Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 117

Appeal against accidental block

This blocked user asked to be unblocked, but one or more administrators said no to this unblock request. Other administrators can also review this block, but should not unblock the user without a good reason. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Simple_talk/Archive_117 (contribs · deleted contribs · block log · filter log · global contribs)

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Request reason:

It would appear that I have been unintentionally blocked, and the block is not set to expire until June. I believe that I was blocked by accident for two reasons. The first reason is that no reason was given for the block; a single previous block that I received cited a Wikipedia page that I had edited. I accepted that this block was my fault and waited until it expired without making any attempt to appeal. The second reason is that, more importantly, in the few days between the expiration of the first block and the setting of the second block, I did not edit any Wikipedia pages. I would like to contact Widr, the administrator who blocked me, but I cannot access their talk page, so I hope that someone might notice my appeal submitted here and send it to them. I believe that I have been mistakenly blocked, and if this is the case, I respectfully and politely ask that the block be removed, and I promise that I will use my editing privileges for nothing more than adding extra information and correcting minor errors, never to add anything that is defamatory to anyone or anything.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.18.214 (talk) 17:33, 4 April 2016

Decline reason:

We can't help you because you are blocked on English Wikipedia, not here. This is Simple English Wikipedia. You need to pursue this on English Wikipedia. -- Auntof6 (talk) 17:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Note: I reviewed the block of this IP user on EnWiki and have left a note on the (recently promoted) blocking admin's talk page making the admin aware of the IP user's request. The IP is correct that a block was added without any warning on the talk page, and a review of reverted edits showed nothing terribly alarming. To the IP user, I would suggest registering an account after this matter is taken care of: no personal info is required, but it will allow you to separate your edits from those who may share your same IP address. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  19:36, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Video Game Simplifications

I just made a Simple page for Captain Forever and wanted to know if I should describe some concepts of the game in laymans terms, or the terms that the games uses. In this case Captain Forever uses "Modules" to describe the parts you can use in the game, but I opted for parts. Should I be using the game's terminology or something more easily understood? (New to Wikipedia, sorry in advance) It can be found here. - — Preceding unsigned comment added by AaronIvs (talk • contribs)

You can put the article in simple terms, meaning that the article should not have advanced words. Using parts is good. //nepaxt 00:20, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Server switch 2016

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas. This will make sure Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the new data center on Tuesday, 19 April.
On Thursday, 21 April, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for approximately 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped.

Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.

• There will be a code freeze for the week of 18 April.

No non-essential code deployments will take place.

This test was originally planned to take place on March 22. April 19th and 21st are the new dates. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Prevent IP users from creating pages

One thing that editors who are not logged in can do on the Simple English Wikipedia but not on the regular English Wikipedia is make new pages. I have noticed that many new pages made by these users had to be deleted as they have little or no useful content. Since only a few users are able to delete pages compared to reverting edits, I'm wondering whether it's time to stop this from happening by banning unregistered users from creating pages on the wiki - if you get what I mean. Cheers, << S O M E G A D G E T G E E K >> (talk) 20:50, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

I was able to pop on this morning, and saw this. I wholeheartedly object to this premise. IP editors are still real people behind a screen no matter if they choose to edit without a username. A lot of IP editors - even through vandalism - have sparked articles that end up being a positive to this wiki. And besides, the bottom line is, "A wiki that anyone can edit," isn't it? Also, hasn't this been proposed recently by this user and was shot down? --Lithorien ^{Talk • Changes} 10:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• I agree with Lithorien that I would rather not establish this restriction yet.
• Lithorien is also correct that Some Gadget Geek made this proposal in February. Let's wait another 6–12 months before suggesting this again, please. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It's hard to remember everything that has happened since it gets archived every so often. I can't remember I even made this proposal only a few months ago. Saying that, don't we have a "Perennial proposals" page, like there is on the regular English wiki? We could make such a page and call it "Repeated proposals" or something like that. << S O M E G A D G E T G E E K >> (talk) 14:15, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• I understand where this proposal is coming from, but at the end of the day we are also a small wiki that needs all the contributions that we can get. Also, the good to bad article creation ratio sometimes varies depending on time of year, so I guess we could be going through one of these periods. Currently we mitigate abusive article creations by throttling all article creations by non-autoconfirmed users; this is implemented in abuse filter 49. Chenzw  Talk  16:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah this is not something that is likely to ever be done here, we are too dependant on IP editors because we are a small wiki and need all the edits we can get from IP editors. Forcing them to create an account will likely stop a large percentage of those possible edits from happening. -DJSasso (talk) 15:44, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Interwiki language links for pages brought from other Wikipedias

When you bring a page from another Wikipedia, please link it in Wikidata to the original page. You don't have to go to Wikidata to do this. I did a write up on how to do it from here. The write-up is at User:Auntof6/How to#Interwiki language links for new pages. Feel free to ask if you have any questions about it. Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 03:35, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Why don't you incorporate this into WP:Interwiki? StevenJ81 (talk) 16:09, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Good idea. I'll work on that later when I'm on a better machine for editing.. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:42, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Broken RC after unlocking of database

Just a heads up, shortly after the maintenance window ended, an issue with the MediaWiki job queue led to edits completely dropping off Recent Changes. Affected diff IDs are 5375922 to 5375941, a window approximately 30 minutes long. Since the recent changes IRC feed (irc.wikimedia.org) was also down, bots which relied on the RC feed were not able to perform any task, most significantly User:ChenzwBot.

I have gone through every diff in that window and reverted any vandalism accordingly. Anyone interested in a closer look can use Special:Diff/<diff number>. Chenzw  Talk  15:37, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Chenzw: Thank you for doing that! Outstanding! ... How can I check this on Ladino Wikipedia, where I am an admin/'crat? StevenJ81 (talk) 16:12, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Since there appear to be no edits made after the maintenance window, you should make an edit to a page first, so that you can get the diff ID of the most recent edit (anywhere on your userpage would be a good idea). After that, in RC, look at the URL of the diff link - curid=nnnn&diff=xxxxxx. Diff xxxxxx will be the upper bound for your checks, while the lower bound will be the most recent edit before the maintenance - for ladwiki, that would be diff 154411 by MediaWiki message delivery. Once you have both the lower and upper limits of the diff ID, you can just increment the diff ID by one and manually check through each edit through Special:Diff/<diff id>. Chenzw  Talk  16:38, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

TY. There may very well have been no edits during the window at all, but I do want to check. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:49, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon

Hello! Sorry that this is in English only, but we are using village pump messaging in order to reach as many language communities as possible. Wrong page? Please fix it here.

This is an invitation to all Wikipedians: Wikimedia Deutschland has been given data space to include Wikipedia content in an upcoming mission to the Moon. (No joke!) We have launched a community discussion about how to do that, because we feel that this is for the global community of editors. Please, join the discussion on Meta-Wiki (and translate this invitation to your language community)! Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 15:35, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Could Talk:Main Page be semi-protected?

Would it be possible to protect the talk page for the main page so those who would not know how to use it could not disrupt it like they've been doing recently? Thanks, << S O M E G A D G E T G E E K >> (talk) 22:21, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm usually hesitant to protect talk pages, but I've semi-protected this one for a week. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:29, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Of all talk pages, no I don't think I would ever protect that talk page. Its probably the only talk page on the wiki that should never be protected. -DJSasso (talk) 11:22, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Template problem

There is a problem with the QD template when three or more reasons are given for QD. Assuming my wait request is honored at Fashionably Late (album), an example of the problem can be seen there. The person who tagged the article for QD selected three criteria (A1, A4, and G1). When editors add the QD template for a single reason, the usual wording is something to the effect of If you think this article should not be deleted, please add {{Wait}} below this message, and then say why on this article's talk page. Please do not remove this notice from pages that you have created yourself. The problem is when three or more criteria are selected as the reason for QD. In that case, one of the criteria is selected, and the message reads like this: If you think this G1 should not be deleted, please add {{Wait}} below this message, and then say why on this G1's talk page. Please do not remove this notice from G1s that you have created yourself. I believe that the template should be edited to prevent this behavior, but I'm not sure what is causing it. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  11:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Of note, this is happening when the template is added via Twinkle, so it might be a Twinkle problem rather than a template problem. I'm not sure if this happens if the template is added manually. I don't know if anyone tags such articles manually. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  11:31, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Etamni: Next time I put an article up for QD with 3 reasons I will attempt to do it manually. Lolcats20 (talk) 11:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Etamni: Test Page this was done manually, and the problem is still there. Lolcats20 (talk) 11:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I just conducted my own tests and found that the problem occurs when template:QD-multiple is used, and it is always the third item in the list. If only two criteria are selected, the notice displays correctly. I've looked at the template code and I think I see the problem, but I would like a more experienced template editor to look at it. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  11:40, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

While it should definitely be fixed, my god people stop at 1 reason, 3 is crazy. Admins who look at it will know if its applicable to others. ;) -DJSasso (talk) 11:52, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I have made the fix, and also fixed a related bug that will trigger when there are *shudder* 4 QD reasons specified. Like what Dj mentioned, please, two QD reasons is generally more than enough. Yes, most QD-able pages meet multiple QD criteria, but there's not much extra benefit in knowing which ones. Chenzw  Talk  12:01, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

We can always ask people in the instructions not to add more than n reasons ... StevenJ81 (talk) 13:28, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Creation of WikiProject Iceland.

The Wikiproject page said to post news of the creation of a wikiproject page, so here it is:

I made the WikiProject Iceland page. Any tips would be appreciated, since this is my first wikiprojects page. --Alicezeppelin (talk) 05:16, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. A lot of project pages on EnWiki have "to-do" lists and the like, so this might be something to add, once things are identified that need to be done. You know, of course, that this is a really small wiki with a small group of active members, so I'm not sure how many people will sign up for this project right away. Good luck! Etamni | ✉ | ✓  04:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistency in rollbacker policy

The way we word our policy on granting rollback is inconsistent between WP:RFP and WP:RBK:

• WP:RFP: "Once autoconfirmed, admins/rollbackers from other projects can be granted rollback without these requirements."
• WP:RBK: "You should have made a lot of changes, preferably showing vandal fighting. If you have rollback elsewhere, or admin rights elsewhere, this requirement is usually not needed. So if you are already a rollbacker or admin elsewhere on the Wikimedia Foundation, you can just ask for it here and it may be granted."

I think it is a bad idea to mention the same kind of point on two different pages, worse still if both allow for the possibility of contradiction, as has been pointed out in a recent request. Considering the precedent that has been established in Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Archives/2015/June/Notdone, Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Archives/2015/November/Notdone, Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Archives/2015/December/Notdone, Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Archives/2016/January/Notdone and Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Archives/2016/February/Notdone, I would like to propose the following changes:

• WP:RFP: remove the entire statement mentioned above, and point requesters to WP:RBK instead for the rollbacker requirements.
• WP:RBK: clarify the statement (changes in bold): "You should have made a lot of changes, with experience in anti-vandalism work. If you have rollback elsewhere, or admin rights elsewhere, the threshold for meeting this requirement is lower. So if you are already a rollbacker or admin on another Wikimedia Foundation project, please mention it in your request and it will be taken into consideration."

--Chenzw  Talk  02:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't see the inconsistency: neither says the right will be granted, only that it might ("can" doesn't mean "will"). However, I agree with the suggested changes. We should never say that any rights will automatically be granted. There's a learning curve here, no matter now much experience a user has elsewhere. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Agree with wording change. Also, while we are mucking about with this particular guideline, I think we should funnel all requests for the permission through Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback. As currently written, WP:RBK also allows interested parties to directly request this right from an admin, or to post a request at the administrator's noticeboard. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  04:23, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with both of Etamni's suggestions suggestions here.

1. Funneling all requests through Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback makes sense. This does not necessarily prevent an administrator from offering the right to someone, but it gives user-initiated requests at least some community vetting.
2. I don't know that the wording is exactly inconsistent, but I think the proposed wording makes things clearer.

I would add, though, that Auntof6 makes a very good point: even for people with advanced rights elsewhere, this wiki has its own way of doing things—for good reasons—and there is a learning curve here. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:31, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I really don't understand why this one feature has had to have the wording discussed so many times lol. No one seems to understand what may and can mean. It isn't inconsistent at all. I have no problem with the change, other than its possibly not as simple. I don't really agree with needing to funnel all the requests, the whole idea with rollbacker is that admins can give it based on their discretion, since there isn't intended to be community discretion on rollbacker requests. The only reason for the rollbacker page really is to make a request when no admin are around to do it. -DJSasso (talk) 17:07, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

The idea behind funneling all of the user-initiated requests through Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback is to make it easier for future prospective Rollbackers to review earlier requests, and get a better understanding of what will or will not suffice for experience and activity levels. If these requests are made on any admin's talk page, or at WP:AN, they will be more difficult for the prospective rollbacker to seek out. This suggestion is not intended to limit an admin's discretion in granting the permission, including those circumstances where an admin initiates the process. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  18:18, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

How are "child unfriendly" topics handled on EN.simplewiki?

How are "child unfriendly" topics handled on EN.simplewiki? For example topics related to violence and sexual themes? Are there particular rules/policies or unofficial practices? WhisperToMe (talk) 19:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: Policies say there isn't any censorship (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#What Wikipedia is not). Thanks, Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 19:08, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

There are no special rules. Articles on these subjects (and all subjects) are to be written from a neutral point of view in order to present information in a straightforward way. Wikipedia is not censored. There can be information and images that may not be suitable for children. Children are part of our target audience because their English skills are still developing, but we do not cater to them. We expect their parents and guardians to control what they do on the internet, including this site. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying the matter. It was really in relation to the efforts to develop the Simple French Wikipedia. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like quite a challenge, WhisperToMe. How are you defining "simple French"? What stage is the Simple French Wikipedia in now? If it's live, I'd be interested in looking at it. If you'd like to know more about the challenges and issues we've had as a simple version of another Wikipedia, feel free to ask on my talk page or email me. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

@Auntof6: The discussion page is here: meta:Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_French_Simple_3. Langcom is deciding whether to give final approval. There is an established simple French version, en:Français fondamental WhisperToMe (talk) 03:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah its very important to remember that children are not the target, they just are a target of the wiki, but more due to a side effect of being simple rather than actively trying to target them. So in saying that we don't censor anything, that is up to a child's parent. -DJSasso (talk) 11:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: I think your project sounds like a great idea. In my opinion, the most important thing is to have a clearly defined standard for articles, with a clear understanding of who the target audience is, and how you will handle articles that don't meet the standard. Also, be aware that a wiki aimed at younger readers will attract a higher-than-normal level of vandalism -- you'll want a bot set up ready to fight as much of it as possible. As for child-unfriendly topics, here we follow the "Wikipedia is not censored" line of thought, but I think you are free to propose standards to (and for) your community that differ from those used here (making sure, of course, that you don't violate any WMF rules). Etamni | ✉ | ✓  04:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I received an off-wiki communication regarding this subject. The person who e-mailed me suggested that if the Simple French Wikipedia targets articles at both younger readers who are native French speakers, as well as adults for whom French is a second language, that individual articles should be tagged to indicate the target audience. (Full disclosure: The person who e-mailed me acknowledged being blocked on this site at this time. I am sharing the idea because I think it has merit, and in fact, I almost made the same suggestion when I wrote the preceding comment above.) Etamni | ✉ | ✓  16:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

That idea was rejected here because it smacks of censorship. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:36, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. If an article were tagged as being written for younger readers, or if there was a tag that indicated that an article was written for adult English (or French) learners, this would imply censorship? It's not clear what you mean by this. As someone who once tutored adult ESL students, I can assure you there is a difference between the materials written for teaching young learners their primary language, and teaching adults a second language. All of the materials are "family friendly" -- we aren't talking about controversial or "adult" subjects -- but the materials themselves are written by professional educators with different learners in mind. In any case, I wasn't proposing that we adopt that system here on Simple but that WhisperToMe might consider the idea for a Simple French Wikipedia. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  18:22, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that once an article is tagged for one then it either couldn't be or wouldn't be used for the other. Really if they are going to do it, they should do it as we do, target ESL adults and only catch the children as a side effect of being simpler language. That being said, I don't actually see that project ever getting off the ground. WhisperToMe has been pushing for it for years, and the language committee is pretty set on never creating another simple language wiki. If anything I think we are a pretty good example of why another one probably shouldn't be opened. What they do need to start thinking about is if they could add some sort of way to the main language wikis with a simple tab or something on each page to see a simple version of the article, separate communities will never have big enough communities to be effective. -DJSasso (talk) 18:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I find it a bit perplexing since on one hand Langcom had stated in 2011 that other languages can be eligible for simple Wikis and that nobody said that simple.FRwiki is definitely canned, but on the other hand nobody has opened the test wiki after all this time, and therefore simple.FRwiki is unable to move forward. Anyhow I wouldn't mind if the simple wiki was folded into EN.wiki as a "side tab". I wouldn't mind if a simple French version was started within the French Wikipedia rather than as a separate project. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:08, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Is the word etymology a "Simple English" word?

While editing our article for Boise, Idaho, I added a section for the origin of the name. Another editor changed the words Origin of name to the word Etymology. Of course, I realize that etymology means "the study of the origin and historical development of a word." The question for the community is whether this term is simple enough for Simple English Wikipedia? The words name and word appear on the Ogden basic word list, and the word origin appears in the expanded version of the word list. So Origin of name or Origin of word are both perfectly simple section headers. Etymology is not on any simple word list, so I don't think we can call it a simple term. In other sections, we prefer to use other websites instead of external links, and we have other conventions where we differ from English Wikipedia and other Wikipedia projects in order to make our articles easier to read for English learners. I am proposing that we add etymology to the list of words that should be simplified when used as a section header, and that this should be reflected in our version of WP:MOS. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  17:44, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Generally the idea is to use the simplest option possible while still maintaining the meaning. Origin of the name is definitely simpler than Etymology. You could possibly push it further to Begining of name but that might change the meaning slightly. I don't think we really need to codify it anywhere, we just do it as it isn't a standard heading found on every page like "other websites", but I suppose there is no reason we couldn't other than it will make MOS pages that much more complex to start listing every such thing. That change was only made by someone who has edited here for 6 days, probably just not aware of how simple things should be. -DJSasso (talk) 17:58, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

We have the article Etymology, so usually it could be used with a link. However, since we're not supposed to have links in headings, I'd also go with "Origin of the name", "Where the name came from", or something similar. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:04, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

The word could be unlinked in a heading, but used linked in the text. 'Origin of the name' as a subhead is also good, but definitely not anything which smacks of baby-talk. If the topic is academic, then its language is bound to reflect that, even though it is simplified. We have different types of page content, and the language needs to fit the occasion. An article should have an appropriate style for the content, as well as the readership. It should not switch noticeably from one style to another. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Template: {native name|ar|...} does not work

• {native name|ar| جمهورية جيبوتي |italic=no} ar (= Arabic language) seems not to work. RESULT: (language?)
  See:

Republic of Djibouti جمهورية جيبوتي  (Arabic) République de Djibouti  (French) Gabuutih Ummuuno  (Afar) Jamhuuriyadda Jabuuti  (Somali)
Flag
ISO 3166 code	DJ

Jumhūriyyat Jībūtī Djibouti is a [country] on the eastern coast of Africa. Djibouti gained its independence on June 27, 1977.
but: Infobox country
Koninkrijk België  (Dutch)
Royaume de Belgique  (French)
Königreich Belgien  (German)
END --129.69.140.138 (talk) 14:40, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Chenzw  Talk  15:24, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

A WikiProject Astronomy for Simple English Wikipedia?

I've created a Simple English version of Wikiproject Astronomy, and two task forces, one for dealing with Solar System related articles and one for Astronomical objects. Thoughts? Davidbuddy9 Talk  20:46, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a good project to have: good luck with it! Be aware that on this Wikipedia, WikiProjects are unofficial and are managed completely in userspace. This means that, among other things, we don't use WikiProject templates on articles or their talk pages. If you have any questions about how these projects are managed, feel free to ask. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:30, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah I realised that after I made the templates :( But I think this is will be useful for Simple Wikipedia as Simple Wikipedia has very low number of Astronomy articles. Davidbuddy9 Talk  23:23, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

A new "Welcome" dialog

Hello everyone. This is a heads-up about a change which has just been announced in Tech News: Add the "welcome" dialog (with button to switch) to the wikitext editor.

In a nutshell, later this week this will provide a one-time "Welcome" message in the wikitext editor which explains that anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. The user can then start editing in the wikitext editor right away, or switch to the visual editor. (This is the equivalent of an already existing welcome message for visual editor users, which suggests the option to switch to the wikitext editor. If you have already seen this dialog in the visual editor, you will not see the new one in the wikitext editor.)

• I want to make sure that, although users will see this dialog only once, they can read it in their language as much as possible. Please read the instructions if you can help with that.

• I also want to underline that the dialog does not change in any way current site-wide and personal configurations of the visual editor. Nothing changes permanently for users who chose to hide the visual editor in their Preferences or for those who don't use it anyway, or for wikis where it's still a Beta Feature, or for wikis where certain groups of users don't get the visual editor tab, etc.
  • There is a slight chance that you see a few more questions than usual about the visual editor. Please refer people to the documentation or to the feedback page, and feel free to ping me if you have questions too!
• Finally, I want to acknowledge that, while not everyone will see that dialog, many of you will; if you're reading this you are likely not the intended recipients of that one-time dialog, so you may be confused or annoyed by it—and if this is the case, I'm truly sorry about that. This message also avoids that you have to explain the same thing over and over again—just point to this section. Please feel free to cross-post this message at other venues on this wiki if you think it will help avoid that users feel caught by surprise by this change.

If you want to learn more, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133800; if you have feedback or think you need to report a bug with the dialog, you can post in that task (or at mediawiki.org if you prefer).

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 16:52, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm Back

Yes, I am back. PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 00:50, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
P.S. I also need a refresher.

Looking back on my actions, I realize that maybe I wasn't all too helpful. Maybe next time I won't do so much crazy stuff. I am going to start over. Of course, I'm going to keep this account. Just please think of me as a new person. This time, I will try to be helpful. PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 00:56, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Nothing much has changed that needs to be noted. Take a look at Category:Wikipedia policies if you need to refresh your memory. Chenzw  Talk  01:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind that your topic bans are still in effect. If you violate them, you may be blocked. --Auntof6 (talk)

@Auntof6:How can I get them lifted? PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 21:48, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Also, what are theey again @Auntof6? I forgot. PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 21:54, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Let's discuss that on your talk page. I will answer there. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:27, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Welcome back. --Lithorien ^{Talk • Changes} 12:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Chenzw and Lithorien:. PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 21:49, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Having trouble

I am trying to make a page creator for my user page to make it easier for creating sandbox pages. However, I am having trouble. It is at the bottom, and it is too short. I want to make it fit the whole page. Could someone help me? P.S. I borrowed the code from the Article Wizard Creator. —This unsigned comment was added by PokestarFan (talk • changes) 23:14, 16 May 2016‎ (UTC)

Example

I deleted the example because it might be disrupting the content. PokestarFan (talk) (My Contribs) 22:21, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Code

<td><InputBox>
type=create
placeholder=Page Name
prefix=Special:MyPage/
editintro=Template:Article wizard/draft editintro
buttonlabel=Create new page
</InputBox></td>

Reply: Try this:

<td><InputBox>
type=create
default=User:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/sandbox/ReplaceThisWithNewSandboxName
buttonlabel=Create new page
width=50
</InputBox></td>

• Note: remove the <td> and </td> tags. Also, copy the code as you see it here, without other tags that might appear in other views of this page. As written, this will create new sandboxes within a directory named sandbox. This makes it easier to find things later when a number of subpages have been created. I strongly recommend that this be employed from within a registered account, lest a change in IP addresses causes the content to become difficult to find. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  06:29, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• Additional note: The example may need to be deleted as it appears that it will keep moving down the page as new content is added. If this continues when a new topic is added to WP:ST, then it will need to be deleted unless someone knows how to pin it into the section where the code is. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  06:48, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
• Additional note for PokestarFan: Please make sure your use of this code fits within your current topic ban before you use it. I've answered the question because this might be of interest to numerous editors, but this should not be interpreted as meaning that it is OK in your particular case to create pages this way -- that is up to your mentors and/or the admins to decide. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  06:49, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• You should not be doing this. No-one needs a code to create sandbox pages. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:44, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Autopatrolled not created. 192.163.234.80 (talk) 03:50, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

you are on the wrong wikipedia if you want autopatrolled status. Etimena (talk) 04:14, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

• Please be more specific. It is unclear what you are asking for. Autopatrolled status is granted after a registered user has been active for at least four days and has made ten or more edits. As an IP user, your IP account won't be eligible for autopatrolled status. Even if it were, your first post from that IP was the one above, and as of right now, that is your only post. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  04:44, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@Etamni: You are talking about autoconfirmed, not autopatrolled. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:12, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, call me half-asleep! I've stricken part of my comment above. Nonetheless, the status is still not available to IP users, so the user should be more specific in the comment. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  05:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

This IP (and related edits to this page regarding autopatrolled and researcher user rights) is part of an attempt to evade a global block. This "request" was not intended to make sense. Chenzw  Talk  05:33, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Autopatrolled. 83.220.239.92 (talk) 06:38, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Chenzw, do you know who this person might be? Etimena (talk) 18:46, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

No idea. I think this editor edits anonymously only. Chenzw  Talk  03:11, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for extra eyes

I wonder if one or two colleagues might have a look at Hebrew calendar#Details. I just added this section, and wouldn't mind a second opinion on factors related to Simple English. Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:35, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Cats for singles by year

I think that singles should be categorised by year they were released, as well as the year the song was released, which is often different. Jim Michael (talk) 09:22, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe, although this could add a layer of complexity in our category structure. People could get confused about where to place song articles. Sometimes the word "single" is used interchangeably (although incorrectly) with "song". If we're going to have both sets of categories, we should define them better, such as with more specific category names. Even a category like "2015 songs" doesn't say if that's the year the song was written, the year it was released, the year it was copyrighted, or what.--Auntof6 (talk) 09:38, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Being simple doesn't mean we should be wrong or incomplete. I think 2016 singles, 2015 singles etc. and 2016 songs, 2015 songs is easy to understand. However, we can make things clearer by writing a brief description on both sets of cats. Jim Michael (talk) 09:54, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

I actually disagree with Jim Michael on this. We do not have, and do not need, as elaborate a category structure here as some other wikis have. I'd rather have one set of categories (xxxx songs) and let people categorize them as they will. And if we need to take a stand on regularizing the categories, then let's define them as songs and year of first release of any type and be done. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:42, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

As things are, many singles are in the wrong year of songs, because singles are being categorised by year of release despite the fact that singles are often released during a different year to the album they're from. Having songs cat and singles cats avoids this problem. A single released this year from an album released last year will be in the 2015 songs and 2016 singles cats. That's an improvement as well as a clarification. It was seeing that many singles were in the wrong year that made me start creating singles cats. Without both sets of cats existing, many people will wrongly put singles cats in the wrong years - for example 'correcting' a 2015 song released as a single this year into 2016 songs. Not all notable songs are released as singles and not all singles are from notable albums, so they won't all be in both singles and songs cats. Jim Michael (talk) 19:10, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree with StevenJ81 above and here's why. I really want to create an article for Vera Lynn's song "We'll Meet Again'. No matter how many times it has been featured in other media or sung, it is still just a '1939 song' and a 'WWII song'. To me the word 'single' is jargon for audio recordings of a certain length and 'song' is a basic word. For an extreme example of how confusing things can become, please look at the categories I have just hidden in Last Christmas: [1] If we did that article justice and had more than a few sentences, we would need all those categories under this system. It however, is still just a '1984 song' and a 'Christmas song' and probably one giving credit to either 'Wham' or 'George Michael' as creators. Fylbecatulous talk 21:53, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Single is neither jargon nor complicated. It's a well-understood, basic term. Jim Michael (talk) 22:58, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

In simple english it is complicated cause the word has multiple meanings, any word that has multiple meanings is generally considered to be a complex word. -DJSasso (talk) 11:19, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

If the issue is the word, then we could replace it with a different word. It seems strange to not categorise articles about singles by the year they were released as well as by the year the song was released. Jim Michael (talk) 16:17, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I actually think that's not the main issue here. If "single" is complex enough such that it should not appear in articles, why then does {{Infobox single}} exist as it is? Chenzw  Talk  16:23, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

That infobox links to the article Single (music). Articles that use the word should link there, too. The word may be well understood among music aficionados, but it is jargon and it is ambiguous without context, so it is complex, at least in this meaning. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:47, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I think that most people know what is meant by a music single. If the term should be linked as single, then that should be done on every article of a single, whether the single cats are to exist or not. If it's linked, there's no ambiguity. Jim Michael (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Just remember we write articles here for people who we assume don't know English so a specialized mean of a word like that can be confusing. And yes, it should be probably. -DJSasso (talk) 18:24, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

We can in no way assume that every reader knows the meaning of 'single'. It is definately slang, cant, or jargon, excluding those outside the world of music. (Ask someone young what 'stuck in the groove' means) In the 1960's singles were known as hit records. Pete Townshend famously said in the early days of The Who: "we can't go on making hit records forever". Singles were released to increase the sales of albums, with the hope they would be 'hits'. Fylbecatulous talk 02:59, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

An article about a song from an album which has been released as a single should state which year the album was released and which year the single was released. When the relevant info is in the article, with the terms linked, the cats are helpful and aren't ambiguous. Jim Michael (talk) 05:23, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

• Music in general is full of date categories. Example: written music pre-20th century is described by author, date of manuscript, details of first and other notable performances. After about 1900, recording methods change the scenario. There is date of sheet music publication (very important in the music industry as the basis of composers' royalties). Then notable recordings, date of. Finally, in modern popular music the same (or closely similar) recordings may be presented for sale in various formats. All this information might appear on a well-written page. However, I would not have categories for any data which is essentially trivial in the long term. And we need to be very clear what is meant by "release" or "format". We should not add categories just because we have data. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:39, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

What year a single is released isn't trivial. If an article is about a single that was released in 2015, from a 2014 album, then both those facts are relevant in the long term as well as the short term, so why would both cats not be valid? Jim Michael (talk) 08:51, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

History Deleted for Wikipedia Contributions

The history for my contributions to Wikipedia over the years has been deleted. I just noticed this when I looked at the Eddie Hurley page, one that I had created a few years ago, and there is no mention of me having been associated with the page or any other. What's going on with this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Intassage (talk • contribs) 05:10, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

You are on the wrong Wikipedia. This is Simple English Wikipedia. Your changes were done on English Wikipedia: see here. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:33, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Removing tags

When a page is tagged (for example, {{unreferenced}}), and an editor fixes the problem, is that same editor allowed to remove the tag? I thought the answer was no, because for example, an editor might think they simplified a {{complex}} page that other editors still find complex. So I don't tend to remove tags on pages I try to fix. But the result seems to be that a lot of those pages stay in the maintenance categories with the tags on, for example, still saying {{unreferenced}} when there are refs in the article. Guidance? Thanks. Fuhvah (talk) 21:25, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

In general, yes, you can remove a maintenance tag if you've fixed the problem. The one for being complex can be tricky, as you describe. If you're not sure you've sufficiently fixed the issue, you could ask someone else for a second opinion. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:46, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Ok, thank you! Fuhvah (talk) 18:34, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

You can remove any tag at any time if you disagree with it still being relevant (or ever being relevant for that matter). It is not intended to be any harder to remove a tag than it is to add one. So yes by all means please please please remove tags if you think you have fixed the page because no one ever wants to remove them and once added often become permanent which is a huge problem. -DJSasso (talk) 15:38, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

On the whole, I agree with DJSasso. But Auntof6 makes a good point, particularly about the one for being complex, especially for a new editor here. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Well yeah of course, if you are unsure you can always ask. I just wanted to make sure it was clear that if you are confident then don't hesitate to remove. -DJSasso (talk) 17:30, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed change to Template:Uw-test1

• Background: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Twinkle_discrepancy

Currently, {{uw-test1}} returns warnings of slightly different wording, depending on whether a parameter is passed to it (title of vandalized article). Most user warnings follow the "Twinkle workflow" of clicking on the user talk link (which Twinkle automatically rewrites to pass on the article title) on the "rollback successful" page, so the discrepancy was seldom noticed. Shall we standardize it to say "trying things out"? Chenzw  Talk  09:54, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: what if I wish it said something different? I agree thank you for experimenting with the page is a bit difficult but what exactly does trying things out mean as a phrase for someone with a limited grasp of English? Coming to mind are 'trying out for an audition, trying on a dress, trying it out for 30 days free, trying to catch a criminal, trying to find a lost cat..." All these are slang for verbage more specific (fill in your own blank :)) Because next, the wording is your test worked. We use "change source" as the action one takes to make an edit. Where we have Thank you for trying things out on Wikipedia, why not Thank you for trying out a change on Wikipedia or Thank you for trying to change the page Grumpy Cat . Fylbecatulous talk 14:49, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Speaking from my ongoing experience as an English tutor to ESL students, it would be good to avoid using phrasal verbs such as "try out". Phrasal verbs are one of the trickiest things for non-native speakers to understand. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:46, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

So yes, that actualy agrees with what I am trying to express, although in my usual garbled explanations. ツ It is the vague phrase "trying things out" that bothers me, My examples were still using "trying to change". So are we left with 'thank you for experimenting with..." ? Could we say "thank you for testing a change to the page Pink cat". or "thank you for testing a change to Wikipedia". ? Thanks, Fylbecatulous talk 12:58, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

What about "thankyou for changing Wikipedia...." --Peterdownunder (talk) 23:14, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Kinda comes back to thanking someone for breaking the rules. Since this is a level one warning for making a test edit on an article page, how about something like, "I am happy to see your interest in learning to make changes to Wikipedia. You may not have known this, but test changes should be made at . . . " — This unsigned comment was added by Etamni (talk • changes) at 01:26, 1 June 2016 (UTC).

Notability guideline for geographic places

As a result of a recent RfD discussion, I decided to open a direct discussion on this topic at WT:GEOLAND. The community's comments are requested and will be most welcome. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Making changes

When I edited an article (Montenegro), there was a rectangle on the meta-page. It had a notch apparently referring to a warning triangle. Inside the rectangle, there was a short sentence saying something like "you have one message." When I clicked on the rectangle and then on the triangle, I didn't see a message. What is it all about? Another thing I saw for the first time was a pulsing blue circle. What is that? I think a totally unexplained icon like that is a bad idea. Kdammers (talk) 12:14, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I can't tell what you're talking about. What meta-page do you mean? I don't know if it's related, but I think there's been a software change in the last few days: I'm seeing something different on history pages for changes since my last visit. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

@Kdammers: You were using the visual editor. The blue pulsing circle, if you click it, will explain the icon that it is hovering over. I think the idea there is to draw your attention to the icon -- which may not be explained very well elsewhere -- and teach you about it. Was it near the one that looks like two links in a chain? That is the interlink icon. As far as the notice that you have a message, I was able to replicate that. I suspect it is a bug that will soon be fixed. I don't think that anybody here is actively involved in development of the visual editor, so it is unclear if your message here will be received by anyone who can help clarify the issue further. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  08:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Maths fraction glitch

I noticed a glitch in the way fractions are displayed on Electric current: V=I/R. The glitch occurs on English wiki version as well. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:02, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I can't find anything wrong with the fraction there or on Ohm's law (I set "MathML with SVG or PNG fallback" in my preferences). This could be related to this issue that was discussed on EN. I have purged the server's cache for both pages. Does it still glitch out? Chenzw  Talk  02:31, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed edit to Template:Unblock reviewed

See the talk page for details. Krett12 (talk) 16:16, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon: voting has begun

Hello, after six weeks of community discussion about Wikipedia to the Moon, there are now 10 different proposals for content for the mission. Starting today, you can vote for them on Meta-Wiki, and decide what we will work on: a Wikipedia canon, different lists, the Moon in 300 languages, an astronomy editathon, featured articles, articles about technology, endangered things, or DNA-related topics. You can even vote against community involvement. Voting is open until 24 June. Sorry that this message is again in English only, but we are using village pumps to reach as many communities as possible, so that everyone knows they can vote. Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 15:31, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

"Bern voter" in edit validation?

I just made an edit to the article on Sir Ian Percival. When I made the edit it brought up those funny little letters you have to write in the box to prove you are not a robot. The word it displayed was "bernvoter". I do not believe it is appropriate that political messages should be broadcast through these validation procedures, it damages wikipedia's credibility and raises questions about the judgment of the staff or managers in question who wrote the code.

I've saved a screenshot of the word in question if that will help

5.80.255.17 (talk) 19:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

That happened on the English Wikipedia...not here on the Simple Wikipedia. Only (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think we *have* edit validation. Krett12 (talk) 20:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Can someone please move Spervising_producer

It has a typo. I'd do it myself but my new account hasn't been autoconfirmed yet. Computer Fizz (talk) 22:10, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I deleted it as a redirect based on an implausible typo. Just make a new redirect at supervising producer if you think one is needed. Only (talk) 12:22, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Template help needed

Template {{singlechart}} isn't working right in some cases. I've see it in several articles. An example is Luxurious, where all the uses of the template for Billboard-related chart info are giving the message "ERROR: Billboard chart was invoked without providing an artist id. Artist id is a mandatory field for this call". I looked at the enwiki copy of the template and saw that the template there said "artist id" is no longer required.

It looks like our copy of the template might just need updating. I tried, but wasn't sure enough of what I was doing to proceed with it. We can't just do a straight copy of the enwiki version, because our version has been customized, at least in some of the categories that are used. Can someone take a look and see if you can figure out what to do? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:55, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, how much has our version been customized? "Customized" as in, changing some wording and categories, or "customized" as in, "changed a notable portion of how it works and what it does". In the first one, we *can* just copy enwiki. In the second one, I have no clue. Computer Fizz (talk) 04:59, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't know. I haven't looked at the entire template. In any case, even in the first case, we would NOT just copy enwiki, because that would wipe out the customization. We have quite a few customized templates, and I don't think anyone who went to the effort of doing the customization, not matter how small, would appreciate having it undone. It might work OK, but it wouldn't be what we need here. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:08, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, that's not really what I meant. but in any case, we probably shouldn't anyway. Another option is to not have a huge flashing message and just add it to a category. It's not a permanent solution, but could work for now until we find the real problem. Computer Fizz (talk) 05:13, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can think of a lot of options, but I'd like to have the right one. Let's wait and see if someone else can help. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:24, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

The problem is due to the transition to the usage of {{BillboardID}}. That template is essentially a whole list of artist IDs (eg. {{BillboardID|Fun}} will give us Template:BillboardID). I have modified {{singlechart}} to call {{BillboardID}} instead. You can still pass artistid to the template, but that is no longer recommended (see next paragraph for caveats) and will categorise the article under the hidden cat Category:Singlechart with deprecated parameters.

Every time a new artist is introduced for the first time to this Wikipedia, editors will need to remember to update {{BillboardID}} and add a new entry for the artist. Calling {{BillboardID}} with a name which does not exist in the template's records will categorise the article under Category:BillboardID errors, and result in a non-functional ref. I will be updating the template documentation to reflect these changes. Chenzw  Talk  09:43, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Welp, looks like the problem is worse than I thought. Due to changes in the website's URL for chart history, most (if not all) ref links on this Wikipedia are non-functional (be it with the old or new template). I will need to take more time to look into this. Chenzw  Talk  09:57, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Alright, most of the template calls should be working now. There are currently some issues with "non-existent" charts that were not programmed into the template, which I will add over the next few days. Give me another ping if there are more wacky issues regarding this template. Chenzw  Talk  14:33, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@Chenzw: Thanks very much! --Auntof6 (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Cross-IP vandalism

Hello everyone. Just a reminder that the school year is wrapping up, and that means that unconstructive editors will be all over. Be prepared for home IPs to make bad edits. Just a reminder :) Krett12 (talk) 23:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding!––مجتبیٰ Talk! 09:37, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Can I change line in template to make it work like on En Wikipedia?

Hi~ I want to make a change to a template, but I don't want to break anything, so I'm asking here first. Article Solifugae shows error:

"Expression error: Unexpected < operator."

If I remove "Late" from "Late Carboniferous", it works.

I think {{Template:Fossil_range}} uses info from {{Template:Period start}}, and a line containing "late carboniferous" was removed from that last template in edit Special:Diff/4979484, so now it only contains "carboniferous". I don't know why it was removed, and I'm not familiar with the topic.

However, "late carboniferous" is in the En Wikipedia template, where the en:Solifugae article works fine. Also, changing that line back works in "preview", but I'm not sure about other articles, etc.

So, my question is: Can I change that line on the Simple template, or will it break things?

Thanks for any advice! Zeniff (talk) 01:40, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

• We adjust our taxoboxes manually. On many occasions we try to avoid unnecessary complications on this wiki, and manual adjustments can be used to make the boxes as simple as possible. There's no percentage in making science look any more scary that it already is! Simplest is to put a note on the talk page of any biology article which needs attention, and I will pick it up. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:31, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense, good point! I didn't realize there was more than one way to solve it. And thank you for fixing the article! It's a good example and I'll keep in mind and follow your suggestion next time:) Zeniff (talk) 02:54, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Extremely minor glitch not causing any real problems, but worth pointing out.

I signed into my old account to fix something elsewhere, and when I came back here, I was still in my old account. I thanked someone for an edit, realized that, and went into my new account again. When I tried to thank for the second time, instead of the javascript pop-up, I got the regular old window. What might be causing this? Computer Fizz (talk) 04:10, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed changes to AGF warning template(s)

A discussion is currently ongoing at Template talk:Uw-agf3. It would be nice if more people could weigh in on this. Chenzw  Talk  03:30, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Want to make deleted page back

HELLO! Im "مجتبیٰ" but now made a cleanstart under this new username. One of my deleted article "Gadri", was deleted by Macdonald-ross due to lack of notibility, now i want to put more references to that article, also to put 1 external link. I want my article "Gadri" back. Please help.~MMGJ~08:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

"Brexit": the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union (EU)

Hi, all. Just a note: although it looks like the UK has voted to leave the EU, the actual separation doesn't happen immediately. It will take time for planning and implementation. Feel free to make edits talking about the result of the vote, but please don't make edits saying that the separation is complete until it really happens.

We've already had at least one bad edit that was apparently due to a misunderstanding of the vote. An edit took the UK out of a list of countries in Europe. Europe and the European Union are two different things. The UK may leave the EU, but it can't leave Europe.

To those of you who already understood this, thank you for bearing with me. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:26, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Let me add that right at the moment, the UK is still a member of the EU. The whole disengagement process is supposed to start in the late summer or autumn, and can take two years or more. Certainly for the moment it would be incorrect to remove the UK from such a list, although appropriate in text to say that the UK has voted to leave. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:45, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Steven, that is what I said, except that it will never be correct to remove the UK from the list I mentioned. The list was of countries in Europe, not countries in the EU. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:44, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Steven is correct. Since no member state has ever left the European Union before this is a very uncertain process that may years to sort out. Any changes to articles removing the UK from the EU would be incorrect until the process is completed—if it is completed. User:Rus793 (talk) 14:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Rus, isn't that what I said? --Auntof6 (talk) 16:44, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, except that the vote leads the UK into an unprecedented process. User:Rus793 (talk) 17:31, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, yes, but I didn't mean this to be a general discussion of the event, just some comments on what our reaction should and shouldn't be. I'm not sure the fact that it's unprecedented changes that. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:24, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Also adding on because a recent edit introduced this: David Cameron is still Prime Minister of the UK, contrary to what some other (misleading/inaccurate) news headlines/reports may claim. Relevant parts of what he said to reporters outside his office:

“	I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination ... in my view we should aim to have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative Party conference in October.	”
—David Cameron

--Chenzw  Talk  16:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

And I should note, that the referendum wasn't binding so there is still talk that they won't leave period. -DJSasso (talk) 17:13, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

That's hopeful. When/how would it be decided whether to leave? --Auntof6 (talk) 18:24, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

The referendum was an official part of the government's program of legislation, announced in the Queen's Speech on 27 May 2015. There is really not the slightest chance of the result being put aside. The resignation of the Prime Minister is itself a recognition that the result cannot be ignored. It is true that appropriate laws need to be enacted by Parliament, and the negotiations may be long and difficult. In my opinion this is the greatest watershed in UK politics since the 1945 general election. The number of voters was greater than in the last general election. Macdonald-ross (talk) 20:28, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I read a commentator who suggested that Parliament might choose not to enact the laws necessary to put the results of the referendum in force. The commentator suggested that the referendum was not binding—which it technically is not—because ultimately de facto sovereignty rests in Parliament alone. So the commentator suggested that Parliament might choose to take a different path "for the good of the country."

Technically, the commentator is correct. But this would create an incredible constitutional crisis in the UK, and the fact that the Prime Minister resigned clearly indicates that he and his Government are not going to be responsible for creating a constitutional crisis of that sort. So ultimately, Mac is right. The result cannot be ignored, and while the negotiations may be long and difficult, the result is going to stand. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh I don't think it will be ignored. But what is likely to happen is that it will be used as leverage to get a better deal in the EU. We will leave or else etc. A lot of what I have been reading and hearing is that it is very unlikely at the end of the day that they will leave. Especially if leaving means losing Scotland and its valuable oil deposits. -DJSasso (talk) 12:44, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Help required

Hi all, I have been a regular user and contributor to Wikipedia, though I agree that due to work-related preoccupations I am not abreast with all the technical terminology here. However, as I have read and learnt and contributed quite a bit at Wikipedia.

I have been very happy with the way the community Wikipedia helps and contribute and help each other learn. However, as with all real places, this place also has few moderators who knows only to push and not read.

One such ardent moderator I had to deal with is Dharmadhyaksha regarding India Trade Promotion Organisation article. I had nominated the article for Wikipedia:Good articles and had received positive feedback from [few].

The story started with Dharmadhyaksha [[2]] few changes in the India Trade Promotion Organisation article which I happily did and requested Dharmadhyaksha to review again. Dharmadhyaksha started pronouncing random objections which were far from fact. For instance, citations were questioned without reading them (they were genuine and verifiable web-links) and writing uncilised language at my [page].

I [again] to review the article in good faith. but met with [abuse]

I again reiterate that Wikipedia is a shared space for knowledge and if I am willing to contribute and willing to provide valid verifiable sources, why should I be bullied by such moderators like Dharmadhyaksha? The page India Trade Promotion Organisation is already having huge reliable, nuetral and verifiable content with about 50 citations. — This unsigned comment was added by Ola.saurabh (talk • changes) at 09:40, 1 July 2016‎.

I'm afraid you're on the wrong Wikipedia. The links you give are to pages on English Wikipedia. This is Simple English Wikipedia. Both are Wikipedias, but they are separate projects. You need to follow up on English Wikipedia on this matter. I'm sorry we can't help. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:50, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Compact Links coming soon to this wiki

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Hello, I wanted to give a heads up about an upcoming feature for this wiki which you may seen already in the Tech News. Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). This will be enabled as a feature in the coming week for all users, which can be turned on or off using a preference setting. We look forward to your feedback and please do let us know if you have any questions or concern. Details about Compact Language Links can be read in the project documentation. Thanks. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team: --Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon: invitation to edit

Three weeks ago, you were invited to vote on how to take Wikipedia articles to the Moon. Community voting is over and the winning idea is to send all ‘’featured articles and lists’’ to the Moon. This decision means that, starting today, Wikipedians from all language communities are warmly invited to intensively work on their best articles and lists, and submit them to Wikipedia to the Moon. The central site to coordinate between communities will be Meta-Wiki. You will find an overview and more information there. Hopefully, we will be able to represent as many languages as possible, to show Wikipedia’s diversity. Please feel kindly invited to edit on behalf of your community and tell us about your work on featured content!

Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 14:10, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

A request

Dear users of the simple English Wikipedia, I have a little question for you. As you know (maybe) there is Vikidia, a kind of Wikipedia for and by childern. I two years ago the English Vikidia is created. I'm working on this Vikidia to make it populair in several English-speaking countries. But I need help. There's a lot that has to be done. We have to make portals for users, readers, parents and teachers with information about Vikidia, I need people who can write articles and explain to users how everything works. I ask the Simple English Wikipedia community to help.

There is also an advantage for the Simple English Wikipedia. A lot of child users can change from wiki if the feel to old for Vikidia. My meaning was not to make advertisement. I hope some users will help, here's a link: en.vikidia.org. Yours sincerely, Mike.Helden (talk) 15:31, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Redirect destination of Occupied Kashmir

I brought this up on the redirect's talk page a few days ago, but since it is a redirect, my talk page edit probably has been buried... please weigh in on Talk:Occupied Kashmir regarding a proposed rename! Chenzw  Talk  16:20, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references. Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.

Recent changes

The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.

The single edit tab feature combines the "Change" and "Change source" tabs into a single "Change" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.

Future changes

The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

m:User:Elitre (WMF), 17:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Twinkle seems to be down

I'm not seeing the things that Twinkle usually gives me, so I'm assuming it's not working for some reason. If you need to leave warning messages while it's down (yes, that's possible!), many of the templates needed are listed at Wikipedia:User talk page warnings. You might want to check the documentation for an individual template to make sure you include all necessary parameters. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:15, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Down for me too, makes me wonder how I ever got along without it.--Peterdownunder (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

As well for me. Alas. I really want to scold an IP at the moment for some format tinkering. One change was done a second time. But it is probably not badly intended, so I will just comment conversationally in my edit summaries. Fylbecatulous talk 23:16, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Welp, looks like it was my earlier bugfix that introduced another syntax error... I have done the fix. Sorry for the inconvenience. Chenzw  Talk  02:18, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Don't you just hate when that happens? What was your earlier bugfix trying to fix? --Auntof6 (talk) 02:34, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I was fixing an issue when an editor tags a redirect for RfD (with the intention of nominating the redirect itself). Twinkle would previously end up tagging the redirect target: Special:Diff/5433684. Chenzw  Talk  02:59, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I am always pleased that we have editors who not only understand this technical stuff, but who know how to fix it when it breaks. Thanks for your work on it.--Peterdownunder (talk) 04:13, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I have a very love/hate relationship with that very situation.... I catch those mistakes (and others) for a living so they keep me employed...but they are as annoying as heck. -DJSasso (talk) 13:29, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

That said, it was an embarrassing mistake to be making. I should have duplicated the page and made changes there, before committing to the live wiki-wide version. Chenzw  Talk  13:31, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Compact Language Links enabled in this wiki today

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). Based on several factors, this shorter list of languages is expected to be more relevant for them and valuable for finding similar content in a language known to them. More information about compact language links can be found in the documentation.

From today onwards, compact language links has been enabled as the default listing of interlanguage links on this wiki. However, using the button at the bottom, you will be able to see a longer list of all the languages the article has been written in. The setting for this compact list can be changed by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages

The compact language links feature has been tested extensively by the Wikimedia Language team, which developed it. However, in case there are any problems or other feedback please let us know on the project talk page. It is to be noted that on some wikis the presence of an existing older gadget that was used for a similar purpose may cause an interference for compact language list. We would like to bring this to the attention of the admins of this wiki. Full details are on this phabricator ticket. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team:--Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 03:10, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistency in rollbacker policy, redux

I don't think our previous discussion on this was resolved, so I have copied it from the archive to Wikipedia talk:Rollback feature. Please continue to comment there. Since my interpretation of the guideline (it's a guideline, not a policy) was apparently considered so far off that another editor saw fit to reverse a decision I made on one request, I don't plan to process any more requests until this issue is resolved. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:13, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Helpful things to do when you create a new article (or work on an old one)

Here are some easy things that would improve a lot of our articles:

• Images: Add an image from Wikimedia Commons. If the article has an infobox, you might be able to include it in that infobox. If not, a good place to put it is usually at the very top of the article (unless the image is more relevant to a specific section). You can even put a "gallery" (an assortment of images) in an article. If you're not familiar with Wikimedia Commons, take a look to see what it has to offer.
• Sister project links: Include links to information in sister projects. This could include a Wikimedia Commons category for the subject, or a page in another sister project. For a list of possible sister projects, look at the "Sister projects" section near the bottom of our main page. Category:Sister project templates contains templates that can be used for this. The documentation for those templates may have information on where to put them in an article, and there's also information at en:WP:MOSSIS.
• Interwiki links: Link an article with the corresponding articles in other Wikipedias. This is now done through Wikidata but you don't have to go to Wikidata to take care of it. I have some instructions here on how to do this. Those instructions might look a little long, but it's not that bad when you actually do it. It's good to take care of this any time you bring an article here from another Wikipedia.

If you have questions on any of this, feel free to ask. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Should we remove patroller and rollbacker rights from long-inactive users?

I've started a discussion here. Feel free to comment. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Undelete

Could someone please undelete my user page?

More details please.--Peterdownunder (talk) 00:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. (By the way, this request belonged at WP:AN, not here.) Please remember to sign your posts. @Peterdownunder: His userpage was deleted a while back. In the meantime, what people saw there was coming from his meta user page. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense now :). --Peterdownunder (talk) 03:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Achraf Baznani

Hi there!

I introduced on the Achraf Baznani page some information about plagiarism with reliable references. An IP deleted those infos.

I usually work on WP:fr, and we had lots of problems with the same pages... Could someone check it? I'm not very comfortable with the english wikisyntax (it took me nearly half an hour to add two lines and their reference^^).

Best regards,
Heddryin ^[🔊] 03:51, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Removal of fraction symbols from MediaWiki:Edittools

Per en:MOS:FRAC, specific Unicode fraction characters are discouraged from use on-wiki. Due to the limited choices of "special" fraction characters available, it also leads to issues with one article potentially containing differing renderings of fractions:

• Unicode: ½, ¼, (specific 22/7 character not available in Unicode)
• MathML: ${\tfrac {1}{2}}$, ${\tfrac {1}{4}}$, ${\tfrac {22}{7}}$
• {{frac}}: ​¹⁄₂, ​¹⁄₄, ​²²⁄₇
• {{sfrac}}: 1/2, 1/4, 22/7
  • enclosed within {{math}}: 1/2, 1/4, 22/7

To keep in line with the MOS, I propose that these special characters:

½ ⅓ ⅔ ¼ ¾ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞

be removed from MediaWiki:Edittools (and substituted with a link to insert their template equivalents) so that they don't appear in the special character palette below the wikicode editor. Chenzw  Talk  04:08, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• No objection to the change. It's not clear to me exactly where you are talking about, however, as the link doesn't seem to take me to a place where there are any math tools. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  08:57, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oops, I forgot about this all the while–the character palette is hidden by default. Until there is a gadget for toggling visibility, you can insert the below in your personal CSS file (either common.css or monobook/vector.css, depending on the skin you are using):

#editpage-specialchars {
     display:block;
}

--Chenzw  Talk  02:47, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I guess nobody else has any opinion on this, Chenzw. I'd say go ahead and boldly change it (if you haven't already) -- if it creates a problem, it can be fixed. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  17:06, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Alright, I have made the changes. I am not sure what was the original reasoning behind hiding the character palette by default, but anyway, I have set up a gadget to toggle the visibility of the palette (essentially the same thing as my code snippet above). It's called "CharInsert" under "Editing gadgets". The palette is quite useful sometimes. Chenzw  Talk  11:50, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

I've enabled the gadget, but still not seeing it. Is there some other step required to activate it? Etamni | ✉ | ✓  09:13, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Nope, there isn't. Can you try purging your browser's cache again? The character palette only appears while editing a page, by the way. Chenzw  Talk  09:27, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Where on the screen does it show up? Is it part of another tool? Etamni | ✉ | ✓  09:36, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

OK, adding the code above to common.css added the tool below the box that includes the change summary and save, preview, cancel, etc. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  09:53, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Yeah, that's the one. Sorry, I wasn't clear about this–the code snippet/gadget actually re-enables the character palette; it is part of MediaWiki's interface, but for some reason we decided to hide it by default in MediaWiki:Common.css, and display it on an opt-in basis. Chenzw  Talk  10:06, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

How simple is this wiki in comparison to English Wikipedia really?

This discussion was moved in its entirety to Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia/Technical evaluation of simplicity at 16:23, 21 August 2016 (UTC). StevenJ81 (talk)

Proposed abuse filter

I think that if a page has been deleted, you must be autoconfirmed to recreate it, enforced by an abuse filter.

Also, not sure if this second one is possible, but maybe it would only look at deletions in the past month or so?

What do people think of this idea? I can test syntax on my local wiki Krett12 (talk) 05:38, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Is this a solution looking for a problem? Pages that continually get recreated can be create-protected (autoconfirmed or full). It would take a script of some kind to limit it to 30 days, but I'm not sure we have that much trouble of this kind here. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:14, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the above is beyond the capabilities of the abuse filter. Chenzw  Talk  13:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I've been blocked by two admins on EnWiki for vandalism until August 12. Was my silly edits on my talk page vandalism? I was editing my EnWiki talk page in crazy ways but they all got deleted from Wikipedia archives. I don't know whether it was the vandalism that got me blocked or something else that got me blocked. Those admins are jerks for not telling me where I went wrong and how I can improve. --174.53.34.144 (talk) 14:40, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Save/Publish

The Editing team is planning to change the name of the “Save page” button to “Publish page” and “Publish changes”. “Publish page” will be used when you create a new page. “Publish changes” will be used when you change an existing page. The names will be consistent in all editing environments.[3][4]

This change will probably happen during the week of 30 August 2016. The change will be announced in Tech News when it happens.

If you are fluent in a language other than English, please check the status of translations at translatewiki.net for “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

The main reason for this change is to avoid confusion for new editors. Repeated user research studies with new editors have shown that some new editors believed that “Save page” would save a private copy of a new page in their accounts, rather than permanently publishing their changes on the web. It is important for this part of the user interface to be clear, since it is difficult to remove public information after it is published. We believe that the confusion caused by the “Save page” button increases the workload for experienced editors, who have to clean up the information that people unintentionally disclose, and report it to the functionaries and stewards to suppress it. Clarifying what the button does will reduce this problem.

Beyond that, the goal is to make all the wikis and languages more consistent, and some wikis made this change many years ago. The Legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports this change. Making the edit interface easier to understand will make it easier to handle licensing and privacy questions that may arise.

Any help pages or other basic documentation about how to edit pages will also need to be updated, on-wiki and elsewhere. On wiki pages, you can use the wikitext codes {{int:Publishpage}} and {{int:Publishchanges}} to display the new labels in the user's preferred language. For the language settings in your account preferences, these wikitext codes produce “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

Please share this news with community members who teach new editors and with others who may be interested.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Red links

An editor has recently (twice) removed the words "We usually keep red links in articles. They help us know what articles we most need to create" from Wikipedia:An English Wikipedian's guide. The content has (twice) been restored. In an effort to ensure that changes to guidelines and policies and the like have broad community support, I'm asking for a community discussion whether we want this wording in the guideline essay. Your comments below (either for or against or for something different) would be appreciated. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  08:55, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Of course this wording should be in the guideline.--Peterdownunder (talk) 09:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

• Red links are essential. They encourage other editors to create new articles, and help towards populating Special:WantedPages, of which the data is also used for Wikipedia:RecentChanges/Most Wanted. Chenzw  Talk  09:41, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

• I don't think any of you actually understand why I removed that content. I completely agree with you, red links of course are essential, but as I explained in my edit summary there, I removed it because it was underneath text that read "Here are some things that are different on this Wikipedia:". We keep red links on the English Wikipedia too, so the content shouldn't be placed there. Omni Flames (talk) 10:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I think that your explanation here makes more sense than the edit summary did. The edit summary did not clearly draw attention to the context of the material, so all anyone noticed was that content was being removed from the page. Perhaps what is needed is a section in the essay reminding readers of some important points that are the same as EnWiki. This content could reasonably be placed in that section. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  10:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Sorry about the misunderstanding. That being said, I noticed before that some editors who copy content from enWP go out of the way to delink red links (or arguably worse, link them directly to EN using interwiki links). This (the fact that we keep red links) should be clarified somewhere. Chenzw  Talk  10:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

See en:WP:REDLINK. Red links shouldn't be removed. Omni Flames (talk) 10:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually, we don't need to rely on the EnWiki version of that guideline, we have our own at WP:Red links. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  10:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

@Etamni: No, what I was trying to prove was that at enwiki we keep red links. Omni Flames (talk) 11:16, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

OK. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  13:21, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

The problem may lie in a reader assuming the comparison is specifically to Enwiki. It does not really say which wikis have different policies on red links. Some wikis may delete or avoid red links. Some may have no guidance whatsoever as to red links. I take the sentence to mean we are different here (Enwiki is likewise different) from those wikis where red links might be discouraged. In addition, in simplifying articles from other projects, an editor here may choose not to use the same word that is red linked in the copied article. Rus793 (talk) 14:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, considering that the page is titled "An English Wikipedian's guide", it's pretty safe to assume that it is referring to enwiki. If we want to expand the scope beyond that, we should probably rename it. Also, all I am proposing is that we remove the text from that section on that page, if someone wants to move it somewhere else, I'm not opposed to that, and would probably support such a proposal, in fact. Omni Flames (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

• Taking into account everyone's responses above, I have boldly edited the essay to move the portion about redlinks away from the "what's different" section and placed it in its own section farther down the page. The two sentences from the original bullet point have been kept exactly as they were originally written, but additional explanation has been added for clarification, along with a link to WP:red link. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  12:48, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Deaths in 2016

This page needs attention. The large majority of the edits to the page were done by two accounts, who also created most of the articles of people who died recently. Since both of them stopped editing, no-one has replaced them in that role. Jim Michael (talk) 13:01, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

IRC testing help

I've been working on ways to make connecting to our IRC channels easier, so could someone tell me if This URL allows them to do so? Computer Fizz (talk) 15:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

@Auntof6, Chenzw, Macdonald-ross, and Etamni: Please look at the message above as this wasn't a joke. Computer Fizz (talk) 16:14, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

CF, I didn't take this as a joke. It's just that I haven't used IRC in years, so I wouldn't really be able to say if your method was easier. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Ah, thanks a lot for clearing that up. For anyone else who is willing to help me with this, here is my thinking:

My link removes all the connection information and channel name and whatnot, and I think this will make it more straightforward.

The only reason I didn't just put it right on the page is because simplewiki does not allow use of the <html> tag. Computer Fizz (talk) 18:22, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

It works, however there is still an invalid channel defined (#simple-wikipedia). You should remove it. I still prefer my own client, though. By the way, while the channel might see more activity if we give others an easy way to connect to IRC, it is not a substitute for on-wiki discussion/processes, and we need to be careful of crossing that line. Chenzw  Talk  09:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah I stopped going on there years ago because too many people kept crossing the line and having discussions on there instead of on here. -DJSasso (talk) 11:51, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

It works fine for me as well and I also use my own client to connect. Reguyla (talk) 03:24, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

@Chenzw: I'm pretty sure I put wikipedia-simple, but I'll check it out when I get back to my main network. I agree that most discussions should be on wiki, especially since nobody is online when I need it.

@Reguyla: You're totally welcome to use your own client (I do that) but I'm trying to make it easier for people who don't know much about IRC. Laptop Fizz (talk) 20:55, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh yeah I totally understand. It's worth mentioning though that with the percentage of the time the WMF channels are on +r most folks aren't going to be able to access them anyway. Reguyla (talk) 22:09, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

"Session data" problems.

Every time I make an edit, I have to click submit twice. This might be due to a problem where I am locally logged in but am not locally, this results in a "loss of session data" or something. I'm using public wifi right now, so that might be part of the problem? Laptop Fizz (talk) 20:39, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

I've not experienced the same thing the few times I've used my mobile account. That said, you can try all the standard stuff, like clearing cache, logging out and back in, etc., but if this doesn't work, we would probably need more data to figure out the issue. For example, what happens if you self-revert something (preferably in a sandbox): Does this also take two attempts at submitting the change? Are you leaving edit summaries? There is an option in preferences that stops you from submitting a change without an edit summary, unless you try to submit the same edit twice (although it shouldn't cause a "loss of session data" or similar error). Are you using a non-standard browser on the laptop? Etamni | ✉ | ✓  13:56, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I get this problem occasionally, though not regularly. Submitting the edit a second time always seems to clear the problem. I always assumed that there was an interruption in the connection to the server that was causing it. I suggest putting in a question at Meta or phabricator to see if someone can just explain what it means when that error comes up. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@Etamni: I was using my normal computer and stuff, just on public wifi. Computer Fizz (talk) 14:13, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

DYK Update

We haven't updated DYK since February; is anyone against an update or does anyone mind me putting its gears into motion for a proposed update? Jcc (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

It would be good for someone to take on the task of keeping this section updated.--Peterdownunder (talk) 23:10, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

@Peterdownunder: How about this? I've checked sources, but would prefer if someone else could check as well as this is my first time.

From a collection of Wikipedia's articles:

... that the 1874 military painting Calling the Roll After An Engagement, Crimea (pictured) by Elizabeth Thompson was bought by Queen Victoria?

... that Lichen can live on bare rock, walls, trees, wood, gravestones, and on exposed soil surfaces?

... that Carly Fiorina entered an election for the United States Senate less than a year after surviving breast cancer?

... that Canada was pre-approved to become part of the United States in the Articles of Confederation section 11 without further votes?

... that The Chaos is a poem that shows that in English many words are not pronounced the way they are written?

... that because of his illness with diverticulitis, Tancredo Neves was never inaugurated as President of Brazil and remained as president-elect until his death in 1985?

Jcc (talk) 14:04, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts? Anyone? Jcc (talk) 09:55, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Can we reconsider the phrasing of the 3rd hook? The term "Oxbridge" is presently used to describe both universities, which the article itself affirms. I dug through the revision history of T:TDYK, and it seems that, at that time, this particular hook slipped through the review process. Chenzw  Talk  11:30, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

@Chenzw: Thanks, I think it may just be a simple missed word- what about "that the word Oxbridge is used..."? Jcc (talk) 20:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

If there are no further concerns, I think that it'd be great to finally change it for September? Jcc (talk) 15:33, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

It looks good to me. I will do the update at around 0:00 UTC on 1 Sep (tomorrow). Please poke me again on my talk page if a few hours have passed, and I still haven't gotten that done. Chenzw  Talk  14:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Chenzw! Jcc (talk) 10:45, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

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