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Portal creation and maintenance

Hi NA1000, I see you've tagged Portal:East Germany/New articles as needing updating, quite rightly. I used to maintain most of the Germany portals, but gave up when the bulk of them were destroyed in the mass deletion campaign. Where do we currently stand with portals? Is there a consensus on the way forward? Is it worth spending any time on them these days? Bermicourt (talk) 09:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Bermicourt: I could set up the User:JL-Bot to automatically populate the Recognized content section quite easily, which would be an improvement, imo. This would not include new articles, though. I'm not aware of any consensus about moving forward, but I simply update and improve them, such as adding FA- and GA-class articles, some other articles if needed to round them out, and also if there are not many recognized articles available. I've been working on portals all year so far. Those portals you maintain would benefit from some work, which I could perform as time allows, if you're not into it. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
• User:AlexNewArtBot can be used to generate new article lists. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oh snap, it may not be as easy as I thought, because there's no WikiProject East Germany, and hence, no assessment tables to generate Recognized content. User:AlexNewArtBot may still be feasible, possibly, though. I'd have to look into it more. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:57, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
• I found the table below at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Assessment, so something could actually work out for a Recognized content update, although there are only three total articles that qualify at this time. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:00, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

GDR articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
GA	1		1			2	4
B		2	4	1		12	19
C	9	12	11	25		83	140
Start	8	12	39	113		351	523
Stub		2	1	140		187	330
List		1		7		28	36
Category					525		525
Disambig					1		1
File					4		4
Portal					17		17
Redirect				2	10		12
Template					20		20
NA					3		3
Other					2		2
Assessed	18	29	56	288	582	663	1,636
Unassessed						7	7
Total	18	29	56	288	582	670	1,643
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 5,220			Ω = 5.14

• @Bermicourt: Nb. I have denoted updates performed to the portal at Portal talk:East Germany. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:11, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I may start doing a bit then. I've just moved Portal:Harz back to mainspace as a trial and may start moving the German state portals back that were moved to project space. It seems ridiculous to have portals for some states and not others. Bermicourt (talk) 08:03, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: I was thinking about merging the Selected article of the month entries into the Selected article section at top left in the East Germany portal, and also about consolidating the monthly images into a scrollable gallery. That way, the articles will show randomly when the page is purged, and can be directly accessed via the list in the Selected article section, and readers can scroll through the images in one sitting. What do you think? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

File:Lean finely textured beef in its finished form.png listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Lean finely textured beef in its finished form.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Lord Belbury (talk) 10:45, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

East Germany?

Why has Brecht now a portal East Germany, with that historic flag, but not Germany, Theatre, Literature? I try to avoid flags, generally, and East Germany is a very sloppy name if a country is meant. "The only real nation is humanity." How about a portal for that? - I'd remove the other, for him and others. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:59, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1988, MiNr Block 091.jpg

Stamp from the former East Germany depicting Brecht and a scene from his Life of Galileo

• Hi @Gerda Arendt: Well, Brecht lived in East Germany when it was East Germany from 1949 to 1956, and passed away in East Berlin in 1956. A portal link was added to his article because he is listed as a Selected article in the East Germany portal. East Germany even created a postal stamp in his honor in 1988. Are you stating that links to the Germany, Theatre and Literature portals should be added to the Brecht article? I'm not sure what you're pertaining to above in stating "I'd remove the other". Do you mean remove the flag of East Germany from the portal link? If so, what would you recommend in its place? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:34, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  I don't mention portals in my articles, ever, so may be the wrong person to comment. If he lived in what some call East Germany, he also lived in Germany at the same time, do you understand? Of course the GDR decorated its international reputation with his name. - I find it unfair to have just a place portal, and at a prominent spot, and with a much-hated flag (not by me, but ask people who suffered) but nothing about his literature. So, my first choice would be no portal link. Second, three portal links, at the bottom, such as here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Gerda Arendt: I went ahead and used a portalbar at the end of the article (diff), adding links to relevant portals. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:48, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Gerda Arendt: the name has been debated before and the consensus was that, in English, it was way the most common name. I'm aware that Germans only called it the DDR, but we never called it that or GDR; it was always East Germany. And I spent most of my early life defending the West from an invasion from East Germany, so we gave it a lot of attention! It was wonderful the first time my wife and I went to the Eastern Harz and up the Brocken and we have loved touring "East Germany" since. Bermicourt (talk) 08:14, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

  I am aware, just can't help to always translate East Germany to "Ostzone", a deprecated name. As I had relatives there whom I couldnt's see - one not permitted to travel to his parents' golden wedding anniversary (only to their funerals) - it will stay emotional. Northamerica, your solution is fine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:14, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Portal:Harz

Thanks for your edits on P:HZ. Of course, one of the criticisms of portals was that page visits were very low. As I repeatedly pointed out, that was because they were so poorly linked from articles and don't appear in searches. I'm going to rectify both by a) adding links to major Harz articles and b) creating a redirect Harz (portal). Meanwhile I have a question: how do you create a symbol for portals to replace the default jigsaw puzzle piece? Bermicourt (talk) 08:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Bermicourt: Port link images are handled at Module:Portal/images. It requires admin or Template editor privileges to edit there. If you have anything in mind, let me know, and I can handle that for you. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:52, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Harz (portal) redirects to the article. I don't think cross-namespace redirects to portals are banned – Portal: is excluded from CSD R2 – but they would be unusual and might attract criticism. Most of the few other (portal) titles disambiguate article topics, e.g. Spider (portal). Certes (talk) 13:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I've found a simple symbol that could make a good Harz logo at least for now: the Dennert Fir (pictured). Bermicourt (talk) 07:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Bermicourt:  Done (See right). North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Cool, thanks.Bermicourt (talk) 08:51, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42

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

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [1][2][3]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [4][5]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [6]

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15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2020)

Many species can live at high altitudes. For example, the Himalayan pika lives at altitudes up to 4,200 m (13,800 ft). Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Organisms at high altitude Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Trout Mask Replica • August 2016 Aden bombing Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Notification of request to lift BrownHairedGirl's restrictions

I have made a request at Arbitration Enforcement to lift BrownHairedGirl's restrictions under their previous decision, including the interaction ban with you, at least to the extent that this may come up in her next RfA. I do hope that the matter is far enough behind everyone now that you will not find this objectionable. Cheers! BD2412 T 17:46, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Here is the notice to the correct discussion location:

You are involved in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Portals and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, BD2412 T 18:35, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412: Thanks for the notification. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:06, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Motion notice

An arbitration motion involving you has been proposed at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Motion: Portals. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:59, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43

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 20 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 October. It will be on all wikis from 22 October (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [7]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [8]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2020)

Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Reader Rabbit Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Organisms at high altitude • Trout Mask Replica Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 19 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2020-44

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 will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [9]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [11]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [12]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [13]

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17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Portal:Trains updates

Hey there. While I appreciate the efforts to improve Portal:Trains, I've been a bit surprised by each of your edits. My surprise is more out of not expecting anything to change at all than anything else. Since I created this portal in May 2005, I've basically been the only editor working on keeping it updated. I can't claim to WP:OWN it, but there is a pretty big sunk cost in the edits I've made so far. So, let's chat some more about improving the portal. Slambo (Speak) 17:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• Hi Slambo: I did notice that you are listed as a maintainer. The edits I performed were minor (and marked as such), consisting of adding a General images section, adding italics to two headers for consistent layout (so all the header titles are in italic, rather than most of them), and rewriting a few links to be more specific regarding the subpages they link to. If you're against these edits, feel free to revert and we can discuss further, or we can just discuss further anyway. Some initial ideas to improve the portal include:

• Using Template:Transclude random excerpt for the Selected article section, which provides current, up-to-date information that is verbatim to article content. A consensus approving the usage of transclusion templates in portals was formed at this Village Pump discussion. The use of transclusions prevents portals from presenting outdated information, such as occurs when subpages are not updated as articles change or evolve.
• Possibly using transclusion for the Intro section, using Template:Transclude lead excerpt
• Moving the "Candidates" links to redirect to a section on the main portal page. It does not appear that the Candidates pages are being used very much. If candidates were to be on the talk page, it increases the likelihood of people seeing them, and potentially contributing to them.
• Also, you've done great work keeping the DYKs up to date (e.g. Portal:Trains/Did you know/Main page, 2020)

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

One of the main guiding principles that I've followed is to provide enough detail in the portal that a reader would want to click through to the related article, but not provide so much information that it would be hard to find information on the portal itself. I'm a bit hesitant on using the automated lead section and selected article transclusions because there is almost always more detail in the article that is not necessary on the portal. It's pretty rare that the selected article excerpt isn't edited down a little for brevity and clarity. For this week's selected article, for example, I removed a few sentences that weren't necessary for the feature, and also suppressed the inline footnote references. For the portal main entry, there is much more detail in the article's lead section that is not necessary on the portal. The other main reason for copying and editing down the text for both sections is for portal stability.

The other main reason for not using the transclusion on the portal lead section is that the Trains portal should really be called the Rail transport portal. When I created the portal, it was meant to be a showcase of articles within the scope of WikiProject Trains, so the name was consistent with the project. However, both the WikiProject and the portal scopes include everything to do with rail transportation. Moving the project and portal to reflect this would not be a trivial matter, so there has been no progress on that front.

The question of how to handle footnotes on a portal is another can of worms. The news section links directly to the external pages that support the news items, but I don't like that as much as the full footnotes that are on the related article pages. However, I also don't think having a footnotes section on the portal would be appropriate stylistically, as I don't see footnotes on any other portal, including the main page.

The random image widget is neat (and I don't think its addition, like the changes that moved a couple boxes around, is a minor update), but I think it's a little too big, overshadowing the weekly selected image. I've thought that the selected image should be bigger, but I don't think it should be so big as to overwhelm the visual clarity of the portal as a whole.

I'm not sure that moving the candidates would encourage participation. But, I am sure that the process could be improved a bit; I just don't know how best to change it.

Slambo (Speak) 11:07, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Slambo: Thanks for the input. It would be possible to change the portal's name to Rail Transport by mass moving all of the portal's subpages, and then of course renaming the main portal page itself. However, the links leading to it would still state "Train portal", which of course could be redirected. It's clear that you have the portal well under control. I viewed the addition of the general images as minor because it's so simple to do, it takes seconds, after which images are transcluded from the listed articles. The time taken lies in deciding which articles to use, to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic. Upon checking out matters, I noticed at Template:Trains portal/FI that the default image size for Featured images is 300px. So, I have changed the image size in the General images section to also display at 300px (diff). As I have stated above, if you don't like the the new images section, go ahead and revert it. Personally, I feel it's an improvement, but no big deal. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:02, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2020)

Institutions and organizations of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Organization Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Reader Rabbit • Organisms at high altitude Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2020-45

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 no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [14]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [15]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [16]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [17]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [18]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2020)

Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Cultural exchange Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Organization • Reader Rabbit Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 2 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

Administrator changes

John M Wolfson

Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla

Yunshui

Oversight changes

Anarchyte

Yunshui

Guideline and policy news

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration

• The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [19]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [20][21]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2020)

An example of Chinese folklore is The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a Chinese folk tale. Pictured is a depiction in the tale of the reunion of the couple of The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd on the bridge of magpies. The artwork displayed is in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing. Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Chinese folklore Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Cultural exchange • Organization Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 9 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2020-47

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

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [22][23]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 November 2020

• News and notes: Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking

• In the media: Murder, politics, religion, health and books

• Book review: Review of Wikipedia @ 20

• Op-Ed: Anti-vandalism with masked IPs: the steps forward

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• Featured content: The "Green Terror" is neither green nor sufficiently terrifying. Worst Hallowe'en ever.

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• In focus: The many (reported) deaths of Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2020)

An illustration of the Pre-Columbian abacus, the Nepohualtzintzin, one of the many pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans. Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Chinese folklore • Cultural exchange Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:26, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [25]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• 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 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [26]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

Administrator changes

Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

Izno

Guideline and policy news

• There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:AFI/Collaborations of the day (no border)

Template:AFI/Collaborations of the day (no border) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [27][28]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [29]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:44, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 49, 2020)

in 2013 Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was celebrated for being the artist in Latin music with the most records sold in history. Hello, Northamerica1000. The article for improvement of the week is: Latin music (genre) Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Industry • List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 23:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

• Thanks CAPTAIN RAJU, and thanks for your continued work in performing deletion sorting, in addition to all else that you do here. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2020)

In macroeconomics, an industry is a branch of an economy that produces a closely related set of raw materials, goods, or services. Pictured is a cement factory in Malmö, Sweden, which is a part of the manufacturing industry. Hello, Northamerica1000. The following is WikiProject Articles for improvement's weekly selection: Industry Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans • Chinese folklore Get involved with the AFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 20:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2020-50

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

Recent changes

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [30][31]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [32][33]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2020.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before Auld Lang Syne. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: This will run from 13 to 19 December, and will target all Requests. Sign up now. Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: 67 fewer articles had copy-edit templates by this month's close. Of the 27 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and 124 articles were claimed for the drive. October Blitz: this ran from 18 to 24 October, and focused on articles tagged for copy-edit in July and August 2020, and all Requests. Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors copy-edited at least one article. 21 articles were claimed for the blitz. November Drive: Of the 18 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and together claimed 134 articles. At the close of the drive, 67 fewer articles were in the backlog and we had dealt with 39 requests. Other news Progress report: As of 09:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 663 requests (18 from 2019) since 1 January and there were 52 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 494 (see monthly progress graph above). Annual Report for 2020: this roundup of the year's activity at the Guild is planned for publication in late January or early February. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Seasonal tidings and cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello Northamerica1000,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

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18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)