Wikisource:Scriptorium

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Proposals

Overriding Vector 2022 paragraph spacing

Since the forced deployment in November 2024, and multiple discussions including [1], 2, 3, and 4, the idea of overriding the excessive paragraph spacing from V22 was floated multiple times. V22 raised the 0.9em spacing between paragraphs to 1.5em, which broke content that expected text to have similar size across skins (notably but not only {{overfloat image}}).

This proposal is therefore to add to MediaWiki:Gadget-Site.css:

.mw-body p {
    margin:0.4em 0 0.5em 0;
}

Technical notes:

• this should have neither false positives nor false negatives given that .mw-body p is the exact same selector used by V22.
• if site.css is loaded before the skin css, then we can just add a html at the start of the selector: will not change the selection (given everything's in an html), and will give it more specificity (0,1,2 vs 0,1,1).
• 0.4em 0 0.5em 0 is exactly how it was in V10.
• this may stop working one day whenever WMF decides to IDHT another change through; but so can the entire website, and at least we'll have a fix. If it stops working, we can easily remove it and go back to our current state of having broken content.

— Alien  3
3 3 15:39, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support as proposer. — Alien  3
3 3 15:39, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support, strongly. Thanks for starting the vote! --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support SnowyCinema (talk) 15:58, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support Tcr25 (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

@BD2412: as the only beaureaucrat - could you please make the above change? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 17:49, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Is this not something any admin can do? I am not so technically adept that I wouldn't worry about breaking something trying to do this. BD2412 T 18:32, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Actually, I don't appear to have access to edit this page either. BD2412 T 18:33, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Only interface administrators have the right to edit MWspace .js/.css. The only vaguely active interface administrator of ENWS is as of now Xover; but he's had little time in the last few months. He still answers talk page posts, though, so I left one.

@Matrix: I don't know where you got the "only bureaucrat" part, though; Beeswaxcandle is also a crat.) — Alien  3
3 3 19:44, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm competent at CSS and I would be willing to edit in the namespace. I am an interface administrator on other wikis as well. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:15, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

I think I misread the rights log, sorry Beeswaxcandle :( —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Can't crats give themselves IA at Special:UserRights? Or is this only on some wikis. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:58, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

IDK if it's possible; but (although we have no official policy on it) until now the practice has been to give the flag after a request and !vote for it at WS:ADMINS; I think it'd be better to keep it that way. — Alien  3
3 3 21:13, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

If someone wants to put themselves up for the interface admin role, I am certain that we could process a nomination in fairly short order. BD2412 T 22:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

The ad hoc process so far for Interface Admin has been that the editor requesting the additional right has been recognised by the 'crats as a person of good standing in the enWS community; and has the demonstrable skills to make appropriate changes to the interface. Thus far all people who have had the IA right have also been Admins. We have granted the IA right for the period of time through to their annual recall and then attached the two together. If someone who is not an Admin was to be granted the IA right, it would either be (a) for a limited period of time (enough to make the necessary changes for a particular purpose); or (b) through a formal nomination process. We haven't formalised this process up until now, as it hasn't been needed. (Note that it is a requirement from the MW lawyers that Interface Administrators use MFA to log in.) Beeswaxcandle (talk) 01:01, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Bot approval requests

• See Wikisource:Bots for information about applying for a bot status
• See Wikisource:Bot requests if you require an existing bot to undertake a task

Repairs (and moves)

Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

Other discussions

QuickSurveys

Apparently some new “feature” has been forced upon us again. These are annoying pop-up boxes which really mess up the formatting, especially if whatever text at the top of the page is centered (as it often is). Can this be disabled by default for everyone? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:32, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Dropped a task (phab:T393436) to ask them to not barge into the content like this, but I don't have much hope.

And no, this extension and its parameters are a wmf thing, so we can't really do anything on our own. — Alien  3
3 3 08:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I have no clue what you're talking about. Can you tell me the steps to reproduce this issue? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:49, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I can see it on any page that I open (and it is very disturbing), so if you do not, you might have it disabled in your preferences. See also the screenshots uploaded to the above linked phabricator task. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't. I'm trying to figure out which settings the original person has to see why he sees it, but if you're seeing it also, that is odd to me. I'm not sure why anyone is seeing this. I'm not. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In the preferences under the "User profile" tab there is a section "QuickSurvey extension" where the surveys can be set as hidden. Currently logged out users also do not see it, but if this feature stays, we can imo expect it will be used to display messages (e.g. pleas for funding) to them as well. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

These things are highly targetable and targeted, see mw:Extension:QuickSurveys. Probably you aren't counted as an active patroller here (and this precise survey is about patrolling tools). — Alien  3
3 3 12:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Just an example of what I am seeing: [2] --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

• Another awful example: Charter Granted by Queen Elizabeth to the East India Company. This time, the pop-up is within the delete template. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:59, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  Well, it just barges into the first thing it finds. They don't appear to be actively paying attention to tasks, and I don't expect them to pay attention to user feedback either, so this probably won't be fixed for a good while. My two cents are go disable it in your settings.

  At least we've got the comfort most users don't see it.... But of course they make whatever surveys they want targeting whoever they want, so it's not that unlikely that this will become a problem for everyone in the near future.

  Aaaahh, deploying breaking changes with no discussion, no warning, no community opt-out, and without listening to feedback. Becoming a habit, isn't it? — Alien  3
  3 3 17:43, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  It's showing up for me too. Once I disable it on one project, then I get it on another. Those of us who regularly visit multiple projects are going to be the most annoyed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:50, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  Did you check the global settings? Perhaps there you can opt-out for all projects. — Alien  3
  3 3 18:56, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  I don't even have the option of using the same skin globally. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:28, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  That's weird. So like, when you go here, you don't see a "Skin", a checkbox on whether to make it a default setting, and radio buttons with the options? — Alien  3
  3 3 05:20, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Might I suggest the following solution? : #bodyContent .ext-quick-survey-panel {display:none;} —Beleg Tâl (talk) 00:57, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

There's a setting to always hide them; the concern is about not being able to opt out the community as a whole (except through site css, but Xover is the only active intadmin and has shown much reticence to adding that kind of stuff (see MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Site.css#Overriding_V22_paragraph_spacing)). — Alien  3
3 3 08:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

• Alien: If that is an issue, we can simply come to a consensus, as a community, that the QS system needs to be blocked, and direct him to make the appropriate changes reflecting that consensus. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 12:35, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, the reticence of one admin should not override community consensus, and Xover knows that as well as the rest of us :) (that being said, I think a proper proposal would be necessary to determine consensus for something like this) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:13, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

  Is amending the user profile, as stated by Jan above, not a good enough solution ? -- Beardo (talk) 02:11, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

  From the technical standpoint, yes, changing site CSS is 99% sure to work. — Alien  3
  3 3 06:18, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

  As Alien333 said, the concern is about not being able to opt out the community as a whole - and you can't do that with the user profile. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Update: quicksurveys was undeployed from ENWS two weeks ago. I have asked them to not redeploy until they fix this. — Alien  3
3 3 08:46, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

HathiTrust

Help:Image extraction#HathiTrust no longer works me; when I try running it, I just get Error 403.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I haven't tried any programs myself, but there are a few image downloader programs for HathiTrust available on GitHub, this one for example. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of HathiTrust can vouch for a particular method. Penguin1737 (talk) 23:22, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: You might look into: Internet Archive Downloader. It is fashioned as a browser extension and it does not sound appropriate since based just on the name it seems to target Internet Archive but it also has a HathiTrust downloader called "Ayesha". —Uzume (talk) 04:11, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Page marked historical

Heads up that I tagged Wikisource:Purchases with {{historical}} since it hasn't actually been in use in several years. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:48, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

This project page is interesting and was unknown to me until just now. It is very similar to an idea that TE(æ)A,ea. and I have discussed recently, which would involve creating a centralized page in the Project namespace for requests for scans to be made where no scans appear to be accessible online (which would replace User:TE(æ)A,ea./Requests in their personal user space). My suggested name was either WS:Requests for scans, or making that a section of the WS:Scan Lab. FYI, because of the inter-library loan (ILL) system, very few books would actually need to be bought in order to be scanned anymore (as far as I understand it), but buying should definitely be an option for those who are willing to donate the material, in cases where ILL is not possible. All in all, the Purchases page has merit conceptually, but in its current implementation inserting {{historical}} was the right move. SnowyCinema (talk) 18:00, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

@SnowyCinema: If someone does start buying hard to find PD works for scanning, I recommend they donate the purchases to some place like Internet Archive after the scanning is completed. That said, I do wonder what happened to the "Current funds: $20" at the now historical purchases page. Did someone abscond with those funds? It surely matters little now but it does leave a trailing question mark of a sort. —Uzume (talk) 04:21, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

We are looking for a pilot for our new feature, Favourite Templates

Hello everyone! Community Tech are building a new feature, called Favourite Templates, that will provide a better way for new and experienced contributors to recall and discover templates via the template dialog, that works with both VisualEditor and wikitext editor. We hope this will increase dialog usage and the number of templates added.

Since 2013, experienced volunteers have asked for a more intuitive template selector, exposing popular or most-used templates on the template dialog. At this stage of work, we are focusing on allowing users to put templates in a “favourite” list, so that their reuse will be easier. At a later stage, we will focus on helping users discover or find templates.

We are looking for potential additional testers for Favourite Templates, and we thought you might be interested in trying it out. If so, please let us know if it is the case, we would be happy to set up a pilot. So far, the feature has been deployed successfully on Polish and Arabic Wikipedia, and we’re currently in talks with other projects for expanding the pilot phase.

In addition, we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for helping people find and insert templates. Some ideas we’ve identified are searching or browsing templates by category, or showing the number of times a template has been transcluded.

Of course, we are ready to answer your questions and to give you all the information you need. Thanks in advance!

—SWilson (WMF) (talk) 05:23, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Though there's been no opposition, it looks like there aren't people interested in this, so I don't know if we'd be a very useful pilot wiki. — Alien  3
3 3 17:27, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 Thanks for your message. Given that there was no opposition, we turned it on on your wiki. We hope it will be useful for your work anyway, so let us know what they think about it. Please ping me under this thread or use my talk page to get messages to me. Cheers, Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:22, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

So far I can see no instructions either here or on Meta as to how to initiate or use this "feature". Nothing shows up for me when editing in the Page: namespace or here. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:46, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: on template pages, next to the "watch" star, there's now a bookmark icon to mark a template as favorite. When editing (with the editing toolbar enabled), the TemplateWizard (the puzzle icon [3]) now offers you when opened your list of favorite templates. — Alien  3
3 3 10:25, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Alien333 for beating me to it. I will bring up the necessity for more documentation about the feature. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Ah. So, as I only switch on the space-hungry sprawling monstrosity of an editing toolbar when training beginners, I'm not the target audience. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:21, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

(@Beeswaxcandle: On the space-hungry side: the toolbar has a few actually useful for regular buttons; notably the OCR button or the page image manipulation buttons when editing in pagespace. To keep those, what I do is CSS away (display: none) all the other ones. That might interest you.)

@User:Sannita (WMF): Also, tell the devs that in V10 the bookmark icon is much larger than the star next to it or the rest of #p-views. Probably a fixed size or something. — Alien  3
3 3 20:28, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 Will report, thanks! Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

DTIC file - Colors in Terrain

Is this PD-US-Gov?

https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA277204/page/n3/mode/2up

If so I'd like to put it on Wikisource. In addition it would be appreciated if someone with expertise could advise on how to reconstruct the XYZ values from the xy and luminance factors given. This is so I can make used of the dataset (with citation) in respect of other projects. (I would of course be happy with a relevant color chart being constructed as a semi-formal academic paper over on Wikiversity.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:52, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

I think, unfortunately, it is not PD-US-Gov. I don't believe US Gov contractors count as federal employees for the purpose of copyright law, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation 27.404-3 specifically outlines that contractor producers of scientific and technical reports have blanket permission to reassert copyright on their research. That same regulation notes that the free unlimited distribution license which is noted on the document is just to the US Gov; I don't believe the public can tap into that license to redistribute.

Perhaps someone with more US Gov works experience can chime in though. Penguin1737 (talk) 23:13, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Bother. Looks like I'll have to find the original journal articles directly then. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

The source dataset seems to be a 1940's translation published in Canada of a 1943 Russian language work, This gets interesting. Can someone dig a little deeper? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:26, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Have we lost some Validated Indexes?

On 11 Sept. 2024 I updated Portal:Proofreading milestones with our 6500th completed index. I just went to check on progress to the next milestone of 7000 only to discover that there are only 5284 in Category:Index Validated. How and when did we lose over 1500 validated Indexes? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:19, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I place my bet on the index lua error from two months and a half ago. We have ~12k indexes that just don't have any categories (out of 35583 total indexes). I think some of those affected by the bug had all their Page:s already transcluded, and so the Page:s didn't count as orphan and we didn't find them yet. The categorylink table must just have not been updated. Confirmation of this: The first thus uncategorised index reported when I queried was Index:! Explosive objects in War in Ukraine, 2022 (01).jpg. It had page_links_updated set to 20250311190213, which is 11 march, the date of the lua index error. On a null edit, it disappeared from the list. We probably ought to get 'round to null-editing all these indexes. I'm really busy these days but I could patch up some code next week. 12k is not that much. If we say one null edit/min that makes 12k minutes, or 200 hours, or just over a week. — Alien  3
3 3 12:07, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

(FYI: the complete list is here. To refresh (you need to have forked) just re-submit. Replag aside, should update instantaneously.) — Alien  3
3 3 12:24, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Hadn't thought of that, despite the fact that I've been null-editing Indexes via LonelyPages every three days. I'm part way through G with another update due this evening (my time). Any Index that is not pdf or djvu has been skipped over. Where there are Pages without an Index, I've left them for investigation later. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:58, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Any specific reason for skipping non-pdf/djvu indexes? Normally they should work like others. — Alien  3
3 3 19:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Because the listing in LonelyPages is the Page namespace and the link to the Index doesn't appear as a tab in the same way. Thus easier to ignore at present and then deal with as a group later. I much prefer dealing with a single workflow at a time. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

By the way - the orphaned pages listing was actually updated yesterday - it starts again on the first of the month,

I have been trying to reduce the main pages on the orphaned pages list. A number of those have been works transcluded but affected by the index lua error. (And so not linked from anywhere else). I have tried adding other links as well. Of course, this means that main pages affected by the lua error do not show there if they already were linked from elsewhere. --

Beardo (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

@Beardo and Beeswaxcandle : the query I linked to above does give an exhaustive list, transclusion or no transclusion, exploiting the fact that broken indexes lost their categories. It also gives the indexes not the pages, so there's no trouble of reaching the index from the pages. If you want, I can reasonably easily get the list into a wikipage with links (as opposed to the quarry result of just page names). — Alien  3
3 3 19:37, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I've made a list at User:Beeswaxcandle/Sandbox2. Having already dealt with some, it's reduced in size by ca. 500 from the initial. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:21, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Would you mind other editors editing that page? So we can remove those that are done and keep track of where we're at. — Alien  3
3 3 10:41, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I've forked the query to select .djvu indexes (page_title like '%.djvu'). 3600 are remaining. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 10:52, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Welp, we do also have to do the PDFs. It's not a good thing, but many indexes are done PDF. — Alien  3
3 3 10:54, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I have no problems with other editors editing the page. Keeping track and not duplicating effort is always good. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:33, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

All DjVu indexes done. The page is updated. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:37, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

All jpg, jpeg, webm indexes done. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

All not .pdf indexes done (6,818). User:Beeswaxcandle/Sandbox2 updated. Now 5,641 pages in Category:Index Validated • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

The proposed query has to be modified, ~2000 indexes having categories other than "Index:...".

I have used as a jointure:

and page_id not in ( select cl_from from categorylinks where cl_to like 'Index%' )

to get a new list. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:29, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM categorylinks WHERE cl_from = page_id AND cl_to LIKE 'Index%') is probably faster. — Alien  3
3 3 08:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

As a side note, I found why these indexes have some of their cats but not all: the categories that are added manually are actually out of the template; so when the template broke, they only lost the categories that relied on it; which means the status cats &co, but not the manual ones. — Alien  3
3 3 17:56, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

All Indexes in the second list are now null-edited and Category:Index Validated is at 6953, which approximately what I was expecting to see. There are only 141 in the Validated category that need to have their transclusion status checked. Thanks to @M-le-mot-dit: for the assistance on getting all the Indexes null-edited so quickly. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:42, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

The milestone of 7000 Validated indexes was reached yesterday. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 07:57, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

(I think it's Index:Skyes Picot, The Manchester Guardian, Monday, November 26, 1917, p5.jpg.) — Alien  3
3 3 08:04, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

The Category contains a template ({{Proofreadpage_index_template/testcases}}), so it may be Index:The President's Proclamation (Proctor, 1963).jpg. Quarry gives 7004 indexes. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:18, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, good catch! :) — Alien  3
3 3 10:13, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

It was indeed The President's Proclamation. Portal:Proofreading milestones has been updated. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:11, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-23

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

Weekly highlight

• The Chart extension is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Editors can use this new extension to create interactive data visualizations like bar, line, area, and pie charts. Charts are designed to replace many of the uses of the legacy Graph extension.

Updates for editors

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• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:54, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Copyright status of a work.

This is listed as public domain on Hathi:- https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31210024780379&seq=15

However, it contains apparenty reprints of papers published in other works, which may need additional evalaution.

The author of the papers seems to have been an active Employee at the NBS (later NIST), So can someone make a determination as to this work's potential inclusion in Wikisource, given that the works itself is Federal?. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 06:00, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I've sent the NIST an email, hopefully they reply. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:54, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

The concern is that some of the papers appear to be published in Journals, which given the dates would have had active registrations, (even if the individual author concerned didn't make individual periodical ones.). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00:

This is the response from the NIST:

"Hi,

Generally, official writings by federal employees are not subject to copyright protection within the United States (a narrow exception to this policy exists in the case of Standard Reference Data published under the provisions of the Standard Reference Data Act (Public Law 90-396). The Act permits NIST to copyright Standard Reference Data. Click here for more information.) However, the government may be able to assert copyright in countries other than the United States. When official writings by NIST employees, except those covered under the Standard Reference Data Act, are submitted to a non-NIST publication, a statement should be included indicating that the material is not subject to copyright protection within the United States. If you are asked to sign a publication permission form, you should have it reviewed by the Office of the Chief Counsel for NIST prior to signing. Some journals will accept our copyright form. (In fact, some journals will request this copyright form.) (External co-authors may be asked to sign an agreement transferring their copyright to the publisher, which they may choose to do.)

Sample statement: Official contribution of the National Institute of Standards and Technology; not subject to copyright in the United States.

Note that in most instances NIST Research Associates could assert copyright but may have agreed not to assert US copyright in their work done at NIST when they signed their NIST Associate’s Agreement. Whether or not to include the ‘not subject to copyright in the United States’ statement on manuscripts jointly authored by federal NIST employees and NIST Associates is a factual matter to be determined when the publication is drafted.

If you are asked to sign a publisher’s agreement for your publication that agreement must first be reviewed by the Office of the Chief Counsel for NIST.

If you encounter any problems with a publisher, or need any help, contact the Office of the Chief Counsel for NIST."

I think this is a yes, thoughts? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 11:10, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, so that says NIST Research Associate works without other notices, are possibles. However, in respect of this specifc collection, some of the later articles are from Journals with their own copyrights and thus can't be included (because of the Journal Copyright, rather than the contributors.). On that basis, the original papers will have to be tracked down and evaluated on a paper by paper basis.

BTW for a Government agency, that response is suprisingly clear for our purposes. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:18, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Colour vs b/w image?

Hi, I was finding the image for [7]. For this text, instead of extracting from the low quality PDF, since they are all catalogued NASA images, I have just looked up the image IDs and downloaded them directly from the NASA/DVIDS website. However, for this specific page, the image is black and white, but I found a high-quality colour version at [8]. What should I do? Use the colour version as is or convert it to black/white first? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 20:29, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

My 2¢ would be convert it to black & white, as that's what the source has. The low-quality is very probably due to bad scanning. — Alien  3
3 3 22:15, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 10:18, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

'Indexes validated in [month]' category

Why does Index:Historical paintings of the Slavic nations by Alfons Mucha (1921).pdf appear in Category:Indexes validated in June 2025, yet Index:Reference to some of the works executed in stained glass - William Raphael Eginton.pdf does not? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:46, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

I expect it is because the former has an entry in the box "Validation date" and the latter has that box blank. -- Beardo (talk) 20:59, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

@Andy Mabbett, @Beardo It is not longer blank now! But yes, you do have to manually fill in the validation date box, by editing the index page. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. (Though the index page was amended to show all validated in May.) -- Beardo (talk) 21:18, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Petscan lists 136 indexes in the above situation. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I've sorted 96 of them, but need to call it a night. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 10:14, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Monthly Challenge colors on dark mode

For some reason the colors for the to fix header and the to proofread headers are swapped on dark mode. ToxicPea (talk) 02:34, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

There where some muck-ups in the templates between the statuses (essentially, the classes were swapped and so the colors were swapped again to make it right). Caused some confusion when adding dark mode compat. Should be solved. — Alien  3
3 3 05:43, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Sorry for the mess up and thanks for the fix by the way! —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 10:02, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Thinking REALLY big..

Back in 2020, Fae mirrored PDF's of copyright records on IA to Commons.

Is there a contributor here that is willing to set up Index: here for post 1950's volumes?

The thought was that it might be a way of finding works that might expire in the next few years, and if the renewals were looked into post 1930(rolling) volumes that might also be in scope for the period 1940 to 1950. Other publications note a Fourth Series which continued to 1982(?) but those entries should already be in the online system.

"Mars-shot" project, but worth it, if the transcription generated can be fed back into Wikidata as well. This wouldn't be a project I'd focus on personally, my watchlist is already at 'life's work' length, but I felt this was something to be worked out. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:26, 6 June 2025 (UTC) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:26, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Get IIIF working again.

Previously, inductiveload had a script (User:Inductiveload/jump_to_file) which helped improve the scans presented, by pulling them directly from hathi or IA, rather than using the lower quality PDF present on Wikisource.

Due to changes at IA ( URL in the script needs updating), this script stopped functioning. Can someone PLEASE look into getting this working again, as it greatly assists in the transcription of works, where the PDF quality is exceptionally poor due to over compression or otherwise? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:04, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

As I already told you, the issue is with a line that has to be changed in the toolforge tool's code. See T356227. This requires usurpation of the tool (given IL is gone at least for now); which is not easy to get. — Alien  3
3 3 12:30, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. So what could be a useful project is effectively stalled, because of 3 letters in old code, which can't be easily updated because the tool maintainer is absent. @Sohom Datta: Another contributor attempted to fix this by patching the url on the Wikisource, but I couldn't get that technique to work. The endpoint that the toolforge script uses now gives Error 500 suggesting it wasn't a priority to repair or was migrated.).. As detailed in the phabricator ticket it's 4 characters in a single file that need changing.

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:58, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

The project I refer to is above. a Marshsot project on the Catalog of Copyright Entries. (Yes I has strait jacket to hand! :lol:) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:39, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Index:Catalog of Copyright Entries, 1930 Books For the Year 1930 New Series Vol 27 Part 1 (IA catalogofcopyri271libr).pdf

When 5 years after a massive upload, you find it isn't in a good quality:(..

I'm going to need some time to consider if I even attempt to work with this, and I am wondering if it's worth it, unless the PDF quality issue is resolved. Others here are working on making the hi-resimage loader work again, provided of course the endpoint it uses remains available. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:12, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-24

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

Weekly highlight

• The Trust and Safety Product team is finalizing work needed to roll out temporary accounts on large Wikipedias later this month. The team has worked with stewards and other users with extended rights to predict and address many use cases that may arise on larger wikis, so that community members can continue to effectively moderate and patrol temporary accounts. This will be the second of three phases of deployment – the last one will take place in September at the earliest. For more information about the recent developments on the project, see this update. If you have any comments or questions, write on the talk page, and join a CEE Catch Up this Tuesday.

Updates for editors

• The watchlist expiry feature allows editors to watch pages for a limited period of time. After that period, the page is automatically removed from your watchlist. Starting this week, you can set a preference for the default period of time to watch pages. The preferences also allow you to set different default watch periods for editing existing pages, pages you create, and when using rollback. [9]

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• The appearance of talk pages will change at almost all Wikipedias (some have already received this design change, a few will get these changes later). You can read details about the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt out of these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). [10][11]
• Users with specific extended rights (including administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, and stewards) can now have IP addresses of all temporary accounts revealed automatically during time-limited periods where they need to combat high-speed account-hopping vandalism. This feature was requested by stewards. [12]
• This week, the Moderator Tools and Machine Learning teams will continue the rollout of a new filter to Recent Changes, releasing it to several more Wikipedias. This filter utilizes the Revert Risk model, which was created by the Research team, to highlight edits that are likely to be reverted and help Recent Changes patrollers identify potentially problematic contributions. The feature will be rolled out to the following Wikipedias: Afrikaans Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia. The rollout will continue in the coming weeks to include the rest of the Wikipedias in this project. [13]
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• AbuseFilter editors active on Meta-Wiki and large Wikipedias are kindly asked to update AbuseFilter to make it compatible with temporary accounts. A link to the instructions and the private lists of filters needing verification are available on Phabricator.
• Lua modules now have access to the name of a page's associated thumbnail image, and on some wikis to the WikiProject assessment information. This is possible using two new properties on mw.title objects, named pageImage and pageAssessments. [14][15]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:16, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

NOTE: The default watchlist expiry time feature isn't available on here and it isn't available on enwiki or commons either. It is available on mediawikiwiki though, and I'm not sure why. Duckmather (talk) 19:18, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

See wikitech:Deployment train#Groups. In a nutshell: mediawiki updates are progressively rolled out in groups; we're in group 2, so we get them on wednesdays; as opposed to mediawikiwiki being in group 1 (tuesday) and enwiki being in group 3 (thursday). — Alien  3
3 3 19:57, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining! Duckmather (talk) 16:55, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (archive.org)

This states that the source was ftp://ia340915.us.archive.org/1/items/LovecraftInPdfFormat/a_jermyn.pdf - trying that link did not work for me, and trying to find this item on Internet Archive gave me nothing. Anyone have any ideas where this source might be ? -- Beardo (talk) 02:35, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

That link uses the FTP protocol. Switching to http or https gives a 500 error.

It also is a link to the direct file as opposed to the IA item.

However, I can't find any item with such a name either.

Possibly it was pulled out of IA's collections, but that would seem strange (pre-1930 publication). — Alien  3
3 3 08:04, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Wikipedia indicates that the story was only published under that title in 1986, so I assume that it was taken from a later collection. -- Beardo (talk) 13:20, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Ah, that would explain IA pulling it out of their collections. In the last few months they've pulled out a lot of stuff which was plausibly PD (probably afraid of getting sued to death). — Alien  3
3 3 13:25, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

And, of course, shows a danger in not uploading the scan to Commons or here.

We now have a scan-backed copy of the story from the original Weird Tales printing, and a Weird Tales reprint available for transcription. -- Beardo (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

@Beardo, Alien333: You can see the IA item does still exist but has been made unavailable by looking at the metadata for the item ID: https://archive.org/metadata/LovecraftInPdfFormat. The "is_dark":true is the key to their redactions which in this case is likely copyright and time related (meaning that item will likely return to visible once it hits public domain status). Incidentally, this is also one of the reasons why I would like to see IA-Upload changed to use /metadata/id instead of relying on /details/id?output=json (they are similar but not the same); see src/ApiClient/IaClient.php, line 44. —Uzume (talk) 23:19, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I suspect that it might be some time before that becomes available again. Also, as has been pointed out in the deletion proposal, that link to the source was added a couple of years after the page was created - so may well not have been the source for this page anyway. -- Beardo (talk) 23:43, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

The Bayonne Times need a link to Wikidata

Can someone link The Bayonne Times here at Wikisource to Wikidata Q118610753. Usually a bot does this, so if you see an error, let me know what I did wrong. RAN (talk) 14:58, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Done. —Tcr25 (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

(Heads up - the bot runs weekly, on saturday evenings UTC. So for this page, which was linked yesterday on the 9th, it would have done it next sat (the 14th).) — Alien  3
3 3 19:50, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

How to improve this table

Hi, I made a table at Page:A History Of Mathematical Notations Vol I (1928).djvu/35. Whilst it works, it probably is quite a bodge solution and probably isn't compatible with mobile. Could anyone give some ideas as to how to improve it? —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 17:48, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

@Matrix I am not sure if all tables can be made safe for mobile, so I am not sure exactly what to recommend. If you concern is having a table altogether, you could try individual lines of text, with Template:Phantom to align the individual terms (alignment would not be preserved on all screens, but it would stop the font size shrinking when viewed in small windows, as presently). Also, very minor, but why call {{Right|}} on cell contents, when you can apply {{ts|ar}}|? Maybe it is identical, but it just seemed a little odd. P.S. There is also a quotation mark missing on the last 8 on the page, but I am not sure what the 8 is/isn't supposed to be aligned with (the 1/7th, and the 5,2,1 look like they are in slightly different columns). Up to you where you place it. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Template:Id

I have no idea why this template is the number one spot on Special:WantedTemplates (all such links are in the Page namespace). My guess is that it is somehow being transcluded by means of a different, broken template. Duckmather (talk) 19:12, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

It appears to be something to do with {{float left}} after ShakespeareFan00's last fiddle. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Due to a typo in Special:PermaLink/15019930, {{float left}} briefly called {{id}} instead of using {{{id}}}. By the time it was corrected, it got the time to spread out it these 3k-ish pages. Discussed this with them back in April; we were hoping that MW would realise and purge pagelinks. Manifestly not. I'd say ignore it? Except if someone fells like going on a null-editing spree again. — Alien  3
3 3 19:54, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Update: either it was the waiting, or the purging the template, or someone purging all the pages *shrug*, but now the links to {{id}} have disappeared from whatlinkshere. I think Special:Wantedtemplates will reflect that in a few days' time. — Alien  3
3 3 20:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Jersey Journal disconnected from Wikidata

You can just restore the deletion at Q7743126. RAN (talk) 20:33, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Done SnowyCinema (talk) 13:28, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

The Cabin at the Trail's End

There are two indexes Index:Cabin at the Trail's End (IA cabinattrailsend0000sheb).pdf where some pages have been created and Index:The Cabin at the Trail's End.djvu where, apparantly, the OCR is a page off. Which to keep ? -- Beardo (talk) 20:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Given that a) OCR off by a page is a fixable problem; b) pdfs have more bugs; c) the djvu's OCR is slightly better than the pdf's; my 2¢ are take the djvu.

I have taken the liberty of realigning the OCR of the djvu. (One of the good sides of djvus is that the hidden text can be easily extracted, tweaked and readded.) — Alien  3
3 3 20:52, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Beardo (talk) 15:24, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Vote now in the 2025 U4C Election

Please help translate to your language

Eligible voters are asked to participate in the 2025 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election. More information–including an eligibility check, voting process information, candidate information, and a link to the vote–are available on Meta at the 2025 Election information page. The vote closes on 17 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

Please vote if your account is eligible. Results will be available by 1 July 2025. -- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

New DJVU OCR realignment tool

Announcing that I've just created a webservice that automatically realigns DJVU OCR at https://realignocr.toolforge.org/ . Probably someone will find it useful^[1]. Feel free if you've got suggestions. There's some more doc at User:Alien333/realignocr (perhaps it should live in WS:space? IDK). If someone finds a misaligned file which this doesn't fix even after retrying, please tell me; I can probably adapt the code for that new case.

1. at least it's faster than manually invoking djvused 3+ times; and it doesn't require djvused or technical knowledge of how it works

— Alien  3
3 3 15:10, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-25

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

Updates for editors

• You can nominate your favorite tools for the sixth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations are anonymous and will be open until June 25. You can re-use the survey to nominate multiple tools.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Foundation staff and technical volunteers use Wikimedia APIs to build the tools, applications, features, and integrations that enhance user experiences. Over the coming years, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will be investing in Wikimedia web (HTTP) APIs to better serve technical volunteer needs and protect Wikimedia infrastructure from potential abuse. You can read more about their plans to evolve the APIs in this Techblog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 - Call for Candidates

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The call for candidates for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection is now open from June 17, 2025 – July 2, 2025 at 11:59 UTC [1]. The Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's work, and each Trustee serves a three-year term [2]. This is a volunteer position.

This year, the Wikimedia community will vote in late August through September 2025 to fill two (2) seats on the Foundation Board. Could you – or someone you know – be a good fit to join the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees? [3]

Learn more about what it takes to stand for these leadership positions and how to submit your candidacy on this Meta-wiki page or encourage someone else to run in this year's election.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair of the Elections Committee

On behalf of the Elections Committee and Governance Committee

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Call_for_candidates

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Bylaws#(B)_Term.

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Resources_for_candidates

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives

Two points:

• I have just added recent months to the index as they were not there. Is it not possible to have that done automatically ?
• I note that up to 2021, there is included a list of topics for each month. Was that added manually ? I guess nobody is too worried by that now.

-- Beardo (talk) 14:24, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I think all that's manual up to now, yes.

On the month listing: I've just added an automatic prefixindex list archive box (also in a multi-column layout, reduces the scrolling). Looking good to you?

On topic: if someone feels like it they're free to but I don't think it's very useful; the search form can already very easily find specific topics. — Alien  3
3 3 17:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. When I look, it has "Manual - Historical" vertically beside the new box. I don't know how to correct that. -- Beardo (talk) 18:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Should be fixed. (Was an issue with the floating.) Also took the occasion to move the automated toc further down. — Alien  3
3 3 19:16, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I still see the headings vertical at the side. -- Beardo (talk) 00:48, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Huh. I can't reproduce by switching to any of the available skins. Could you perhaps "save page" (as in the html &c) as you see it and put that somewhere in a temporary file storage on the web? Would allow me to debug. A screenshot of what you're seeing would also help. — Alien  3
3 3 07:35, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Is the problem the box is for you only ~200px wide? It's supposed to be full-width. If that was the issue, I just tried another fix that should hopefully make it full-width. — Alien  3
3 3 07:42, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't know how to provide you the "save page" but the screenshot is at File:User-Beardo-Scriptorium-Archives Screenshot 2025-06-20 145959.png - you will see that it is full page,

If no one else is getting this problem, perhaps there is something up with my settings. -- Beardo (talk) 19:11, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the screenshot! Much clearer. After investigation, it's not related to your settings; I could reproduce in a clean chrome. I think it's due to how chrome treats full-width floating content. Regardless, I have added a {{-}} after the box and I no longer see this behaviour in chrome. Is it fixed for you too? — Alien  3
3 3 19:19, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Fixed for me too. Thanks -- Beardo (talk) 20:35, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

While we're at it, I've also added automatic lists to WS:Proposed deletions/Archives and WS:Copyright discussions/Archives. — Alien  3
3 3 13:07, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Feedback on an idea to tell new editors adding content in mainspace directly that it's a bad idea

Many new users start creating works before getting in touch with the community and knowing the "right" way to do it; they often end up doing stuff like people did here around 2010 (mediawiki headers for titles, arbitrary formatting, no source/only a link as source, &c). Warning (gently) users that are creating non-scan-backed works would probably help.

I was thinking of an edit filter along the lines of:

• if a new user
• creates a page
• with \{\{[Hh]eader[\}\|], but without \{\{[Vv]ersions[\}\|] or \{\{[Dd](ab|isambiguation)[\|\}]
• not a redirect
• longer than 500 bytes (to not warn someone that just is creating a placeholder page where they will transclude later; the aim is to catch someone adding content in mainspace)
• does not contain \<\s*?pages\s
• does not contain \{\{[Aa]uxTOC[\|\}]; tocs can get damn long sometimes
• then warn the user gently that this isn't the way we do things

These editors adding low-quality works can, just with a bit of nudge, good will and explaining, be taught to create much better stuff. They can be hard to locate, as they're not in contact with the community; the goal of this would be to get them to manifest themselves and ask for help, so we can give it.

Then there is also the question of the exact language of the warning. I think the goals of it would be:

1. Encourage them to get help and learn
2. Not be too techy or jargon-y
3. Not look like scolding or saying "boo! you did bad stuff!"

A proposed draft:

Hello! it looks like you're adding a work directly on a main page. The preferred way to add content is to instead use transclusion from an index page. If you're not sure what this means or you have other questions, feel free to ask them at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help.
If you are not adding content directly to the main namespace, please report this false positive to WS:AN.

What do you think?— Alien  3
3 3 20:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea to me. -- Beardo (talk) 00:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 I don't think the occasional false positive is a big issue, but just in case, could pages like Works of Jules Verne and The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy be excluded (if they aren't already)? Maybe overthinking things, as probably not the place a new user would start (so feel free to ignore if troublesome). Otherwise, I like your draft message. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:34, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

It is true that these should be excluded. I would say that mainspace added TOCs should be in AuxTOC, but it hadn't struck me that for multi-volume works it's been standard practice to not; though that's a discussion for another time. As for what we can do here, I think it's safe to bet that new users, which would probably be defined as less than a week old, won't be creating new multi-volume works. Not a guarantee, but looks good enough to me. And worst case, a new user creating a multi-volume work has a 90% chance of getting something wrong in the process; putting them in touch with the rest of us can't hurt. — Alien  3
3 3 20:58, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support —Beleg Tâl (talk) 00:43, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Jan.Kamenicek: as the main abuse filter editor I'd like your take on this. — Alien  3
3 3 18:40, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

 Support. Let's give it a try. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Category:Authors with approximate workperiodend dates

Are categories like this one and Category:Authors with approximate workperiodstart dates supposed to show up as regular categories? Or are these maintenance categories that should be hidden? Both appear at the bottom of Author:Marian Fell, for example, though I am not sure why they should. There are birth and death dates for this individual on Wikidata. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:53, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

I recently added handling of work period start and work period end from wikidata to Module:Author. I must have forgotten to take care of the categorisation. I think the cats appear because we fetch on one side work period and on the other regular dates, and then decide which to use. Let me take a look. — Alien  3
3 3 06:04, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Done Yep, it was what I thought; I just removed those cats when we don't use workperiod. I have created the cats as hidden cats because sometimes we want them: not for Marian Fell (and they don't appear there anymore), but for e.g. Author:Pearl Poet. — Alien  3
3 3 06:20, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Died

At Brooklyn Evening Star/1853/09/05/Died What is causing the second "died" in the green banner? RAN (talk) 15:22, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

I assume the section name is being pulled from Wikidata. The problem is that the "title" should be the containing work, not the name of the section. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:26, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

+1 to EP; here title should be Brooklyn Evening Star. — Alien  3
3 3 15:52, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

• Yes, I converted "| section =" to "| wikidata =" instead of just adding it.

@Richard Arthur Norton: the section parameter should be kept; it should say "Died"; the title parameter is the title of the parent work where this appeared; here "Brooklyn Evening Star" or the specific issue. — Alien  3
3 3 17:19, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Portals - NWS and NOAA

We have Portal:National Weather Service and Portal:National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that has a subsection for the National Weather Service. Shouldn't they be linked ? And in the same area in portals ? -- Beardo (talk) 03:28, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

The NOAA portal should link to the NWS portal for sure. No reason to duplicate effort. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:26, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

But do you think that the NWS portal should be a sub-portal of the NOAA one ? Or leave it in a different part of the structure ? One is class QC and the other JK. -- Beardo (talk) 17:55, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

There is a clear hierarchy and departmental organization, so it makes sense for NWS to be a sub portal of NOAA which is itself a part of the Department of Commerce, the executive branch of the feds, the United States, etc. Portal:Federal Government of the United States is a child of Portal:United States, but the former is JKA and the latter is IN. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:59, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-26

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

Weekly highlight

• This week, the Moderator Tools and Machine Learning teams will continue the rollout of a new filter to Recent Changes, releasing it to the third and last batch of Wikipedias. This filter utilizes the Revert Risk model, which was created by the Research team, to highlight edits that are likely to be reverted and help Recent Changes patrollers identify potentially problematic contributions. The feature will be rolled out to the following Wikipedias: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Latin Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia. The rollout will continue in the coming weeks to include the rest of the Wikipedias in this project. [16]

Updates for editors

• Last week, temporary accounts were rolled out on Czech, Korean, and Turkish Wikipedias. This and next week, deployments on larger Wikipedias will follow. Share your thoughts about the project. [17]
• Later this week, the Editing team will release Multi Check to all Wikipedias (except English Wikipedia). This feature shows multiple Reference checks within the editing experience. This encourages users to add citations when they add multiple new paragraphs to a Wikipedia article. This feature was previously available as an A/B test. The test shows that users who are shown multiple checks are 1.3 times more likely to add a reference to their edit, and their edit is less likely to be reverted (-34.7%). [18]
• A few pages need to be renamed due to software updates and to match more recent Unicode standards. All of these changes are related to title-casing changes. Approximately 71 pages and 3 files will be renamed, across 15 wikis; the complete list is in the task. The developers will rename these pages next week, and they will fix redirects and embedded file links a few minutes later via a system settings update.
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that had caused pages to scroll upwards when text near the top was selected. [19]

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors can now use Lua modules to filter and transform tabular data for use with Extension:Chart. This can be used for things like selecting a subset of rows or columns from the source data, converting between units, statistical processing, and many other useful transformations. Information on how to use transforms is available. [20]
• The all_links variable in AbuseFilter is now renamed to new_links for consistency with other variables. Old usages will still continue to work. [21]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the recent updates for the "Add a Link" Task, two new Newcomer Engagement Features, and updates to Community Configuration.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:21, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

HKelp

Index:Campobello Tourist Booklet 2.pdf has a single photo spread across two pages, obviously it's better to stitch the image together but how to handle? Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 12:22, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

I would put the full image at Page:Campobello Tourist Booklet 2.pdf/5, and then leave Page:Campobello Tourist Booklet 2.pdf/6 blank. I'd also put a note in the header on Page:Campobello Tourist Booklet 2.pdf/6 just to indicate that it's transcribed on the previous page. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 13:19, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Look at Page:The Tunnel (1905) Alfred E Burke.djvu/3 and Page:The Tunnel (1905) Alfred E Burke.djvu/4 vs. The Tunnel Between Prince Edward Island and the Mainland for an example. You'll want to save to Commons each half of the image separately, as well as a merged/joined version. Then use the ifeq statement on both pages to show the separate images in the Page namespace but to only transclude the stitched-together version in the main space. —Tcr25 (talk) 13:33, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

{{Page other}} may replace ifeq; or you may use {{Elsewhere}} on the second page if you prefer the first solution. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 14:10, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Sister Projects Task Force reviews Wikispore and Wikinews

Dear Wikimedia Community,

The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees assigned the Sister Projects Task Force (SPTF) to update and implement a procedure for assessing the lifecycle of Sister Projects – wiki projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).

A vision of relevant, accessible, and impactful free knowledge has always guided the Wikimedia Movement. As the ecosystem of Wikimedia projects continues to evolve, it is crucial that we periodically review existing projects to ensure they still align with our goals and community capacity.

Despite their noble intent, some projects may no longer effectively serve their original purpose. Reviewing such projects is not about giving up – it's about responsible stewardship of shared resources. Volunteer time, staff support, infrastructure, and community attention are finite, and the non-technical costs tend to grow significantly as our ecosystem has entered a different age of the internet than the one we were founded in. Supporting inactive projects or projects that didn't meet our ambitions can unintentionally divert these resources from areas with more potential impact.

Moreover, maintaining projects that no longer reflect the quality and reliability of the Wikimedia name stands for, involves a reputational risk. An abandoned or less reliable project affects trust in the Wikimedia movement.

Lastly, failing to sunset or reimagine projects that are no longer working can make it much harder to start new ones. When the community feels bound to every past decision – no matter how outdated – we risk stagnation. A healthy ecosystem must allow for evolution, adaptation, and, when necessary, letting go. If we create the expectation that every project must exist indefinitely, we limit our ability to experiment and innovate.

Because of this, SPTF reviewed two requests concerning the lifecycle of the Sister Projects to work through and demonstrate the review process. We chose Wikispore as a case study for a possible new Sister Project opening and Wikinews as a case study for a review of an existing project. Preliminary findings were discussed with the CAC, and a community consultation on both proposals was recommended.

Wikispore

The application to consider Wikispore was submitted in 2019. SPTF decided to review this request in more depth because rather than being concentrated on a specific topic, as most of the proposals for the new Sister Projects are, Wikispore has the potential to nurture multiple start-up Sister Projects.

After careful consideration, the SPTF has decided not to recommend Wikispore as a Wikimedia Sister Project. Considering the current activity level, the current arrangement allows better flexibility and experimentation while WMF provides core infrastructural support.

We acknowledge the initiative's potential and seek community input on what would constitute a sufficient level of activity and engagement to reconsider its status in the future.

As part of the process, we shared the decision with the Wikispore community and invited one of its leaders, Pharos, to an SPTF meeting.

Currently, we especially invite feedback on measurable criteria indicating the project's readiness, such as contributor numbers, content volume, and sustained community support. This would clarify the criteria sufficient for opening a new Sister Project, including possible future Wikispore re-application. However, the numbers will always be a guide because any number can be gamed.

Wikinews

We chose to review Wikinews among existing Sister Projects because it is the one for which we have observed the highest level of concern in multiple ways.

Since the SPTF was convened in 2023, its members have asked for the community's opinions during conferences and community calls about Sister Projects that did not fulfil their promise in the Wikimedia movement.[1][2][3] Wikinews was the leading candidate for an evaluation because people from multiple language communities proposed it. Additionally, by most measures, it is the least active Sister Project, with the greatest drop in activity over the years.

While the Language Committee routinely opens and closes language versions of the Sister Projects in small languages, there has never been a valid proposal to close Wikipedia in major languages or any project in English. This is not true for Wikinews, where there was a proposal to close English Wikinews, which gained some traction but did not result in any action[4][5], see section 5 as well as a draft proposal to close all languages of Wikinews[6].

Initial metrics compiled by WMF staff also support the community's concerns about Wikinews.

Based on this report, SPTF recommends a community reevaluation of Wikinews. We conclude that its current structure and activity levels are the lowest among the existing sister projects. SPTF also recommends pausing the opening of new language editions while the consultation runs.

SPTF brings this analysis to a discussion and welcomes discussions of alternative outcomes, including potential restructuring efforts or integration with other Wikimedia initiatives.

Options mentioned so far (which might be applied to just low-activity languages or all languages) include but are not limited to:

• Restructure how Wikinews works and is linked to other current events efforts on the projects,
• Merge the content of Wikinews into the relevant language Wikipedias, possibly in a new namespace,
• Merge content into compatibly licensed external projects,
• Archive Wikinews projects.

Your insights and perspectives are invaluable in shaping the future of these projects. We encourage all interested community members to share their thoughts on the relevant discussion pages or through other designated feedback channels.

Feedback and next steps

We'd be grateful if you want to take part in a conversation on the future of these projects and the review process. We are setting up two different project pages: Public consultation about Wikispore and Public consultation about Wikinews. Please participate between 27 June 2025 and 27 July 2025, after which we will summarize the discussion to move forward. You can write in your own language.

I will also host a community conversation 16th July Wednesday 11.00 UTC and 17th July Thursday 17.00 UTC (call links to follow shortly) and will be around at Wikimania for more discussions.

-- Victoria on behalf of the Sister Project Task Force, 20:57, 27 June 2025 (UTC)