Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2018/August

Is adding a book about game (not strengy) aviliably?
Hello everyone! I want to create a introduction book about Undertale but I wonder if the content and category is aviliable. Can I add that?Mariogoods (discuss • contribs) 09:04, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Only if it's a tutorial, like those in Subject:Electronic games. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 10:46, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Growth team is looking for your feedback and ideas
Hello!

Have you heard about Growth team?

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.

We are contacting your project today, because you may be interested by what we work on.

8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!

We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.

We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.

Share your experiences with newcomers

We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.

Get updates on your project page

The Growth team's newsletter will provide updates regularly. You can subscribe to it.

On behalf of the Growth team, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

New user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS


Hi all!

To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like  and   which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.) A new user group,, has been created. Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with  or   that is either in the   namespace or is another user's user subpage).

You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.

Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).

Thanks! Tgr (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)


 * When the Foundation acts to disempower the volunteers, they should admit that's what they're doing. Honesty is very high on my priority list. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:31, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * We just have to add all the admins into this group for a start. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 14:10, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That seems like a reasonable measure to me. The creation of the group would otherwise constitute a revocation of privileges from existing admins without approval of the local community. What procedure do we need to go through (if any)? Official hoops to jump through? I seem to recall that on en.wb (unlike en.wn) local 'crats don't have the power to toggle the admin bit, but since I'm not a 'crat here I can't tell for sure whether the same is true of the new group. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that this privilege should be restricted to the bureaucrats only, rather than to all sysops. Let's face it: the permissions discussed aren't small in effect. And not all admins need (or even know how) to use it. This should at least put the 'crats group to some value rather than being some superfluous extension of sysop. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 15:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That's definitely too restrictive. I, for example, am not a crat on Wikibooks, and I'm engaged in an occasionally-intensive, multi-year javascript-based wiki infrastructure development project; it'd be kind of a disaster for me to not be able to edit the javascript files; and I'm somewhat involved from time to time in the CSS, too. And JackPotte does maintenance on our codebase; it would be detrimental to the project for JackPotte to not have those privs. Frankly, I think any admin can be trusted to make judgements about when they're qualified to tinker with the js or css. We could reasonably have an arrangement where an admin is granted the interface priv only if they request it; that way, admins who judge themselves to have no need for the bit would not have it on their accounts, and there'd be no problem as long as whoever turns on the bit for them was careful not to respond to a request from an admin account that had already been compromised at the time of the request. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * All such admins should get bureaucrat-ship. If you have a need, get it. I'm looking for the bureaucrat flag to be more than just a useless permissions-granter, and this is one of the better ways to ensure the same. Indeed, admins who "could reasonably have an arrangement where an admin is granted the interface priv only if they request it". Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Two things:
 * That seems backward; the point of splitting off the interface priv is so that an account doesn't have to have excess privs on it that aren't needed, so it would run counter to that to force a user to become a crat in order to acquire the interface priv. The amount of trust by the community implied by granting adminship seems to be exactly the amount of trust for a user to be able to decide whether or not they should be exercising the interface priv.
 * I've been involved in several crat RFPs, including one where I became a crat myself on en.wn, and I have to say it's a huge hassle and a royal pain for a small project. Imho it'd be a terrible idea to require users to go through that sort of hell just to get an interface priv that, as I've now remarked a number of times, is quite within what an admin's judgement can be trusted on.
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Given the main point of a crat is to judge consensus and grant admin rights it makes no sense to me to make them the only people able to edit the interface especially as very few projects have any crats. I think we should just add the right to any admin who asks if the crat is willing to, rather like adding reviewer or importer. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 15:54, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Bureaucrats can toggle interface admin here by the way. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 16:38, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, let that be the case. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Editing of sitewide CSS/JS is only possible for interface administrators from now


Hi all,

as announced previously, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed: only members of the   group, and a few highly privileged global groups such as stewards, can edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage). This is done to improve the security of readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. More information is available at Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS. If you encounter any unexpected problems, please contact me or file a bug.

Thanks!

Tgr (talk) 12:39, 27 August 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)