassment, but we need to be professional in not bawling out or unveiling privileged information.
"I do think Antandrus says too much" -- you are right, and I know it too. We should probably change our overall approach and not use his name at all. Just quietly remove his sputter and point people to the LTA page when necessary. Antandrus (talk) 16:26, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
"This includes things that can be dug up from public logs and page histories." - no. Anything public is public and can be referenced and reused under the WMF ToS. I had to tell the same thing to User:ThunderingTyphoons! who complained about my linking that anon user with their actual account and called it "outing". Seems to be a project-specific thing. Overall, I do not believe that SHB2000 made a mistake. Leaderboard (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
You may be right in terms of ToS and law, but that is only part of the picture.
I strongly believe in respecting people's privacy. Especially in this time, everything about anybody can be deduced from non-secret information, and I think collecting, sorting and publishing the information is not something to do. When I speak with my friends in the bus, or in the street, even in my yard, I know that people around can hear what I say, but I'd be disappointed if they told what they heard on Facebook next day, coupled to my identity, which they recognised or found out by an image search. I like the rule on the communication radio: anybody listening on the channel can hear what you say, but they may not tell anybody.
There are things that must be said, that fellow administrators (and perhaps other trusted fellows) must know to fight vandalism effectively, but about such things one should tell only what is useful for others to know, and they should understand that they got the information in confidence.
I'll openly admit that I'm a person who prefers names, over usernames, but I myself do not like to reveal my name, even in emails. While some people openly reveal their name in their usernames (e.g. User:Ikan Kekek, User:Anirban Kolkata or User:KevRobbAU/SCO) while others reveal their first names on their userpages.
I could've had my name outed, after an edit war with someone on enwp, after continual edit warring due to w:WP:NOR, but instead he chose to out me on instagram instead of wikipedia. And I do certainly agree with LPfi here with the radio rule.
And Leaderboard, and for outing 82's old ID, tbh, I also did not think it was outing as if you follow a set of certain pages, you could find the old username. I know it was not a mistake, but I believe this was done upon 82's request.
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Hiya, should it not be clear, this is a response to your pitch in the pub. I'm much in favour of the idea I'm hearing, but I feel like there's some vague spots in the pitch that allow people to misinterpret your intentions. The concept as I understand it largely comes down to making barncompasses somewhat like {{Rint}}, in which standard transit lines are made more easily accessible through a template, aside from the fact that this one would, of course, print barncompasses rather than tram and metro lines:)
Since I did a lot of work on RINT myself, and felt like a mock-up of the idea might help your cause, I've gone ahead and made a mock-up based off of what I think you're trying to achieve. I don't want to deviate the discussion in the pub, so hence why I'm notifying you directly. Right now, there's two templates, and that's all it would need:
BC. This would be a customisable version of {{Barncompass}}, making it modular and thus removing the need for a 1:1 ratio of templates and barncompasses where every type of barncompass has a template for itself. It allows for customisation of not only the text, but also allowing one to easily pick the image (|img=), scale it (|size=) and add a different title (|title=).
BCindex then uses that modular template to recreate existing barncompasses, and allow for indexation of future barncompasses. Ideally, it would replace {{Barncompass}} as it stands now. I can assure you that it wouldn't break any existing barncompasses using that template. For now, all that works is the silver, gold, sysop and default variations. When a barncompass isn't found, it defaults to display the entered parameter (or in other words, everything after {{Barncompass|) as plain text in a default barncompass, thus not breaking any of the existing barncompasses should this be moved into {{Barncompass}} itself.
As a very brief how-to: {{User:Wauteurz/BCindex|}} is the template you use. Follow this by the code, for example silver, and follow this with your text, separated by a pipe (|). You can omit the compass code (silver, in this example) and it will print a default barncompass with anything else specified after the template name printed as the accompanying text. Both of them print as follows:
{{User:Wauteurz/BCindex|silver|This is a silver barncompass!}}
The Silver Barncompass
This is a silver barncompass!
{{User:Wauteurz/BCindex|This is a barncompass without a specified code.}}
The Wikivoyage Barncompass
This is a barncompass without a specified code.
I'm not trying to steal the idea from you, should that not be obvious. Unless you honestly want me to, I won't work this out further to become a proper usable template set, since you asked whether it is something that you should do or not, and I don't intend to rob you of your projects - I have plenty of my own. If you go for it though, might I suggest you use ISO 3166-1, Alpha 3 codes for countries and regions as well as the names of countries for their indexation? In any case, let me know whether this is what you meant or how else I should interpret your pitch, and I can alter the mock-up accordingly if you want me to. I honestly think it's a great idea, and I'd like to see it succeed. If you need the help, just let me know. I'd be more than happy to help you with developing this idea:) -- Wauteurz (talk) 14:00, 22 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you so much. I'd love a mate to work this alongside me. So if I put {{BC|type=AU|message=message xyz}}, that's the way to avoid confusion with the original Barncompass? I'm not that great with coding (apart from html), so any help will be greatly appreciated. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 00:09, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
No worries! The templates I linked above are both still in my userspace, so you'll have to use User:Wauteurz/BCindex as the template name to call it correctly for the time being. I've added a few Barnstars of National Merit (BoNM) from Wikipedia as placeholders for barncompasses, and they can be accessed through either the ISO 3166-1 α3 code I linked above (i.e., the three-letter code assigned to that country), or the full name of the country, removing any spaces. The current options are:
Australia:aus or australia
New Zealand:nzl or newzealand
Papua New Guinea:png or papuanewguinea
Vanuatu:vut or vanuatu
And for clarity, BC is the bare barncompass, and does not know how to make any other barncompass than the default by itself. Using BC, the Australian BoNM would have to be called by specifying what it looks like: {{User:Wauteurz/BC|img=BoNM - Australia Hires.png|title=The Australian Barnstar|[your text here]}}. BCindex is the index of pre-configured barncompasses, and for that you can simply define {{User:Wauteurz/BCindex|aus|[your text here]}} instead. BCindex is the template that the compass-gifter would see. BC is the template the compass-maker would use to create new or custom barncompasses. In an ideal world, I would move BCindex into what is now {{Barncompass}} (it won't break existing barncompasses unless they're defined in a weird way), and BC would become something along the lines of {{Barncompass base}}, ideally with a redirect from {{BC}} so that the codes in BCindex can be kept a bit shorter. I've done this with RINT as well - RINT calls {{Routebox entry}}, which is abbreviated as {{RbE}} (and RINT itself is an abbreviation of {{Rail-interchange}}), but I digress.
Also note that the parameters used in BCindex do not have to be defined. In other words, you don't have to tell it what parameter you're trying to define (|type= and |message= in your example). It checks what parameter you're defining by its order. Therefore, the Barncompass's code has to be defined first, followed by the message. See this as the organisation you also use on your PC. You would generally put images in the folder for images, so you have to open that before you can view any images. Here you have to tell BCindex that you're wanting to access the Australian BoNM, and then tell it the text you want it to print within that. This could be expanded to include subregions, such as the US states. Those could be put on a 'folder' within the USA 'folder', so that California is accessed through {{User:Wauteurz/BCindex|usa|ca|[your text here]}}. This would then remove the need to use three-letter codes, and we could switch to the two-letter codes instead, which tend to be better known because they largely match the top level domains for these countries. I haven't made a real look-up page for it, but if you want to check the current codes, jump into the source code of BCindex and see for yourself. The template is somewhat annotated with <!-- NOTES -->.
No problem whatsoever. Feel free. I don't know if you want me to, but I can add some extra options for customisation to the barncompass base template (User:Wauteurz/BC). Think of things like definable colours for the border and background. Also, the template you copied uses the switch-function. If you aren't familiar with it, you'll find some documentation and examples on MediaWiki and Wikipedia. I would suggest that you put some of the subregions of Australia that you added under Australia itself as a switch-function on the second parameter. I'll copy your additions into the version on my userspace with that structure, should you want it as reference. I'll leave the one in your own userspace for you to play around with. If there's anything that you can't manage to change or fix, then please shoot me a message! I'm happy to help out. -- Wauteurz (talk) 13:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Tip
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Reaction on your last edit. With 4x "-" you get a long line in the full width of the page. With many "_" you get a page that can have a horizontal scrolling bar.
So, "----" makes:
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
By reverting my edit you restored the quite messy situation of having 3 different formats for times in just one article: 21:00, 4PM and 6pm. They are even all 3 in the same section of the article. In the heading of the talk page it says "please use the 12-hour clock", and on the same talk page it says "We have a general policy of using only one time format in an article". --FredTC (talk) 12:14, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Oh whoops, that was my mistake. The time format in Australia is quite an unusual one with older generations using 12 hr time while younger generations using 24. Hence why you see me preferring 24 over 12. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 12:16, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).
Thanks. On a little bit of a side note, I suggest adding a documentation. Since any user might want to add this, this might as well help. Could also help with other things as well SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 08:36, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000: I tried to do that, but it made the documentation template appear underneath the article status templates when I tested it on my userpage. 82.3.185.1215:40, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
@82.3.185.12, sorry for the late response, but you're meant to include the <noinclude> code around the documentation.
@SHB2000: I redirected User:82.3.185.12/Starnom to User:82.3.185.12/Star, and I realised that this left a blank gap in your userpage. {{User:82.3.185.12/Article status|6}} should produce Starnom, which is what was on your userpage before. Thanks, 82.3.185.1212:31, 2 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
Moved from the IP talk page after 14 days of discussion being stale
@SHB2000: When I type {{User:82.3.185.12/Star|city}}; it does this. Do you know why it is not centred like the actual template?
This city travel guide to SHB2000/Archive 2021 is a star article. It is a high-quality article complete with maps, photos, and great information. If you know of something that has changed, please plunge forward and help it grow!
@SHB2000, 82.3.185.12: Took me a bit to find this one. This problem occurs because the image and the text share the same cell in the table that makes up the structure of this template. Because the first line of text prints at the same height as the image, the second line will force itself to fit below the image. I'd suggest making a left and right column. Left for the image, right for the text, and that should resolve the issue. It's easy to miss, but if you look at the template for the current star boxes, {{Stbox}}, you'll find the following code on lines 9 and 10:
|{{#ifeq: {{{status|}}} | star | [[Image:Cscr-featured.svg|100px]] | }}
|This {{#switch:{{{type|}}}
The pipes (|) used at the start of each line indicate that the two elements (the image on line 9 and the text, which starts at line 10) are in separate columns from each other. They have no further modifications through CSS attributes, so you should be fine with just splitting the elements across two columns. Other than that, the templates look more or less identical, aside from 82's version having a decentralised structure (which I should add is a bit annoying when trying to troubleshoot it). -- Wauteurz (talk) 09:04, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Wauteurz: I have tried splitting it across two columns, however this now makes the star appear on top of the words. Do you have any ideas on how to fix this? 82.3.185.1217:39, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
@82.3.185.12: I don't see this edit back in the template? If I look at the edits, there's the insertion of a new line for the text, but that's not how tables work. All this does is force the text onto a new line, whereas you need a separation on the horizontal axis. A new line only does something on the vertical axis. You'd have to add a column into /Starborder's code on line four, with that column only containing a parameter named "2". (|{{{2}}}. "1" would contain the image, "2" would contain the text, and this would require /Star to be edited accordingly (|city={{User:82.3.185.12/Starborder| «image» | «text» }}). In other words, the enters in /Star need to be replaced with a pipe, and that should have the entire thing resolved.
You might need a bit of fiddling with the HTML/CSS on /Starborder if the width of the columns needs tweaking, or if there are instances where no image is displayed, you'd want to hide the column in /Starborder under an #if-module, which would check for an "image" parameter and whether it is present or not. In that case, the "image" parameter replaces "1", and "2" becomes the new "1", and that should be everything done. -- Wauteurz (talk) 20:33, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. I always appreciate your hard work on this site, but you don't know how to recognize that guy's edits yet. I'd suggest, therefore, that for the time being, you ignore edits by people with usernames that could be him and leave the determination to others, unless you are sure the edits are useless. Also, it's totally useless to post any message to the talk page of any of that guy's innumerable socks, because he'll never read or pay attention to it. I post a user talk message only when I think it's him but I'm not completely sure (and even I and some other admins make mistakes at times).
@Ikan Kekek: Thanks for your message. Yes, I do agree with you that I'm not fully able to recognise Brendo's edits yet, I am well aware his target pages: Usually Sydney districts, random towns along NSW and Queensland, Aboriginal culture, WWI and WWII, some ancient medieval culture and Star Wars pages. Usually those edits are just an added listing, poor quality. However, I was just extremely tired and exhausted, and possibly my 2100h self is just who I am not.
Also unrelated to this, but should I remove the cyclone warning in Kolkata. User:Anirban Kolkata has said it's over, but I do want to check with an experienced user, rather than removing it myself.
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
There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday.
Hi Hastley, thanks for the clarification. Wasn't aware of the other types of spambot accounts, but usually on Wikivoyage, they are just self-promotion or a tour agency advertising tours on their userpage. I've rollbacked my edits, and sorry about the revert. Take care, SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 03:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
It seems it would be handy to have a link to global contributions on the page you land on when you are patrolling new user pages with external links. Wouldn't that catch spambots? –LPfi (talk) 10:13, 1 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Much appreciated. I had a period of reduced activity from February to May (unfortunately) and therefore for me you’re a relatively new contributor to WV. It’s great to see your enthusiasm for the project, so keep up the good work.
We like to use only four digits after the decimal point in coordinates (a minor technical point) just because it’s easier to use while still being accurate.
Thanks. While I've just reached this milestone. The one mistake I wished I hadn't made was editing under an IP for 9 months on en.wikipedia. And yes, while I'm an admin on another project in a language that I barely know, I still prefer wikivoyage more, than the other WMF projects.
And to a coincidence, I just happened to get autopatrolled status on meta, (not a big thing though), but the timing did intrigue me.
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Moved from the IP talk page after 14 days of discussion being stale
@SHB2000 thanks for your edit on Kainji National Park. It was really helpful. But Was struggling to get the stub off the article.
Latest comment: 4 years ago23 comments4 people in discussion
But as they say in Wikipedia, "don't bite the newbies". There is a group of new editors in Nigeria who don't know much about Wikivoyage, but they are helping to build articles that our existing pool of editors can't do much with. Let's be sure to encourage them. Ground Zero (talk) 15:30, 6 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you guys, but I think we also ought to check that these types of edits aren’t copied from somewhere. I like the work these Nigerian contributors are doing but it needs supervision, and if you’re not familiar with copyright/copyleft (as most people aren’t), it’s easy to copy a paragraph or article from a WP or non-wiki source without attribution and without realizing such action is not allowed. The information about schools is an example of what I’d suspect as copyvio because it doesn’t make sense why someone would write this content on a travel guide. I’m not saying we should admonish these “newbies” but we should put our resources into helping them learn how to contribute best to this wiki. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:11, 6 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I've been trying to coach them, with some success. It would help to have other experienced editors doing this too so that it doesn't seem like just me and one or two others nagging them. Ground Zero (talk) 22:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I have raised the question of Murtala Muhammed International Airport on the user's talk page, and want to give him a couple of days to respond. Where is Kainji National Park copied from? There are parts that look like they are from Wikipedia, in which case I would just do the accreditation and remind the user to do so going forward. Is there text from another site? Ground Zero (talk) 12:38, 7 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
There's also the point that most of these airports clearly fall outside our criteria for which airports get their own article. All of them probably do, but the only one that would seem possible is Murtala Muhammed, since that's the airport for Lagos. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:43, 7 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
You will have seen by now that I blocked her for a day to try to get her attention. It's best not to assume I'm always available, though. The only reason I was available this much last night is that I slept really poorly. If you'd like something to be done. contacting individual admins may not be the most effective means. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:24, 8 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Noticed that. Yeah I only contacted you because you seemed to be the most active admin that hour. Anyway, this will be my final edit for today, as it's 0026 in Sydney here. Take care, SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 14:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Also, thank you for guiding these new editors. As far as I can tell, some of these users will possibly become long term users at Wikivoyage, and to say, most have had a rough start, but eventually have got the hang of Wikivoyage. And also, slightly off topic, a correction to my earlier comment "this will be my final edit for today, as it's 0026", actually, it's one of my first edits for the day. I obviously can't think properly;). Anyway, thanks again! SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 08:50, 9 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).
Future changes
The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future.
Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages.
The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters.
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
You reverted IP edits in Turku and Tampere, on Lime scooters, with no comment. I suppose the comment on their talk page was related to these. Was it because the IP added "(cheapest)". I'd have simply removed that comment – as there is no guarantee that is true after a year, and the prices are not posted publicly. Was there some other reason to revert the edits?
I haven't yet seen any Lime scooters since they were removed (because of the pandemic, I suppose, it might have happened earlier), but I suppose the IP editor knows they are back.
I don't see any reason to treat the IP editor as a tout. For all I know they could be a local or a traveller, who just has been using scooters over here.
It's unusual to see an IP user to add a link to these electric scooters, in two different articles, along with the word "cheapest", which very much looks like a tout to me. Let's say, if I were a traveller, and I hired a bike (for examples sake) somewhere. I would write about the entire place I've been, and not just about bike hiring service, in two different spots. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 12:24, 10 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Vkem redid the edits as logged-in. I suspect it was him also the first time. He is Finnish and adds a lot of Get in and Get around information (sometimes too much for my taste, but that's a different issue).
I can imagine myself seeing a Lime scooter in the street, and checking whether they are back in other places also. I haven't done it for scooters, but indeed for things like ferries or coaches.
Sweden report: Working with UN Human Rights; Aftermath to the fiddler competition; Music manuscripts from the 18th century; Digital visions; Should museums work with Wikipedia?; Wikidata project with museums has results
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I am not used to the default banners (read: haven't been paying attention), so did not realise that the banner was indeed the African one. I supposed that syntax just did not work, so replaced it with the filename listed at Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition#Usage. The page doesn't tell about the keywords (or automatically choosing the right banner), and neither does the template page. –LPfi (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Here's just a tip:
{{pagebanner|Africa}} would produce the default African one
Here's just a full list
Europe - none
North America - none
Middle East - Mena Asia
North Africa - Mena Asia
Asia - Mena Asia
Caribbean - Caribbean
Australia - Australia
and so on. I'm planning to make some documentation for the parameters, so hopefully this should help, since I noticed that there weren't none.
I added the keywords to the template documentation after writing here – but I had to look at the template code to find them. –LPfi (talk) 15:36, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I need help both on wikicommons and Wikipedia and again sir How do I request for grant if I have a project here in Nigeria. —The preceding comment was added by Favourdare123 (talk • contribs)
[[File:|thumb (optional)|left, right or center (pick one)|size px(replace the size with the number|Caption (replace this with the test you want]]
So in this case, if I wanted to add File:Sydney Harbour NP board.png, 500px and on the right side of the page, then I'd be using
[[File:Sydney Harbour NP board.png|thumb|right|500px|Sydney Harbour National Park entry board]]
and it'll turn out like this:
Sydney Harbour National Park entry board
To upload images, go to c:Special:UploadWizard and follow the steps from there, it's pretty guided, and if you want, you could upload certain images from Flickr (depends on copyright license).
To create articles on Wikipedia, you have to go to w:Wikipedia:Article_wizard and follow the steps there. I've only made three articles on Wikipedia, and they're all stubs. If you want, you could also go to the Simple Wikipedia, which is where I make my Wikipedia articles (with my best one being w:simple:Aircalin). You might also want to ask Ground Zero, since he's a sysop on Wikipedia.
These directions are for editing the wikitext. If you use the visual editor (where the article is shown mostly the same regardless of whether you are editing) you have "easy to use" icons for doing the same things. There may be some third option on mobile. But if you get to the wikitext you can copy any code from any article, and if it doesn't contain too "smart" templates, it should work.
The upload wizard on Commons may feel daunting, but it is mostly quite straight forward and you will get used to it. You could look at some similar images to see what categories and descriptions usually look like. Here on Wikivoyage, you mostly have to first click the image, and then the "view on Wikimedia Commons" or "description page there" links to get to the true description page. If you get to the image viewer, the link is called something like "more information".
If you still have problems, please tell exactly what you have been doing and what did not work.
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
Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile.
German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi there - I see that you removed the listing I recently tried to add for Highland Cinema in Fort William, as being an attempt to advertise or promote a business or service.
Fair comment - it's my first time editing a Wiki, so was not too aware of the requirements. Can you advise how I can make a second attempt at this with impartial, factual language, or are you able to edit my original text to make it acceptable? I feel we should definitely be listed as something to either see or do in the town, though not even sure which! As we have a café bar too, we could also be included under the eat and drink sections. Any guidance you can provide gratefully received.
Thanks for replying Ikan Kekek. Sorry for not responding Hamish, as it was 03:27 in my local timezone so I haven't had a chance. I don't have anything much to add onto that, apart from the advice Ikan has given you. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 07:45, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Emptying user pages
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments4 people in discussion
I think we should not blank user pages even if the user is globally locked. Adding the template is reasonable, so people know what happened, but users who have contributed constructively should have right to present themselves also after having been locked (given their presentation isn't vandalism in itself).
Removing the presentation by a user may also legally infringe on their right to be attributed, based on moral rights and the "by" clause of the licence: their contributions are attributed to the user name, which is coupled to their real life or pseudonymous identity mostly through the user page. Especially if the user name is non-descriptive, it might be deemed like changing the attributions not longer to point to themselves.
Sorry for a late response. I read this response yesterday while bludging a meeting (which had really nothing to do with me) but was too tired to respond. While I get what you're trying to say, locked users' userpages almost always have the template {{locked}} on it. While I haven't seen much people from meta adding it here, I've seen it a lot on commons. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 12:04, 18 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
No worries, and no need to be sorry. I've made this mistake a lot (especially when I first got rollback - only on this wiki though), but once I disabled one touch click, I haven't made that mistake ever since. Enjoy your Friday. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 12:19, 18 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I have seen blanking of user pages elsewhere, but I have not seen any convincing arguments for doing so. If the page is blatant touting or the user has contributed nothing that wasn't reverted, then I think blanking is OK, but if we are to attribute the user, then we should attribute them by linking to a user page in the form they chose themselves (with possible templates or manual explanations). –LPfi (talk) 13:36, 18 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Those are unproblematic, as the accounts haven't contributed significantly. User:CatDog1234539 has lots of unreverted edits (I didn't check how much remains, but I suppose they haven't been edited away). –LPfi (talk) 15:18, 18 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Guide status
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments2 people in discussion
I've reverted Lagos back to usable status for now because Lagos#Eat had some improperly formatted listings without enough information, IMO. Wikivoyage:City article status states that a guide status article should "closely match the manual of style" and I can't see that the article is there yet. I've instead upgraded Ibadan to guide status. Even though it has less information, it is consistently formatted, uses coordinates in almost all listings and includes detail for all listings. Let me know if you disagree or noticed something I missed. Thanks. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:22, 19 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sure. I don’t mind upgrading a little early for these editors, but that one just didn’t have what was necessary for status in my opinion. Thanks for your help with these contributors, though, and hopefully soon Lagos will be a guide status article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
If there are pictures in Commons I could do that one. By the way as you mentioned traveling on rural routes have you ever thought about writing itineraries or travel topics to Australian roads? Could be very interesting, particularly in the Outback. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:22, 20 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
If I only get to go to WA;) Fun fact, Like most people who live on the east coast, I've never been to the west coast, but I've been to both the east and west coast of the US numerous times:). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 11:19, 20 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Hey SHB2000, do you have a list of editors by their number of edits? I'm aware of such a list on Wikipedia but don't know of any here. Just curious because you seem to be aware of how many edits everyone has. Gizza (roam)11:56, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunately not. I just so happen to know everyone's edits since I have this tool enabled. It's a pretty useful tool to know whether someone wants to referred to as he or she or them. But there is a website here that has the "most active editors" which you can see here. All the best! SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 12:01, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Ah thanks. The only list of sorts I know is this but it's out of date (31 Jan 2019). Search for "50 recently active wikivoyagers" and you will find two tables of Wikivoyagers by their total edit count along with other information like number of articles created and date of first edit. Gizza (roam)12:33, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments4 people in discussion
Why did you revert this edit as "Possible touting? (TwinkleGlobal)". I see nothing touty about the listing. Did you just trust Twinkle or is there something I don't see? –LPfi (talk) 12:30, 27 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I could be wrong, but I'm not sure a business adding itself as a listing is banned (although it may well be discouraged). I'm also don't see any indication this user is associated with the business. Therefore, in this case I have to agree with User:LPfi. I would support restoring the listing. This edit may stand out because not many business listings have been added of late due to the pandemic, but as some places re-open, we may see more users adding business listings for places they have visited. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:04, 27 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, but I don't see where it says that businesses can't list their own business. I see in that page the following: "The key guideline is: "Don't tout." Save the sales pitch and just tell it like it is." That seems to tolerate business owners adding their own business listing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Because there is an inherent conflict of interest when someone is being paid for their edits, if you are working for a hotel chain, a marketing agency, or a similar organization then you may not add listings for that business to Wikivoyage articles.
(edit conflict) Looking at the wording specifically, maybe too specifically, it refers to "hotel chain" and "marketing agency." This isn't a chain, which is covered at Wikivoyage:Boring. It's also not a marketing agency for an organization similar to either of these. That's my take, but definitely Ikan Kekek is the expert in the area of touting and might have a different opinion. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yes. And I think that wording is intentionally telling about those two categories and not individual business owners. For a place like Rishikesh, we might not want the umpteenth company listing themselves with little useful information, so I understand if we are a bit harsh there. But for Hanko we had one sole hotel and no campsite before the edit. I believe there are more than a few accommodations there (it's a resort town, beside an industry and port one), but probably not more campsites than what will fit nicely (I'd guess three or so). For such an article I'd just detout even an obviously touty listing. –LPfi (talk) 13:53, 27 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This page is linked the lede of the new article. It’s called a disambiguation page but doesn’t resemble one. Any ideas for what to do with it? Should it be redirected to the Sydney Harbour Park article? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
You still say 240 km in 2 hr. That is quite som speed. Are there 240 km stretches of motorways in Nigeria? I don't think we have any in Finland. –LPfi (talk) 09:41, 1 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, so I as usual, have chosen a terrible example (I was thinking of average speeds in the US and Australia.) Apparently it looks like a good A route's speed limit is only around 70km/h based on this. I was also having the same mentality that expressways have the same speed limit as rural roads, but it's not (Australia is just an exception). After doing some research though, there's no chance of going 120km/h on an expressway like this. I'll change the example to 240km in 4 hrs. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 09:51, 1 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
:-)
I did some edits. Feel free to improve. The 60 km/h of your research is better than my 80 km/h, based on our country roads (I knew they would't match, but I had no better estimate).
On the Do/Sleep/...: I did include a Sleep section in Understand of Nordkalottleden, and I think a similar section could be used in some Nigerian itineraries; although most of that should go into Nigeria#Sleep, itineraries through a national park or similar could have enough of special considerations.
Thanks for the edits. Mostly Australian rural roads are 100-130km/h on flat roads, and around 80-100km/h on alpine roads. At least your example of 80km/h is better than my 120. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 11:15, 1 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
While in NSW the max is only 110, it seems to be quite controversial (as the government is thought to just claim money off fines). But there's 130 in other parts of the country (and there was once no speed limit, but that came to an end when Labor took over). But like most people, we just go 120 on highways where there's no police, and a car only comes once an hour (so approx 24 cars per day) including some like this. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 01:22, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
100 km/h requires good roads, much better than what I suppose most country roads are in Nigeria. Over here in Finland we have forest), and in 100 km/h you'd have no chance to avoid wildlife stepping out on the road (except with very wide shoulders, such as in Lapland and by motorways: highways have wildlife fences, but you need to let the animals through somewhere). Environmentally, I've heard that (certain?) small birds, eating insects above the road, can avoid cars coming in 80 km/h, but not those driving 90 km/h. Moreover, in highway speeds air resistance dominates the fuel consumption equation, and air resistance doubles from 90 km/h to 130 km/h. –LPfi (talk) 13:39, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
I have been traumatised from going 100km/h these days at dusk, as I was in a car that almost hit a kangaroo last Saturday (was as a passenger), but that was at dusk in the Snowy Mountains. But there's also roads like this that it's quite hard to believe there's a 100km/h limit. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 13:44, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Edit summaries
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Sorry about that. I was just annoyed at this user because doing SWViewer Patrolling would ideally mean you'd get a fair share of problems with all wikis but there was an excess of WV problems, and I suspect I've seen a user like this before. Hopefully, I'll change my attitude for dealing with users like this better next time. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|en.wikipedia) 01:51, 4 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
You said you didn’t understand why I got TPA revoked on Wikipedia.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I think the reason why I got TPA revoked on Wikipedia was because Wolfson didn’t think I was ready to be on Wikipedia yet due to that scandal I was involved in that lead to the block, and the fact that I breached his restrictions in the first place. I pledged never to make stupid mistakes like that again during my unblock request (which the TPA unrevoked just for), but instead got TPA re-revoked for insolence. We’ll see what happens in November. The only mistake I made in Wikivoyage however was that pointless discussion Ikan Kekek was talking about, in presidents of the United States.
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
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.
Recent changes
AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes.
Problems
InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org.
Changes later this week
The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year.
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful.
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Just so you know, we have an Organized crime article. I did mention Ned Kelly in that article, though I don't know if you think it's appropriate. But in any case, if you know about any tourist sites connected to organised crime in Australia, please feel free to expand. The dog2 (talk) 22:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Not sure about any organized crime in Syd or Perth. I've only studied about the Kellys before, but I could expand on more Kelly sites there. I could also add things about Harry Powers, but I'm not too familiar with that. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 00:27, 7 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
You already created the Ned Kelly article, so it makes sense to put things related to Ned Kelly in that article you created instead of the organised crime article. Just wondering if you knew more. The dog2 (talk) 01:09, 7 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
@The dog2: A little late reply, but this came to mind. Maybe either Vaticidalprophet would know more about SA, LivelyRatification may know more about Victoria, and Graham87 would be more familiar with WA. Unfortunately, in the two states I've lived in, having just done some research, none so famous in NSW or Qld. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 06:19, 9 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Admin
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Congratulations, you have joined the mop and pail crew! You will see some new tools, which you're probably familiar with from your work on other Wikis. Always feel free to lean on me and other admins, but also remember that we gave you a vote of confidence and trust you to use these tools wisely.
Doesn't matter much. His vandalism is easily reverted, he uses one account for 1-2 edits, and he doesn't do real damage other than through copyvio if it isn't reverted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:35, 10 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
This Month in GLAM: June 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
A talk page about a deleted template, crediting a Wikipedia article. We normally don't delete any talk pages of articles that legitimately existed before, but maybe we should in this case.
On a more important matter, I think that the edit protection of your user talk page should have been lifted when you became an administrator. I don't think administrators are supposed to limit access to their user talk pages. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
For the template, I deleted it because the code wouldn't work, so I chose to use a table instead for portraying userboxes.
Unfortunately, you'd think that after three months, I'd be free from Ljupco harassment, but unfortunately I am still not. While no vandalism on my user and talk pages for a while, I still get email threats on my old email which I no longer use. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 21:53, 12 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Sorry to be so assertive about this. You understand why an IP user might legitimately want to discuss stuff with you, I think. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:58, 12 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What's the point in that? I never block his accounts anymore, as he uses an account once or twice and then creates another. Only when I'm really in doubt that it's him do I post a user talk page message. I fear you may be too obsessed with him. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:31, 13 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Welcome to the second issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.
If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.
Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review - Initial meetings of the drafting committee have helped to connect and align key topics on enforcement, while highlighting prior research around existing processes and gaps within our movement. (continue reading)
Targets of Harassment Research - To support the drafting committee, the Wikimedia Foundation has conducted a research project focused on experiences of harassment on Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
Functionaries’ Consultation - Since June, Functionaries from across the various wikis have been meeting to discuss what the future will look like in a global context with the UCoC. (continue reading)
Roundtable Discussions - The UCoC facilitation team once again, hosted another roundtable discussion, this time for Korean-speaking community members and participants of other ESEAP projects to discuss the enforcement of the UCoC. (continue reading)
Early Adoption of UCoC by Communities - Since its ratification by the Board in February 2021, situations whereby UCoC is being adopted and applied within the Wikimedia community have grown. (continue reading)
New Timeline for the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee - The CRC was originally expected to conclude by July 1. However, with the UCoC now expected to be in development until December, the timeline for the CRC has also changed. (continue reading)
Wikimania - The UCoC team is planning to hold a moderated discussion featuring representatives across the movement during Wikimania 2021. It also plans to have a presence at the conference’s Community Village. (continue reading)
Diff blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff blog. (continue reading)
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
I hope that you are able to get on top of your health issues quickly. It must be difficult dealing with the health care system when its focus is on the pandemic. Ground Zero (talk) 12:08, 18 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the wishes. I do certainly agree with the focus on the pandemic, and I wish I could get vaccinated, but yet the government here is still in their "over 40s" rollout, with the vaccine rollout quite mixed up with Pfizer and AstraZeneca here. How's it like up there? SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 12:14, 18 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Our government realized that there was no point in relying on Trump's US for vaccines, so it made deals with European manufacturers, because the Europeans would trade fairly, wouldn't they? They didn't. Europe was blocking exports for a while, so we got started after the US, UK and Europe, but we caught up quickly. Now almost 80% of people 12 and up have had at least one shot, and 50% are fully vaxxed, so new cases have fallen in Ontario (13.5 million people) from almost 4000/day to 150. Hospitals are working on the backlog of non-Covid treatments. Restaurants, shops and gyms are reopening, but some services are still not available. Most people I know are fully vaccinated now, so we are starting to see friends in person, in small groups, outside if possible. I'm still being careful, but looking forward to starting a big road trip in about a month from now, and hoping that the Northwest Territories will be open by the time I get there. I'll still go on the trip though even if NWT is closed. My first shot was AstraZeneca, with some side effects, and the second was Pfizer, with none. I know no-one who had anything other than temporary side effects. I have one friend who got covid after his first shot, and it was bad, but he was not hospitalized, and made a full recovery. We know other people who lost family members. Stay safe. Ground Zero (talk) 12:28, 18 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
That seems a lot better than the Australian government did. Ours did the same as well, and relied on Europe. But they were also blocking exports here, so we only started three months after the US. Now, there's only 10% of the population fully vaccinated with 28% having received a jab (includes the 10% as well). Government had too much hope on AZ and so they only ordered about 10 million Pfizer doses, until there was a survey after someone had died after taking AZ, showing that a majority of under 50 wanted Pfizer, which led to a large disruption of vaccines. Later it was said that only over 60's were able to take AZ but over 40's can take it if they want, but Pfizer was coming soon. And then a hotel quarantine breach (Delta strain) led to our premier not putting a lockdown and now it's gone to a disaster with about 100 cases a day, needing contact tracers from interstate/interterritory (if interterritory is a thing). It also spread to neighbouring Victoria as well, so now they're also in lockdown with us. So still most people I know are unvaccinated, or only on their first dose.
Hope I can go to my trip back up to the skifields when lockdown is over, even though I'm probably not going to get my vaccine for at least another three months, and maybe into neighbouring South Australia or at least the western part of New South Wales. But until then, I'll probably only be drafting articles on fr.wikivoyage where there was only one article for the entirety of New South Wales (Now there's four).
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
The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year.
Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).
Future changes
How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.
Latest comment: 4 years ago15 comments4 people in discussion
Especially now that you're an admin yourself, I would appreciate if you wouldn't make statements like this. The fact that you weren't there in 2018 doesn't mean it's OK for you to cast any whiff of aspersions on those of us who were. I think you've read through the userban threads about this individual in full. If you haven't, please do so before you give any kind of acknowledgement of his outrageously self-entitled bullshit claims again. Thanks.
OK, I'll try not to do that again and I apologize, but next time, could you please leave the message on commons since I made this loose statement on commons. (It's just for my record keeping so it's on the relevant wiki that I made the mistake it.) Sorry again and yes, I have read all the userban threads. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 09:26, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
For some extra clarification, I meant that AC may have felt that way, but not that we actually didn't follow policies (everything was to policy for extra clarification). But the second time was well clear, and there was no AC complains that we weren't following policies when we did the UBN the second time. I just said that so AC can stop blabbering about "but it was against policies". SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 09:34, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yes, they may feel that way, but acknowledging their feelings in the way you did was acknowledging that they might have been in their right. The forum was wrong for venting that discontent and for the acknowledgement. Discussing in public one needs to think about how one's statements can be interpreted and how they may affect the reputation of the project. –LPfi (talk) 09:46, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Well, the way how AC just went up to ANU on commons and just randomly said that, I tried my best to just calm AC down. Not acknowledging someone's feelings (including the George Reeves Person), is just plain disrespect and everyone deserves respect, don't they? But in no way was I meaning to acknowledge that AC was right about that, I just wanted to acknowledge their feelings and how they may feel. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 09:55, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Appreciated. I posted here because I don't want to discuss this with the banned individual. And I don't think his feelings deserve respect, sorry. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:05, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
I see. That makes sense and on third thought it seems like it's better to post it here so AC can't comment. Also, there's no need to be sorry to me, as I completely understand his racist words have caused harm on many, including almost, if not all user's feelings who participated in the UBN #1, and while if you compare AC with the George Reeves Person, AC's content was more intolerable, but with GRP you could just rollback his edits (unless you're one of his hated few people, and yes, to this day, I still get email threats from him), so maybe as usual, I've chosen something in the terrible examples department (including one that diverted attention from a lot of people on Wikivoyage talk:Measurements). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 10:14, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
This person has a (worsening) tendency to write veiled threats at the Wikivoyage community and claim feelings (falsely). The way s/he added offending content disguised as district reorganization is an example of his or her sneaky behavior. Indefinite ban was the right decision on WV’s part, and I wouldn’t trust any of AC’s claimed “feelings” because these were always a motive to be allowed back into the website to write more objectionable content. If AC enters a discussion across wiki, apart from clarifying to others that this user’s comments ought to be ignored, probably best not to dignify with a response. However I do wonder if we should seek a global ban on AC, since this pattern of trolling is disruptive and represents his objectionable behavior carrying over multiple wikis. And the anti-Semitic statements he slipped into articles during district reorganization to avoid being noticed would certainly be enough to convince the Wikimedia community to enact a ban. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Is a global ban even a thing (there's locks, but that isn't the same)? But the only good thing in my opinion about AC is their work on nl.voy, which is cleaning up Luchy04's copyvios. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia) 10:42, 21 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Why did you block her indefinitely? I would ask what she wants to upload a photo of and why, but I don't see any evidence yet that she's a spambot. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:42, 25 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).
Future changes
If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preferenceEnable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
You might be interested in reading about m:immediatism and m:eventualism. Most contributors fall somewhere between the extremes, but if you tend towards the one, you may find yourself frustrated with people who naturally tend towards the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 27 July 2021 (UTC)Reply
the addition I just made is simply to expand the information to travel in buenos aires and the link I have put is only a directory of remises that I found when I went to argentia. —The preceding comment was added by Snakepet73 (talk • contribs)
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
I don't think redirects from the template space to user space are something we should have. There is a host of problem with those, in principle and in practice. I don't think that is a controversial standing.
{{s}} did not have community support, and I think there was consensus against it. You wanted it moved to user space, and that is OK. But leaving the redirect means in effect that the template remains, just that the community has lost control over it, which is kind of unacceptable.
When I first changed the redirect, I supposed {{Support}} would work as support. When I noticed it don't (which is odd, but seemingly the original behaviour), I added a default handling that obvious use. I suppose that after my change (which I did 3 hr before your revert), your edit comment "[...] {{support}} does not work on its own so it may cause disruption to wherever it's used" is no longer true.
Could you check that I am right and revert your revert.
The reason I reverted your edit was because it has been used in some discussions. It may not have got community support, but deleting it or breaking the redirect would cause some issues on pages where it is used.
For starters, I'm usually OK with people editing my subpages, just not my userpage (hence the protection), my archives (also protected) and other protected pages. So maybe I should redirect it back to {{s}} meaning the community would have control over it.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't change the redirect target.
You could move the template back, overwriting the redirect, pending the conclusion of the discussion – where is it? Was it in the Pub? I cannot find it right now. But if the solution was to move the template to your user space instead of deleting it outright, then it should be moved without redirect.
It is used in some discussions, which is why I redirected it to {{support}}, which should work well enough. Did you check before reverting me? Did you check as I asked you to now? Is there some issue left with using that template?
Of course, if also {{support}} should be deleted, then we need another solution. I don't think substituting the template call with <nowiki></nowiki> would be too bad: the template is used in archived discussions, and those who use an experimental template shouldn't be too surprised if it gets deleted. And indeed: using an experimental template cannot be a way to get it saved from deletion.
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion
Do not change others users' comments. Your change to my comment completely changed the meaning, which is deceptive and absolutely inappropriate. Do not do that again. —Granger(talk·contribs) 14:03, 1 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Mx. Granger: we do have a custom of deleting abusive comments. When I deleted the Pub discussion heading calling the work the SHB2000 and I do on skeleton articles a "Redirect Cult", that move was supported by several editors. The author of that attack later acknowledged the "it should have been left unsaid".
Was your comment abusive, or just hostile? That is a matter of opinion. But couldn't you find a less hostile way of making your point? The internet is full of toxic environments; let's not let Wikivoyage become one of them. One of the Nigeria Expedition participants told me that "Wikivoyage is much friendlier than Wikipedia". I think that is a strength we should preserve.
Everything SHB2000 has done here has been to improve Wikivoyage, so this type of comment makes when you lash out in the way you did, you make Wikivoyage less fun.
SHB2000 started the AfD discussion because he believes that discouraging the creation of redirects from search terms people never use will improve Wikivoyage. You are free to disagree with him, but I encourage you to do so in a friendlier way. If someone is criticizedattacked for even starting a discussion in a collaborative project, they will be less likely to do so again, and less likely to contribute.
I apologize for phrasing comments in an unkind way. I'll try to work on that, and on remembering that text doesn't convey tone of voice. I think it's reasonable to remove abusive comments, but it's inappropriate to modify another user's comment to change its meaning. —Granger(talk·contribs) 17:52, 1 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Let's remind ourselves what Granger's comment said. It said: "Can't we find better ways to improve Wikivoyage than debating whether or not to keep wordy but harmless redirects?". That's not "hostile" or "abusive". That doesn't look like someone "lashing out", nor does it look like an "attack", nor is it "toxic" (nor, for the record "unkind"). And it's not remotely comparable to the attention-seeking, bullying rubbish posted in the Pub about the "redirect cult". I completely understand that when nastiness is introduced to a project in that way, it can make us feel less secure about expressing ourselves freely and put us on guard in expectation of further attacks. But bear in mind that it can also make us more sensitive to disagreement, perceiving instances of such as criticism, and seeing attacks where there aren't any. And unfortunately, I think, the latter is what's happened here.
@Ground Zero: I'm sorry to say that I find your message above an inappropriate response to a polite suggestion that the community may have better ways to spend its time (not a suggestion I agreed with, by the way, but one which I found totally reasonable and well within the bounds of good faith, politeness, and decency). Without getting into specific examples, it's a type of comment I've seen you make numerous times when you perceive us to be wasting time on e.g. political content or historical background info. On such occasions, you suggest that we instead focus our efforts on writing travel content. Often, your perception is justified and the community agrees with you; other times it's not and we don't. But I don't believe you've ever been attacked or criticised for simply suggesting we move on to other things; if you have, you shouldn't have been.
The specific words of yours I quoted above (hostile, abusive, toxic, attack, lashing out) are so far from my reading of Granger's comment, that even though you believe them to be apt, I honestly don't even know where you got them from. And I feel that they've unfortunately injected a degree of unpleasantness into this discussion that didn't have to be. Genuine question: how would you go about making Granger's comment friendlier? I'm serious; please demonstrate how you would rephrase that comment to make it less abusive and more friendly, while still making the same point.
I also thought the censorship of Granger's comment was inappropriate. @SHB2000:, if you found the comment offensive, you could have gone on Granger's talk page, said "Hey, I found your comment on VFD hurtful because of x and y" and it could have been sorted out between you. One of your key strengths I've observed of you, at least on WV, is your force of personality. You're honest and up front, but also charismatic and likeable; in short, you're more than capable of handling a disagreement directly instead of through censorship.
Perhaps we could all consider these (slightly modified) wise words: "If someone is attacked (and censored) for writing a polite opinion on a collaborative project, they will be less likely to do so again, and less likely to contribute."--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:34, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the advice tt!, I'll take that into note. To the question of
Genuine question: how would you go about making Granger's comment friendlier? I'm serious; please demonstrate how you would rephrase that comment to make it less abusive and more friendly, while still making the same point.
The answer is that the comment was not needed in the first place. I don't know if it's just me overreacting, but I found that quite unnecessary. I could have handled it better though, and I'll take that into account next time. Specifically, I found
@ThunderingTyphoons!: Indeed, I have made similar comments in the past. That is why I wrote "I have no doubt that I have made hostile remarks in the past, and I am going to do my best to avoid doing so again." In this case, we are talking about Granger criticizing SHB2000 for bringing something up for discussion, and SHB's proposal is supported by several other contributors. SHB2000 clearly found Granger's comment to be hostile. In the case of a particular contributor who I feel contributes relatively little travel content, but spends most of his time here writing on politics and history, sometimes very inaccurately, I feel the comment is warranted. When he stirs up unnecessary political debates, it diverts other contributors from the useful work they could be doing. SHB2000 has established a record of constructive contributions.
I agree that as Granger is a long-established constructive editor, raising the issue on their talk page would have been a better approach for SHB2000 to take than deleting the comment. Ground Zero (talk) 11:15, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I have reviewed my comments as you suggested, and changed words that I agree I shouldn't have used. Thank you for calling me out on that. I, too, need to try to be more be civil. Ground Zero (talk) 12:16, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks both for the measured replies. I feared I was going upset people further, but am glad this has been avoided.
GZ, you've misinterpreted my point about your similar comments in the past. I wasn't suggesting those comments of yours have ever been hostile, or that you shouldn't have made them. Indeed they weren't hostile, you should have made them, and I expect and hope you will again. If/when you do, you shouldn't be criticised for doing so. But equally, when another user makes a similar suggestion to move onto other things, don't criticise them for it either! We should all be free to politely state whether or not we believe something is a good use of volunteers' time. Doing so isn't an act of hostility, nor is it abusive, unless it includes hostile or abusive language. And I reiterate my view that "Can't we find better ways to improve Wikivoyage than debating whether or not to keep wordy but harmless redirects?" was neither abusive nor hostile.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:49, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I'm shocked by this thread. SHB2000, you do a lot of good work, which is why we wanted you to be an admin and promoted you by unanimous acclamation, but we all need to have thicker skins than to take a remark like "Can't we find better ways to improve Wikivoyage than debating whether or not to keep wordy but harmless redirects?" as such a personal attack that we edit the remark when someone else has posted it! The remark is blunt but to my mind a good way to focus us on an issue, and I agreed with the point. I don't find anything about the remark a problem, though it's possible that if I were in your shoes, I might have, but I find the editing of the remark by you a big problem, indeed. I may have missed it, but have you promised in this thread to never edit other users' comments again except in extreme situations like doxxing and so forth? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:39, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
My view on this lies somewhere between the opinions of TT and GZ. I think we have some work to do to make Wikivoyage fun. Negativity has survived in pockets of Wikivoyage for some time and while some of it and its opinions are justified, I think it's a good time to have a more "go with the flow" attitude when a contributor or policymaker has a different opinion. At Wikipedia, negativity wasn't stamped out, and it's damaged if not destroyed the website's collaborative value. There are likely other wikis as bad for this as WP, and while WV isn't one of those, the use of policy to put down others is an issue here and I'm glad a few people are finally taking that behavior to task.
But we have to balance that with the right to express one's opinion whether positive or negative. I didn't agree with Granger's sentiment, but the right to express that sentiment should be defended by everyone including SHB2000. What Granger said was directly relevant to the VFD nomination and caused no harm. It's not a personal attack as Granger didn't single out anyone, and even used the first person to avoid a condescending tone. Let's not overstep our administrative bounds and good faith by targeting anything seen as negative. Removing a comment has the same effect as cutting words out of a speech or written document that is attributed to someone. If I attributed a speech or written work to someone and then removed parts of the content with which I didn't agree, that would be seen as a misrepresentation of the beliefs of the author. I agree with Ikan Kekek on this, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "big problem," as long as it's resolved going forward.
Despite that strong opinion, fundamentally, my views are more in line with those of GZ and SHB than anyone else on this thread, although I think there's merit to all sides of the discussion. On a collaborative project, we need to act as though this is a collaborative project, and we should do what we can to promote positivity across-wiki. Positive thinking seems like the best way to expand our contributor base and, therefore, our travel content. To be inclusive we need to focus on the original goal of this wiki, which is travel content, rather than removing parts of the travel content with which we don't agree. I don't think the way to promote positivity is to single out Granger and anyone else and censor them for a lack of positivity. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:57, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Not censored
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I am a bit puzzled by your edit summary "No WMF project is censored" in response to "Edited a few of the links as some were showing adult 18+ websites". I suppose the reverted edit itself was about something else (a link was replaced by another, by a one-edit user), but I don't think we have any reason to link porn sites (isn't that what "18+ website" means?). Editorial discretion and censorship are different things. –LPfi (talk) 04:43, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
True... OK you know what, on third thought, I'll revert the edit. Also to @LPfi: just a heads up, but GRP might come back here after three hours of edit warring with him on simple (have a look at this for some context). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)07:36, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion
The reason I came to your talk page was not to join in the above dispute, but actually to ask that you don't place unreasonably long protections on pages. Examples I'm referring to are:
Chess semi-protected indefinitely - I have lifted this protection. If we permanently stop unconfirmed users from editing a page on our guide, on account of an LTA's activities on another wiki, then we're unwittingly allowing that LTA to set the agenda.
Liverpool semi-protected for two years - I have reduced to one month, which can be increased gradually if the page is targetted again in September. Two years is far too long for new users to be unable to edit a popular page on "the travel guide that you can edit". Again, we mustn't allow the vandals to set the agenda.
Talk:Gori semi-protected for two years - Talk pages should be protected for just long enough to stop the vandalism; two years is an excessively long time, particularly if down the line the article Gori gets protected for one reason or another.
By contrast, the nonsense word Hjudfyrta being fully protected (until July 3022!) is a good use of the tool. There's no conceivable good-faith use of a page under that name, so protecting it forever was the best course of action. I doubt Wikivoyage will still be here in 1000 years, but if it is then a place called Hjudfyrta might have been built; it may even be a natural evolution of a modern city's name like Hertford!--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:04, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, so maybe I'm taking this Lupco's email threats too seriously. I'll try and not listen to those. And for the 3022 one, yes, I was just testing out whether the mw software allows it, and yes it does. But thanks for letting me know. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)11:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I'd advise you to not even read those emails, let alone act upon them. That's some cool software. I wonder how far into the future it goes? Can we give an indefbanned user a symbolic 100 consecutive life sentences? (8000 years) :D --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:06, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
On the time: MediaWiki uses boring 31 December 9999 as upper bound. I thought it would use plain 64-bit Unix time, which extends quite a bit past the lifetime of the sun. I don't know the last estimates on the lifetime of the universe, though. –LPfi (talk) 16:22, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@ThunderingTyphoons!: I feel quite stupid here, but do Ikea sell table lights? I've only ever been to Ikea once and I got lost in the maze then (which was I think in 2012). I thought they were only a shop that sells all these types of small life hacks items plus some other random things? SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)22:53, 2 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly.
Changes later this week
When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).
Future changes
The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Ever since you updated the new golden route article it seems I can only edit source making it less comfortable to edit, was it caused by the upgrade or something else?
Thank you
@Tai123.123:, I don't think it was because of the upgrade. That wouldn't cause it, and I don't think there's anything with the template. Perhaps @LPfi:, do you know why? Also, please remember to sign your comments with 4 tildes at the end. (~~~~) SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)00:42, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Fixed it, it seems I bumped something that defaulted source as my preferred editing style. I'm incredibly sorry for bothering you. Tai123.123 (talk) 00:54, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you, sorry for bothering you again, I just realized I could create discussion on the New golden route page and will choose to post their instead of messaging you directly. Along with that I'm curious why you speak basic Nauruan and what your realationship with the country is? (If this is too personal you don't have to answer) Tai123.123 (talk) 05:12, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I actually have nothing to do with Nauru at all (although it was once an Australian territory, it gained independence in the 70s, well before I was born). The scale comes where I and @7elteven: tried to revive the Nauruan wikipedia. The knowledge of Nauruan and how it worked was a great side effect. Nothing too personal. I can even speak a little bit of other indigenous Australian languages but I only really learned a little bit of two of them because I wanted to learn where I lived. Cheers, SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)05:18, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your response, I'll try to not bother you again —The preceding comment was added by Tai123.123 (talk • contribs)
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
You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database.
Changes later this week
The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.
Future changes
The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later.
Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future.
Latest comment: 4 years ago19 comments4 people in discussion
Hi. This rollback was a mistake, and then my internet helpfully dropped off a cliff, so I couldn't quickly undo. But now I think about it, the template you've employed needs approval by the community before deployment.
"In general, a template should be discussed prior to being created or modified."
and then under "New Mediawiki template proposals":
"Before a new MediaWiki template is put into general use it needs to be discussed and accepted as good or preferably best practice. Until such acceptance, new templates will be tagged {{experimental}}, and should not be added to more than one low-visibility article—so not Paris. (If other editors object to that addition, though, expect it to be removed until a consensus is reached.) If new templates fail to gain community support, they will eventually be deleted."
It's been noted to you more than once to you by different people that the English Wikivoyage tries to minimise our use of templates. This being said again, I would appreciate it if you could slow down on new template creation, and particularly on their implementation. For those new template ideas that you really think are useful, please can you follow the correct procedure outlined in policy? I believe we also need to add approved new templates to the Template index, though this might be worth checking with someone else.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:24, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Hi TT. If you're aware of a little bit of the discussion, see User talk:Ground Zero for some background. While I must admit I make a lot of templates, probably being the second most person into templates, after Wauteurz, but I believe this one didn't need approval, since it was just turning an existing template, into a better one, and I would call {{formatbox}} more of an extension to {{infobox}} rather than a brand new one. This is also similar to {{exchange rates}}.
Regarding that en.voy doesn't use much templates, it rather seems discouraging shortcuts if you look at it from a technical perspective. From a non-technical perspective, it seems like an excessive load, and a bunch of new things to learn. In speaking of that, you know already how much templates fr.voy has (including some just for hours! but I'm not opposed to that). But I'll use a quick example of one of my recent templates {{Vline}}. It basically is just a quick way that produces images from commons, but without having to search for the file, instead just type for example {{Vline|Albury}} producing and it takes about 10 seconds to do that. Probably the best used template is {{u}}, which provides a much cleaner layout than {{ping}}, when it's meant to be used anywhere but the start of the paragraph (or the end, which is what looking at LibMod's socks do per the EF)
Before I go on what I'm going to say next, I'll add this quote that Ground Zero mentioned
If someone is criticized for even starting a discussion in a collaborative project, they will be less likely to do so again, and less likely to contribute.
To change that into this context, I'll change it to
If someone is criticized for even creating new material in a collaborative project, they will be less likely to do so again, and less likely to contribute.
And I have to very much agree with that. Do I have to initiate approval for every single barncompass I create? The most logical answer is no, and rather to create a mass nom, but I fear from past experience, it'll just get rejected, and per "they will be less likely to do so again", which has lead me to not start discussions in the pub about templates, because I'll just be criticized.
For that matter, I am however planning to propose to change the template policy. Templates takes hours to make, with many trial and errors to happen. Letting it just go into the trash with no or little consideration for the effort done isn't exactly what the author of the template wanted, and it very much explains why we have very few technical people here, and no active interface admins (I might put myself up to it soon).
I however will, slow down my use of templates, and I won't be one of the technical people who would end up leaving because of the strict policy on templates, but if we're going to have such criticism on editors who are into templates, we're going to go down the way that Commons is going. (SelfieCity would know why).
Policy discussions take time, and it's important to be patient with that and not do things like get permission to use the "support" template on your user talk page only and then use and propagate it widely. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:46, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
They do take time, and I acknowledge that, however, I will not take being criticized for making such templates. (for some extra clarification, neither of you two were criticizing me, so just an FYI) SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)09:50, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
(edit conflict that means some of this may be redundant but I'm not rewriting it all only for another edit conflict to occur) Thanks for the clarification that you didn't see my message as a criticism. It certainly wasn't; I was just making you aware of and asking you to follow our established policy.
"Do I have to initiate approval for every single barncompass I create?" - A brainlessly strict interpretation of the current policy would insist that you do, but I don't think barncompasses are quite the same thing as other templates, as they're not used in the travel guide; they're just a bit of fun between users and a nice way to thank each other. Now if some user were to create an offensive barncompass, we could easily deal with that by deleting it and potentially taking action against the user.
However, the current policy does require that you initiate approval for every single template you intend to use in mainspace or projectspace. I understand you find the current requirements restrictive, and you're very welcome to propose a change to that requirement on Wikivoyage talk:Using MediaWiki templates. I might even support this if I find the argument persuasive. But until that requirement is changed by the wider community, we all have to edit based on the existing policy, because that's how a community project built on consensus works.
So, if you haven't done so already, we do need to remove {{formatbox}} from the various talk pages you've added them to (you can keep it in use on one of them as a demo per the policy) and if you want to see it widely used in future, you'll need to open a general community discussion.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:29, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
You should be willing to address questions about why a template is useful or needed. I don't know whether you'd consider that being criticized for making templates, but it goes with the territory on a wiki. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:00, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
To address why it's useful. Here's a list below:
Advantages
Less chance for typos. If there's a typo, then it will be detected. For one of them, I remember the currency being the country name. With this, it's automatically added
More consistency. It's easy to miss something when manually doing it every time, and I have caught some
easy to change. If a country switches from 12 to 24 or vice versa, then just change the numbers.
Much more easier to read (while editing). Phone number format? There's a line for that. With the old template, there wasn't.
And most of all, it makes absolutely zero difference when reading. Just makes it easier to add and modify.
Disadvantages
None. Except for everyone who is against my templates
I have no problem with the time and phone number format (etc.) template you've been putting on country talk pages. Just go through the procedure to get permission to use it. However, I objected to the "talk page stalker" template and object to that expression, too. So I will pick and choose. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
And when you do so, I would advise that you drop the "Except for everyone who is against my templates" which makes it sounds as though you're taking legitimate disagreement personally.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:39, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
In this case, I don't care where you got the idea about "talk page stalker" from, because I think it's a bad idea that we should do our best to quash on this site. You think stalkers aren't creepy? All wikis are charged with making ourselves more hospitable to women. If I as a man find such an expression really offputting and disturbing, how do you think women who have to deal with real-life stalking every freakin day would react to it? I've known women who are in just such a position. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:42, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘SHB, I've noticed you lately doing "odd" things (possibly, in the views of some, and not a personal attack) such as fixing comment signatures from weeks ago and adding these templates. Much of this is good, but I wonder if it's the best use of your time. You're tremendously active here and I think that's great, but it would be preferable if you could channel your enthusiasm for the site into contributing to the wiki in useful ways. I've done the same things myself, such as introducing proposals that didn't get consensus support, and in time we all find our niches on-wiki. But there are expeditions and the Maintenance panel (we have a couple thousand dead external links if anyone wants to take them on) which are there if anyone's looking for things to do. When I find my work on the Florida articles exhausting, I turn to the maintenance panel for less demanding tasks.
You're ability to create templates is great, but I think we need to recognize at times there's no need to create or edit any templates because what we already have is working fine. I'm unusually active on wiki at the moment, but I fear if there's even a period of even two weeks where I have other things to do, I'll come back and find a dozen new templates I don't know how to use.
What do we mean by "talk page stalker"? I agree with the others that I don't support the user of these words. I don't think changing the word to "oversighter" is the way to resolve this, however, because following user talk page discussions is normal and people have a right to put any pages on their watchlists — that's why they are public. If anyone were to use userspaces on-wiki to stalk someone, such as constantly post harassing messages, we'd need to deal with it seriously and without template shortcuts and acronyms. I'd support deleting the "Talk Page Stalker/Oversighter" template, as I don't think there's ever a time when a serious accusation shouldn't be spelled in full.
But I don't think any of this should get in the way of the great contributions you've been making over the past six months, I'm just of the opinion that it would be better not to create any new templates for a while. The community is accepting of the templates (and lack of them) currently in place. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:55, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
Hi. Could you please read what you're "correcting"? I appreciate the corrections you're making but you're also making lots of mistakes that would be pretty bad if someone weren't following up and fixing them. Thanks. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
okay, so I do have to say it does make a lot of mistakes. So when I click "Replace" and get a notifications saying "could not find suspected word in article", it takes me down to a different part of the page and then corrects that. Some are my own mistakes as well like "arailway" to "railway", although I'd have wished there was more context in this tool. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)02:03, 13 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
The tool does not make mistakes. It might help you more or less, and even mislead you, but you have to do your decisions yourself. If the tool is unreliable, you have to be that much more careful. –LPfi (talk) 09:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
The lag? If you use a tool to do edits, you are as responsible for them as without the tool. Tools that can make significant damage (such as by making a sentence incomprehensible, be it because of deficiencies in the tool itself or server problems) should not be used, unless you make sure you do the checking and cleaning up, at least to the same standard as your manual edits. –LPfi (talk) 15:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Moving a file is established procedure, CommonsDelinker just a bonus. With your current tool one could say that getting rid of a hundred typos is worth one mistake, but I'd say that while getting rid of typos is good, a few typos aren't that important, so mistakes should be very rare for the work to be worthwhile. Nobody is perfect of course, and mistakes happen also in manual edits, so just do your best. –LPfi (talk) 07:18, 14 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I'm aware, but is there any difference in spelling? I know it can seem controversial, but we're a travel guide and thus we avoid political debacles. (for that matter, would some countries anti-US/AU (I think you know which) have to end up using en-UK?) SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)04:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Some of them do. I don't see what's wrong with saying that Ireland uses Irish English and that their spellings are the same as in Britain. (Or most of them are? I don't know if all are.) Not all the vocabulary is the same. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:57, 14 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
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 add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet.
Problems
There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed.
Changes later this week
A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden.
Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Without any location info, how it is a useful listing? Also, how do you know from the location of the IP who it is? That guy has previously used IPs in other places. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
For that matter, Brendan's hometown is the Sunshine Coast. A decently sized city, and occasionally those IPs geo locate to Brisbane as part of a mass IP range. SE Queensland is in lockdown so I doubt he went up to Gympie today, and furthermore, Gympie is a small town meaning their IPs often get only used by locals as part of a smaller IP location range. But I do agree that the listing isn't useful so I'll self revert myself. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)04:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
It's been about 7 years since I last visited the area, but I suppose I'd create it and then Brendan would eventually add the listings and then maybe modify it from there? (since they might be probably copyvios) SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)04:55, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Is awashima ready for guide
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
Some remarks. Many phone numbers are listed as "+81 0254 ..." which is wrong. They should be listed as "+81 254 ...", no leading zero for the area code. Four digit values are listed as 1234 but also as 1,234. Times before 10:00 are not listed with a leading zero; so, 9:00 should be 09:00. Time ranges are not always listed like 09:00-17:00, but also as "from 09:00 to 17:00" and "09:00 - 17:00". Some of those things might be OK for getting the Guide status but would only prevent a Star status. The phone number thing has to be solved for the Guide status. --FredTC (talk) 10:51, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Wait
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Hi SHB, I'd appreciate it if you didn't fully protect any more templates. Thanks. If there is no protection for a template, please choose a lower level of protection than template editor. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
But for some like article status templates, it shouldn't need to be edited by anyone. Not even template editors or admins. There's always the vandals who have sleeper accounts, who's intent is to damage templates, and making it autoconfirmed is like having no protection. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)00:24, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I don't agree that those templates "shouldn't need to be edited by anyone". I think their wordings should be changed. On the other hand, it seems too touchy an issue, so should be discussed first, and in the meantime I don't think the protections harms too much. –LPfi (talk) 11:06, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).
This will affect your wiki as well as 11 other wikis. During this time, publishing edits will not be possible.
Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).
For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.
A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.
Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!
20:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
Feet
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
You asked what "feet" means in Eckerö guest harbour price: "€25/35 (less/more than 41 feet)". Boats at most 41" long pay €25, those longer pay €35. Should this be stated clearer? I suppose the boat folks have less difficulty understanding than others, but if you still think it is confusing, please plunge forward to clarify. –LPfi (talk) 11:21, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yachting is one niche where the feet have survived. Few yachters would speak of a 12.5-m yacht, although they might tell that their 41" yacht is 12.5 m, if you ask how long it is. –LPfi (talk) 11:51, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
This Month in Education: August 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion
So I had the RC feed for this wiki open on IRC, and see you're also active with not only blocking the whack-a-mole but also hiding the block logs and their edits. These are account names that would normally qualify for a hideuser (oversight) block until globally hidden, but we have no oversighters on this wiki. Do you think we should? DannyS712 (talk) 00:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Probably not. While someall of these usernames are offensive, and they've been hidden already to the point where only about 100 people can see them, and a global lock often takes no more than a day or two for accounts like these. (in saying that, some GLs have taken one week to do). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)00:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sure, they get hidden, but local blocks are still visible to admins and are treated differently, so it might be helpful. Just a thought --DannyS712 (talk) 00:24, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
I don’t care too much whether someone says something stupid about me. As long as it’s reverted, I don’t think we need to go overkill just because some nerd in his mother’s basement thinks I’m the loser and not the vandal. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:18, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
For a native English speaker, yes and to be honest I don't really care. But most members of the small wiki monitoring team aren't native English Speakers (and often only have either en-1, en-2 and some have a level of en-3.), and sometimes they might get offended (this is from past experience communicating with non-native speakers). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)06:17, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Welcome to the third issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.
If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.
The Enforcement Draft Guidelines - The Enforcement Draft Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct has just been published on meta in different languages. These guidelines include some definitions of newly introduced terms and recommendations for local enforcement structures. (continue reading)
Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review - Before the enforcement guidelines are finalized, they must be reviewed and discussed by the community. The facilitation team has set up various discussion means throughout this review period. (continue reading)
Conversation Hours & Roundtables - To listen to community opinions and exchange ideas regarding enforcement draft guidelines proposed by the drafting committee, the UCoC facilitation team will be hosting weekly conversation hours. (continue reading)
Wikimania Wrap-up - The facilitation team hosted a Roundtable at Wikimania 2021, featuring some WMF trustees and staff. The session offered some insights on how the Enforcement Draft Guidelines came about, and what next steps are being imagined. (continue reading)
Translation - Because a considerable number of Wikimedians are not English speakers, and that UCoC applies to all members, projects across the wikimedia movement, it’s of a great importance to provide adequate language support throughout this process. (continue reading)
Diff blogs - Check out some interesting publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff blog. (continue reading)
WMF's 2021 Board of Trustees election - Please read the Candidate Presentations and vote! (continue reading)
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
Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.
Problems
Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).
Future changes
You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
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
The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break.
Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing. The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
I just thought I'd bring it up here, so we don't continue to edit war. While I agree with you that Australian English and British English are not the same, my impression that Australian English is generally closer to British than to American. Yes, I am aware that some American terms are better known in Australia than their British equivalents, but my impression is that they're not the majority. Of course, I lived in Adelaide, so perhaps your experience as someone from Sydney would be different. It is certainly possible that Adelaide is more conservative and still retains many British terms, while Sydney has a stronger American influence and thus adopted many more American terms. For instance, people in Adelaide say they go to the "toilet", while Americans say "bathroom". What do you guys use in Sydney? The dog2 (talk) 17:58, 31 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
We use bathroom in Sydney and all it needs is a toilet and a sink, and a lot of American terms, most of them having switched after WWII (after no longer trusting Britain from protecting us from the Japanese, where Australia decided to go more with the US). In saying that, I have seen the word "toilets" being used on some South Australian rest station signs, but most if not all were rather replaced with just an icon.
So if I had to choose which English variety Australia is the most closest to in terms is probably Canadian, and for spelling I'd say the same too. To be honest, I thought that most of those terms I was familiar with was British, but after reading that article, a lot of the British terms were those of that I had never even heard of;).
In terms of spelling, it is mostly like British, except that there are a lot of American ones like analog (not analogue), verandah (not veranda), burqa (not burka), livable (not liveable) and it goes on.
I do wonder what other countries that use Australian english use like PNG (only gained independence from Australia in 1975, which is quite recent or Nauru, also gaining independence quite recently in 1968).
But in saying all this, Australia is probably the most un-unified country that I could think of, where everything comes to the states and territories, and it will definitely differ. South Australia was heavily influenced by Eastern Europe, where British English is used, while others like Queensland or NSW is heavily American influenced, and others like Tasmania is heavily Irish influenced. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)22:47, 31 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
In Adelaide, a "bathroom" must have a shower, but not necessarily a toilet, just like in the UK and back in Singapore. Maybe it's true then that Sydney has more American influences, while Adelaide still retains more British terms. For instance, for many of those motor vehicle terms that you claimed Australia follows American usage for, I heard mostly British terms during my time living in Adelaide (I actually first learnt to drive in Adelaide, but had to re-take my driving test to get my American licence when I moved here, so I certainly noticed the difference in terminology). I have been to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth (and Brisbane when I was really young), but I haven't lived there so I am not familiar enough to comment on the usage patterns in different cities. For sure both Adelaide and Melbourne use "tram" instead of "streetcar", and I remember locals in Adelaide pronounced "depot" the British way instead of the American way. And likewise, "cider" is presumed to be alcoholic in Adelaide, just like in Singapore and the UK, and people in Adelaide also say they go to "uni" and not "college".
Andrewssi2 is a Brit living in Australia, so maybe he can comment on this, but I'm not sure if he's still active, or which part of Australia he lives in. Inas is also Australian, but I'm not sure if she's active anymore.
And more importantly, what do you suggest we do about Australia in the English language varieties article given our differing experiences with Australian English? The dog2 (talk) 23:22, 31 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
So do you think it would be fair to say that Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane tend to follow American English, while elsewhere in Australia it's mainly British English that is followed? The dog2 (talk) 22:48, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
It really depends on context and word by word though. Mostly, yes NSW, Qld tend to use American. Vic, NT and SA are a bit this and that. Tas and NT mostly use British although this is changing with time. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)23:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 Thank you, I may try making a static map instead but I'm not good at graphic design and dislike the look of Open Street Map (prefer google maps alot) Tai123.123 (talk) 03:32, 10 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
The Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps page has a good overview on static maps. I also prefer Google Maps given the user unfriendly interface on OSM, although google maps can take you on cliffs at times. (once in Arizona, it took me to a place 4 hours away from where I needed to go and more recently once also took me through a road full of potholes because it bypasses a town and the algorithm thinks it's faster because of a 100 km/h limit)
Ok thank you, just one more thing "If both city and countries have a buy section why doesn't the region template have one, I'm currently revamping the Kiso Valley as a region and want to add a buy section can I?
There are things you can't do easily in the visual editor that you can do (if you know how) in a wikitext editor (e.g., using HTML to add colored backgrounds to table cells), but I don't think that most people would consider it incomplete.
The opposite is also true: In the visual editor, you can create a table simply by dragging and dropping a .csv spreadsheet file into the editor. You can't do that in the old wikitext editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 11 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
I just spent half an hour trying to make a line for the Magome-Tsumago trail and accompalished nothing, if you have free time could you make the line, Thank you! Tai123.123 (talk) 18:15, 11 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you!
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The Wikivoyage Barncompass
I recently pasted 500 edits and would like to give you this Barncompass to thank you for helping me learn how to edit this site and for always quickly responding to my questions on your talk page. --Tai123.123 (talk) 04:39, 11 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the barncompass and Happy 500th:). Thanks for all your works onto Japanese articles you've put in. Japan has been on my want to go list for some time now and I hope to use these guides when I go there. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)04:45, 11 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
This Month in GLAM: August 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
France report: Wikimedian in residence; Some projects for this autumn
India report: Second proofread competition starts on Bengali Wikisource in collaboration with the British Library
Italy report: Summer school in July and two new WiR in August
Netherlands report: 50 cool new things you can now do with KB’s collection highlights, and New old photographs of Algeria, Mali and Morocco by Angeline van Achterberg
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner.
You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet.
The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed.
A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.
Problems
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0.
Future changes
The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences.
The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.
Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion
Is there a way to have two different map masks on one map, for the Nakatsugawa map I want to have all of Nakatsugawa highlighted but Magome in Yellow with a title showing it has a different article, is this possible. Tai123.123 (talk) 05:32, 21 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
Why not? I have mapshapes for all national parks that have them available via wikidata at Finnish National Parks. You may have to play around with the parameters to get them work together as you want; I haven't been trying this. –LPfi (talk) 09:27, 21 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
[edit conflict] If Magome is within Nagatsugawa, there should be no problem: you have the mapframe, a mapmask greying out anything outside, and a mapshape in yellow for Magome. Something like (untested):
I suppose the group parameter refers to a maplink name; if you include the coords as mapmask parameters that connection is not needed. You can connect the mask to a json file at Common or the json code in a <maplink group="Nagatsugawa"></maplink> at the end of the article page. Perhaps you need to use mapshape instead of mapmask. The templates are not well documented, you could try to use parameters of one of them in the other. Without knowing where you have your coords I don't want to do any experimenting.
Yeah, I think that national parks should always have articles, and since there was a nice banner ready for it, creating an article made so much sense . Ground Zero (talk) 01:12, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
Many of the parks called "national" in Australia would be provincial or state parks in Canada and the US. While I've made sure that all national parks in Canada have articles, provincial and territorial park articles are more of an exception. There are just too many of them, and many of them are too small. (One I visited yesterday consisted of a beach area, a campground, a boat launch, and a hiking trail, which was closed due to flooding.) As Australia has taken a different approach to national parks than other countries, would it make sense to group parks that are close to each other into an article that highlights key points, rather than trying to create separate articles? Ground Zero (talk) 12:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
I'd definitely agree, although that is more with New South Wales and Queensland. Other states all have much much less parks, comparable to the number in Thailand or Israel (although, both still have a lot of nice parks). There are some really small parks like Malabar Headland National Park (which is only about 1.7km2), which if it were in another state or territory apart from Queensland, wouldn't even be classified as a nature reserve nor a state park. At least it gets a little bit of federal funding.
Other parks like w:Barakee National Park would probably completely fail the wiaa test, and the only interesting thing there is the highway passing through. But I have a feeling it was designed to protect the koala habitats there, which is why I presume it ended up being protected. It would make sense to group parks together, although I do think some of it can be mentioned in their relevant city or rural area articles. I was thinking to maybe include some in Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, but then given that unlike anywhere else in the world, parks in Australia are managed by the state, so it doesn't help when you've got two different managements preserving these areas. But most likely, as you mentioned, some parks will have to be grouped together. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)12:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
Barakee National Park doesn't even have visitor info on its website, so it looks like it's about protection, not recreation. One line in a group article to that effect might be a better approach than trying to force an article out of it. Ground Zero (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.
Problems
Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October.
A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.
@LPfi: Albeit the image I added, Arnhem is much harder to get to. That image I added was part of one of the four fastest undivided highways in the world, but then anything east of Kakadu National Park (about 150km east of the nearest city - Darwin), the road quality goes to a gravel track poorly maintained worse than the other track, which looks something like this. The start of both roads look deceiving into that the area is easily accessible, putting 130 and 110km/h limits for a little bit, but then the road quality gets basically impassable - with only road trains being able to do it and the really really really good 4WDs. I think both those roads going to completely different parts of Arnhem go for about 600km, and many have died when going across this route because they weren't prepared.
And then you've also got the factor that Arnhem land requires a permit since the land has been returned to the traditional owners of the land. And there's also the crocs. Only RFDS planes seem to go here, apart from that, yeah, this place is almost really really hard to go. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)11:08, 4 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yes. I just couldn't resist. And the Interior is in fact mentioned in the article. But perhaps we should have an image of the actually difficult parts of Arnhem instead – although I understand if you aren't going to take those pics first thing:-) –LPfi (talk) 11:19, 4 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response.
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.
Future changes
You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions.
The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript.
The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module.
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I think the next round of DOTM banner nominations is Sydney. As your user page indicates, you live in Sydney, so do you want to select the DOTM banners for this city? Banner uploads are local and must be resized to a width of 1700px. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
News on complementary policies or changes to the Foundational Text
The electoral policy was approved; this allows the members of the group to decide the members of the different components or to choose the General Coordinator.
The Administrative Commission is the most important component of the group as the substantive decisions emanate from there. Elections for the Administrative Commission have begun. The election commissioners will send a message to all those eligible to register as candidates and/or electors.
Episodes one and two of SuenaWiki Reloaded, a space that allows to talk about the projects of the Wikimedia movement and free knowledge globally, can be listened to through Wikimedia Commons.}}}
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
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).
Welcome to the fourth issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.
If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.
Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review Wrap-up - The Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review will come to a close on 17 October 2021, after more than two months of extensive consultations. (continue reading)
Roundtable Discussions and Conversation Hours - Another successful roundtable session happened on September 18, 2021 to discuss the EDGR. One last conversation hour will be happening on October 15th, 2021. (continue reading)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee Elections - The Movement Charter Drafting Committee selection process has kicked off and will be open until October 25, 2021. Contributors to Wikimedia projects can elect their favorite candidates on to the committee. (continue reading)
New Direction for the Newsletter - As we round-up the consultation processes for the Universal Code of Conduct, the facilitation team is currently envisioning new directions for the newsletter. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hey. The edit notice box thingy only displays on desktop version. Unless you can work out a way to get it to display on mobile (which would be great), we should restore the hidden comments to the various cities lists. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:24, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
To be quite frank, I'm not sure how to get it on the mobile version. It's been a while since I've edited Wikimedia projects through mobile given the very unfriendly interface, but I'll restore the various hidden comments in just a sec. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)13:30, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, and no worries. I tend to avoid mobile for larger edits for the same reason, but a lot of users and casual editors (the ones more in need of prompts) prefer mobile.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:41, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
It looks like you've created or edited a slew of new templates recently, including handicap-icon, toilet-icon, food-icon, fuel-icon, lodging-icon, EVCharger-icon, Store-icon...Keeping in mind that Wikivoyage has had an existing consensus behind not having loads and loads of templates that make the site more challenging to edit, I think you should be explaining somewhere why it's important to have these icons instead of expecting people to explain in prose in "content" tabs of listings what is available. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
The article was started by the infamous "Brendan John Williams" (aka Telstra) so I removed it although I wrote most of the article. But I think I was meant to remove Pomona instead. I'll re-add it. Thanks for letting me know. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)03:37, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
He copies content from sources that have "All rights reserved", and less problematic, lists suburbs under see sections of city articles. Interestingly, he also once listed a Sydney suburb in the "next-to-impossible destinations" list. He appears to have been doing this before a lot of us even came to Wikivoyage (someone like Ikan Kekek would know much more on this than myself), although sometimes he genuinely fixes up errors, typos or adds coordinates (which don't usually get reverted). SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)04:09, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Hi, OhanaUnited. If you really want all the gory details, you can start reading at Wikivoyage:User ban nominations/Archive#Telstra vandal, but the thing is, while some of his edits are good, a lot of them are uncredited copypasta from either Wikipedia or, like SHB2000 said, "copyright, all rights reserved" sites, and a lot of his text is garbled or nonsensical in certain ways, and the big problem is that this guy never engages in a dialogue and habitually creates sockpuppets for like 1-2 edits. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:23, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Wow, I skimmed through it but that looks like a rabbit hole of discussion. OhanaUnitedTalk page
This appears to be another one of this edits just now. While that is not a copyvio nor taken from Wikipedia, Eumundi doesn't have much to offer in terms of where a traveller can experience indigenous culture, and that doesn't help at all. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)06:10, 18 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
I did check the contents in Pomona page that this individual added. They all seem like reasonable summaries and I pasted the summaries into Google. None of them were copied & pasted from elsewhere so I incorporated them back into Noosa page. OhanaUnitedTalk page00:29, 19 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).
3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
A fair bit of content seems to have gone missing when you redirected this to Mid West (Western Australia), an article that doesn't even mention the islands. Are you planning to merge that information in? As it stands, someone who searches on Houtman Abrolhos is redirected to an article who no information. Ground Zero (talk) 16:50, 19 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for nominating this article. After I wrote it, I asked on the FTT talk page for advice on what to do to make it worthy of a nomination, but got not response, so maybe I get get feedback now. I will look for more pictures. Ground Zero (talk) 11:58, 20 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Maybe Sydney is different, but a distinction was made between the two when I was living in Adelaide (and in Singapore too). In both Adelaide and Singapore, if you're asking for information about something, you're making an "enquiry", but if you are conducting an investigation into an incident, you are conducting an "inquiry". The U.S. uses "inquiry" in both instances. The dog2 (talk) 21:23, 21 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
It's been quite some time I've heard "enquiry" being used though, at least in Sydney. I know some people in the older generation still use enquire/inquire and not just "inquire". At least for a traveller, all they need to know is that they can get away with just "inquire" without needing to know both. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)21:29, 21 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Proofreadmydocument says "This usage is now common in Australian English, too, although ‘enquiry’ is still used here (and may be considered more correct in formal writing).". A traveller has little use needing to know formal Australian English, so I don't think listing enquire/inquire is really needed at all. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)21:33, 21 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
The Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).
Future changes
Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax.
The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change.
Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article
"Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
"Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.
News for mentors
The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test.
At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors
Community configuration
Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.
Scaling
We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons.
The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features.
A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.
News for communities
Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Do you mind me @ing you when I see vandalism I can’t revert due to the fact I lack admin powers. I feel directly notifying you gets faster responses though I understand it may be bothersome (I also moved the discussion to your page to not draw attention to the vandal). Tai123.123 (talk) 05:47, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Feel free to ping me or leave a message here on this page. I used to do something similar before I became an admin this July, and also it's not bothersome (I get notifications all the time). --SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)05:50, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Image attribution
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
You wrote "once you've fixed everything, feel free to do whatever you need to do [...]". To fix the attributions I need your answer to my question in that thread: Am I correct in assuming the links should go to user pages on Commons? As I explain in that now archived discussion, I believe the attributions are wrong now, and I don't want to change attribution based on a guess. –LPfi (talk) 07:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
@LPfi: That I am not so sure about. If there were no policy on this, I don't think there's any harm in linking them to their commons userpage though, but I'll also try fix them and link some of these images to Commons. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)07:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
If the links went to their user page on Commons before you copied them, then the links should still go to their user page on Commons. Changing (effectively) an attribution link to point to a Wikivoyage user page for people who are not Wikivoyage contributors is misleading and possibly against the licence and copyright law. Who are we to decide what page to link in the attribution line? It is the author's choice! The problem is that I don't know what changes you did to the file description page; I have no access to the original. So, I'll rephrase my question: Did those links point to the Commons user pages before you copied them? –LPfi (talk) 09:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
E,g, in File:Masjid Nasional Al-Akbar Surabaya 2016.jpg there was the line "author=[[User:Lasthib|Lasthib]]". An identical line at Commons would point to their Commons userpage. When you copy such a line from Commons to here, you change the location it de facto points to; the reader's browser will see <a href="/wiki/User:Lasthib" title="User:Lasthib">Lasthib</a>, and the browser prepends current protocol, domain etc. to the href parameter. Thus the link will go to Commons if the reader sees it on Commons, but to Wikivoyage if they see it on Wikivoyage. If you view a Commons file at Wikivoyage, you will instead get an URL including the domain, something like <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Andrzej_O" title="User:Andrzej O">Andrzej Otrębski</a>, and that is the code you want to continue to serve the browser after the move. So if you copied the description verbatim you got a relative link that used to point to Commons and by your copying was changed to point to Wikivoyage. –LPfi (talk) 12:25, 27 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
What's up with Brendan
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
It seems like his IP adresses add good content, why do you revert them, Do they violate copyright law? His latest edit on the Kazakhstan page didn't seem to be plagiarized so I patrolled it. Please tell me what's wrong with his edits and I can identify them. Tai123.123 (talk) 05:37, 29 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Much of them are plagiarised or copied without attribution. I must say though, that identifying his edits these days are hard, as you need to know what style of writing it's in, and know the IP ranges. He used to use accounts with two to four numbers, but he now only uses IPs. The reason why I block these IPs now is that it leaves it in the log, as some of those IPs get reused so if there was any previous blocks, it's in the log. And it seems whenever he gets an IPv4 address, he now seems to want to switch it to an IPv6 address avoiding further detection. I must say though, that revert those edits with caution, as sometimes edits that look like his are not his. It's why most of the time, it's only Ikan and myself who deal with this guy these days. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)05:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
I'm assuming you don't mean "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena". For non-Aus readers, it would be helpful to explain acronyms like this. Aussie readers probably won't read the Australia article. Ground Zero (talk) 01:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).
We have implemented three new instances: Limesurvey, Moodle and MediaWiki. The first will be for conducting surveys to be sent to volunteers, the second for a future educational program and the third for testing on MediaWiki.
As you know, this group offers permanent connection to Libera.Chat through its bouncer service. Now the requests are processed via Phabricator to make it easier for volunteers to access this service.
Miscellaneous
On October 29, we requested a general support fund so that our mission can continue uninterrupted. We hope that the Latin America and Caribbean Committee will look favorably on our proposal to support small projects.
We need your feedback: Help us to focus our efforts to support small projects in the coming year. We want you to tell us what we can support and in what ways we should support them. The survey will run for thirty days, until December 03. The survey link is here.
The results of the Admincom's temporary seats will be announced on November 8.
From November 09 to 10 we will have a edit-a-thon at Wikiviajes. There we will edit as many destinations as possible.
On November 16th we will have the Allie Awards; a virtual award in which we recognize the excellence, initiative and activism of volunteers in the Wikimedia movement. You as a volunteer can nominate who you consider deserving of such an award. You only have to pingGalahad with the name and the reason why he/she deserves to be recognized. You have the opportunity to nominate until November 8.
On November 17th we will be supporting the friends of WikiAcción Perú and the Cámara de Comercio de San Martín in the Wikiviajes workshop on the region of San Martín. If you want to participate, you can write us through hello<at>wikisp.org.
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
To answer your question, both "city centre" and "CBD" are used in Singapore. Road signs are usually just marked "City", and everyone understands what that means. The dog2 (talk) 08:01, 7 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
CBD is used in Adelaide too, or at least it was when I lived there. People pretty much use "CBD" and "City" interchangeably. And speaking of Singapore, "downtown" (but not "uptown") is understood too, so you can use all four terms. The dog2 (talk) 08:28, 7 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
As you know, I also think that stub articles harm the project. But I also think that removing or hiding travel information — even if it is just a Bible museum and a local museum — is contrary to our aim here. I think that sort of stuff should be moved to another article if you decide to redirect a page. In this case, there was lots of travel information in the town's Wikipedia article, so creating a proper article was pretty easy. Ground Zero (talk) 18:09, 7 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Ground Zero: And now it's usable. Thanks for helping me get all Australian non-region articles usable:) (should be finished with the regions soon) Wasn't my exact intension to get it all usable, but was quite inspired to do the same when you did the same thing to all Canadian destinations before 2020, but I somehow did managed to upgrade 350ish articles over six months. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)12:22, 8 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour.
In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.
Congratulations! I am looking forward to visiting Aus some day, and I personally will use your contributions, and I am sure a lot of other readers will too. Ground Zero (talk) 21:27, 9 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sweden report: The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk; More museum data on Wikidata; LGBT edit-a-thon; Local business history in Nyköping; Stockholm City Museum ♥ Wikipedia; Writing about fashion at Nordiska museet
UK report: British Library and Khalili Collections
USA report: Wikiconference North America + Workshops
Content Partnerships Hub report: Needs assessment interviews; Cultural heritage on Wikidata – thousands of monuments in Norway; Structured Data uploads continue
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I think I now see it for the second time: "the temperatures can go up to freezing". Over here temperatures go down to freezing and things melt when they go up above freezing. Does this wording have something to do with that you are down under? –LPfi (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for the very short answer that I gave this morning. Was in a rush. But to the "up to freezing" and "down to freezing", and I've definitely heard both used. The main reason (I think) is because it strays out of your normal temperatures (15-30). Of course, I'm saying this as I live on the coast, but anyone who lives inland or on the mountains would say "down to freezing", well because, it gets pretty cold inland or on the mountains. I'll fix those up, as I'm sure that someone else would be confused by that as well. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)07:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.
Problems
Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation.
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Is the point of your experiment with style tag to find out if the principal contributor to that article is going to respond by cleaning up the article?
If your aim is more generally to find out how long it will take for anyone to fix the problem, you will have to wait a long time to find out.
You can, on the other hand, check article histories to see when tags were added to the articles.This one that I just came across was added in 2009, and modified after that. I just removed it. Ground Zero (talk) 02:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Yep, that's my purpose. In this case, we had an active contributor who's expanding that article, and so unlike other tags where the issue was made by one off contributors, I wanted to see how long it takes for that contributor [Veillg1] to do it as they're the one who's expanding that article.
@Ground Zero: It seems after numerous edits to that article and having been six days, Veillg1 still has done anything about it. It just shows that even those tags don't even motivate new users who are editing in that subject and why tags like these are useless. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)07:31, 21 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Sadly, that is the case. I've gone through the 195 or so articles with style tags, and removed 112 of them. Some of them were for very simple fixes that were probably as easy to do as slapping a tag on the article. Others took more time. There are some that I have bookmarked to work on later. There were a lot that I removed because I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I suspect some of the issues had been addressed but the tags weren't removed. In other cases, the articles were no worse than the average Wikivoyage article. A lot of them just said that the listings should have more details. The remaining tags mostly ask that Eat and Sleep listings be sorted into budget/mid-range/splurge categories, something that will only happen if someone decides to be a docent for the article. The tags are unlikely to have any impact, so it is good that they sit at the bottom of the article. Fortunately, the people who seemed to do most of the tagging in years past seem to have moved on to do other stuff, or have left Wikivoyage. Ground Zero (talk) 13:29, 22 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
I have mostly finished the cleanup. It was pretty easy tbh, mostly because the content in the region article was also in the relevant city article. The only thing I've left is the events list, because I have no idea what format is meant to be used for events in region articles. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)11:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
Newcomers often don't want to remove tags. It is not unusual for them to think that someone else is supposed to confirm that they did the work. The idea that you shouldn't judge your own work is strong in some cultures. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 23 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
This Month in Education: November 2021
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi SHB2000/Archive 2021, I really appreciate the vote of confidence. However, since I do not visit Wikivoyage on a regular basis, and my memory often fails me, I believe it is best to remove my autopatrol right, so that my edits here are always checked by someone else.. Thanks again, Ottawahitech (talk) 14:01, 3 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module.
An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead.
Ukraine report: Aricle contest for librarians «Local cultural heritage and prominent people»
USA report: Smithsonian demos new Wiki API Connector tool and other meetups
Content Partnerships Hub report: We continue building for the hub; SDC for fun and profit: detecting bad coordinates; Needs assessment – video recorded interviews; Improving ISA
WMF GLAM report: Wikisource birthday celebration, Community Tech Wishlist, and upcoming conversation about courses for GLAM professionals
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
There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Welcome back! Friend! I am very happy to see you again! In fact, I also abstain myself from editing here, until you return, because life without you was very lonely in Wikivoyage! Now, I will start editing here as usual!:) Haoreima (talk) 10:09, 16 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi SHB, hope you're well. I've been popping back in after a period of inactivity, and I found you tweaked the {{emdash}} template. The problem is, that edit seems to have left it broken for half a year, at least from my experiments in the graffiti wall before and after reverting the tweak. Do you recall what you were trying to do? Vaticidalprophet (talk) 04:05, 17 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
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
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February.
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Is there a place for me to make a plea for help from other users when it comes to speling errors? I do make a lot of misspelings when writing in English, espesially in American English SealEater1488 (talk) 05:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)?Reply
Title. Don't know why it's happening, nor if it's just on my side, but it bothers me that it's coming up as a redlink. It's been happening since today, and it's only an issue on this wiki, as it doesn't seem to be the case on meta. Screenshots below. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)10:05, 23 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
(gallery being updated as I upload a new image of this issue)
SHB2000, it's an interesting and curious behaviour. I've noticed that you changed yesterday the protection of the page, so, if the issue appears yesterday, that's a clue. I've tried to change termporary the protection of the page but nothing happens. I've done other minor tests getting no result. Last "invasive" test I have in my mind is to delete completely the page and recreating it again: first empty, then with the original content, to see if it reset the status of the page, but I haven't done it, because it will delete the public history of the page. Since you are an admin, if you want to try, do it yourself. In any case you can open a ticket on Phabricator but expect long time since it's a minor issue that affect only one user. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:31, 24 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
I might try and move the page to somewhere else without a redirect soon, and then add all the contents back so it preserves the attribution of the page. I'll see if that works. I had a feeling it may be those font tags which I was experimenting with a few months ago (which I just left it alone), but I fail to see how that affects a talk page in Special:Recentchanges. SHB2000 (talk|contribs|meta.wikimedia)08:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
SHB2000, a tag, font included, affect the behaviour of the current page, not a system page. Consider that is not just a color change, but the system "feel" that your page doesn't exist (you can see it from the URL associated to that red link). Move a page is different from deleting it because the whole process use different functions. However, if you don't feel confident to try the page deletion (and I can understand it), feel free to open a Phab ticket. --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:16, 24 November 2021 (UTC)Reply
SHB2000, I meant to add the screenshot of the link I've suggested you (not the recent changes one) into the Phab bug report, explaining that the issue occurs also in other pages and with other accounts. --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
Ideally I'd do this at RfC but given how much banner discussions I've just sparked in the last three hours, I don't want to be bombarding RfC with this, but a link to all of those are below.
-- I can't help as I have never done anything with OpenStreetMap as far as drawing boundaries etc. -- if you found boundaries would check to see if the wikidata link is there? -- (I believe not needed) check for the OpenStreetMap link in the wikidata record.. Matroc (talk) 06:37, 24 December 2021 (UTC) Matroc (talk) 06:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
A little Christmas robin told me you were spending the day by yourself. Even though it's nearly Boxing Day for you, I wish you all the spirit of the season. Things will be better in 2022.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:36, 25 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
Due to surging case numbers, our two family dinners were cancelled, so husband and I are sitting at home watching the rain. Happy Christmas and Boxing days to both of you. Ground Zero (talk) 13:36, 25 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
When I hover over a link to a guide, sometimes no text appears. For example- Hovering over Cooch Behar, gives the image of the railway station with no description. Also, the image shown while hovering is nowhere in the guide. 2006nishan178713 (talk) 04:53, 27 December 2021 (UTC)Reply