User talk:SPoore (WMF)

Archive 1

Talk to me

Hello

Hello dear lady. Thank you very much for your efforts in the Encyclopaedia projects and your trusted work. In fact, I am the owner of the account (مشاري) in the Arabic Wikipedia for eight years and I have about 50 thousand editing and the establishment of 800 articles with sincerity and great care and I do not commend myself except my neck and my great desire to follow the liberation and work back the Encyclopedia back to my heart, especially after what happened to me in 11 When I was using my computer from one of my 13-year-old brothers to no avail. I tried to recover my account and clarify it over the last two months but to no avail where my account was banned globally and today by chance, I discovered the way to talk to the team of trust and security, and I was never destructive or absurd Over the past eight years, what my brother has done recently, I want to restore the Encyclopedia of Hope to Shawki's unity of the Encyclopedia after it has been prevented from permanently preventing injustice if the ban is temporarily for a month or two will be better and give me an opportunity to clarify what happened, and I promise not to repeat what happened once Others, stressed the protection p Z will not give my members anyone the opportunity to enter my account again reference to what happened figure (T215799), I apologize for the prolongation but what happened after Vinnie, I wish you dear lady helped me ........ --37.231.220.88 13:44, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Hello

Hi there (it has been a long time since we met at WorldCon 2012 2014 in London!). Very briefly, I saw a contribution you made somewhere (possibly on this wiki) related to talk page discussions of project-specific global bans. Not partial blocks, but very specifically the issue of project-specific global bans (which has caused some problems on en-Wikipedia as you may or may not be aware). But I can't now find that discussion! Would you know what I am thinking of? It may relate to this edit, so maybe I should ask Karen instead, but will wait and see if you are around and might be able to help. Carcharoth (talk) 22:40, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Since things have moved on a bit, am pointing you to this and the mentions of you over there, though I am sure you are getting the pings. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 13:47, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello Carcharoth, I do remember us meeting at WorldCon in London. It's hard to believe that its been 7 seven years! About your original question. Although better today, unfortunately, finding something through searching is still not too easy even if you know for sure that it exists. I don't recall making a post about global bans. It was much more likely it was something about the new partial blocks feature possibly being used to enforced page, topic or interaction bans on a local language wiki. I've written a lot about that on different wikis (including ENWp, Functionaries mailing list, or Meta) where you might have seen it. If I remember anything else I'll let you know.

Yes, I have seen the pings. :-) I'm working on a comment to post that will help clarify the situation. SPoore (WMF) Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 21:09, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply (what name is it best to use for you here?). Difficult to keep track of everything. Your comments have helped clarify things somewhat. Hope you get more feedback and views (as a side effect of all this!). Carcharoth (talk) 11:46, 22 June 2019 (UTC) PS. It was 2014, not 2012! So it was 5 years ago. My mistake! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 11:18, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF terminology question

Hi. The Wikimedia Foundation is kind of opaque sometimes, and it's often not so easy to understand how things are going on inside, so I was wondering if you could answer a quick question for me: Is the term "Foundation platform" used internally within the Foundation to refer to the wikis? Is this a reasonably common term that you tend to hear in internal discussions?

Thanks. :) --Yair rand (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Yair rand, I'm happy to answer your question as best I can. From my frame of reference, the term "platform" is used internally as it is describe on this page about the work of Wikimedia Foundation Core Platform team. My understanding is that it is more that just a local wiki or even a group of wikis. Instead it is more about the Mediawiki code and the other aspects of the technical infrastructure that support the wikis and other Wikimedia internet services. I do think in general there is some ambiguity in the broadness or precision of the term. So it might be subject to being used different ways. I hope the answer helps. SPoore (WMF) Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 21:26, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Need help getting the feature needed to enable mentorship installed at Hebvoy

Hi Sydney. I was referred to you by the user יונה בנדלאק from the Hebrew Wikipedia. I am currently the only admin at the Hebrew Wikivoyage. I have been the most active user there since it was launched in 2013 and created the vast infrastructure of the wiki almost entirely by myself, with the hopes that a community of editors would eventually form (it hasn't so far). Over the years, although we had several active editors whom helped write some excellent articles, most of them eventually left. The most active user, except for me, is now active only once in a long while because he is now doing his mandatory military service.

Recently a new editor joined the Hebrew Wikivoyage whom, unfortunately, seems to be causing more harm than good (I am starting to suspect this is an old troll we had whom got banned, but I do not have access to the necessary tools to prove it). As a result, I find myself investing too much time daily investigating and cleaning up the changes he makes throughout the main space (he is very active). Today, after he pointed out to me that he intends to add mostly raw machine translations without rephrasing them and does not care much about investing the time in writing content of higher quality, I finally understood that we might have no other choice but to have an "involuntary mentorship process" for him, which means that he would only be capable of creating draft articles in his user space during the involuntary mentorship process period, and that his work would be added only after it is complete, reviewed, and approved (this option exists in the Hebrew Wikipedia especially for such instances).

To my understanding, the feature needed to prevent specific users from editing the main space needs to be installed and the process of getting it installed is somewhat problematic in this case, mainly because we do not actually have a large active community that can vote on whether to adopt this feature or not + opening a discussion about importing such a feature together with the new editor will be, in my opinion, awkward and counter productive.

Please help get this feature enabled at the Hebrew Wikivoyage. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 01:00, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello ויקיג'אנקי, it nice to meet you and I'm glad to work with to get the Partial blocks feature deployed to Hebrew Wikivoyage. Right now partial block is deployed on English Wikivoyage as a test to see if there was any bugs to Wikivoyage that might need to be addressed before it is deployed to all local language Wikivoyage.

What I'm going to do is ping Niharika Kohli, the Product Manager of the Anti-Harassment Tools team. If she thinks that we are going to deploy to all Wikivoyage soon then you may want to wait until the regularly scheduled deployment. If it is a few week off, then we can think about doing a special deploy to he wikivoyage.

In any case, I suggest that you begin to think about if there are policies and workflows that need to be updated to get to use partial blocks. I can share some pages with you that describe how pb works that you can use to start a help page. SPoore (WMF) Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 20:54, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Once it is available I will create the help pages based on what the Hebrew Wikipedia have created. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 06:36, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello again ויקיג'אנקי, :-) The Anti-Harassment Tools team decided to go ahead and deploy it to Hebrew Wikivoyage today. Sounds like a good idea to use hewp policy as a basis for he Wikivoyage policy. I'll let you know when it is done. It may be tomorrow UTC time since Niharika works on Pacific Time. SPoore (WMF) Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello ויקיג'אנקי, letting you know that partial blocks is live on he Wikivoyage now. Please let me and Niharika Kohli know if there is a problem or you have questions about partial blocks. There is a page for feedback or you can leave on this page. SPoore (WMF) Strategist, Community health initiative (talk) 21:15, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

sorry for the late reply. I was away for a couple of days. Thank you for helping. I'll let you know if there is any problem with it. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 14:47, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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

Recent changes

• The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [1]

Problems

• Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [2]
• Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [3]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [4]
• There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-28

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

Recent changes

• For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [5]
• Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [6]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
• The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [7]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [8]
• There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [9]

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

20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-29

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [10]

Changes later this week

• The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Abuse filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [11]

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

15:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

Recent changes

• Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
• The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [12]

Problems

• The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [13]

Changes later this week

• Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [14]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [15][16]
• With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [17][18]
• Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
• The variable user_wpzero will be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.

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

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Problems

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [19]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

• A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [20][21]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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

Recent changes

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [22]
• Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [23]

Changes later this week

• Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [24]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:20, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

• There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

• Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
• Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [25]

Changes later this week

• Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [26]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
• Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [27]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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

Recent changes

• You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [28]
• The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
• The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [29]
• The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [30]
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [31]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [32]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [33]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [34]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [35]
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [36]

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09:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)