User talk:Acather96/Archive 14
This is an archive of past discussions about User:Acather96. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | → | Archive 20 |
The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- Gallery: Far from home
- Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?
- Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired
- WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight
The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- Gallery: Far from home
- Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?
- Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired
- WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight
WikiCup 2015 March newsletter
That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader Freikorp (submissions) owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.
In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:
- Cwmhiraeth (submissions) took Bumblebee, a level-4 vital article, to Good Article;
- AHeneen (submissions) worked-up the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, also to Good Article status;
- Rodw (submissions) developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
- And last but not least, Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) worked up a number of Featured Pictures during round 1, including the 1948 one Deutsche Mark (pictured right), receiving the maximum bonus due to the number of Wikis that the related article appears in.
You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email)
Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.
(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 March 2015
- From the editor: A sign of the times: the Signpost revamps its internal structure to make contributing easier
- Traffic report: Attack of the movies
- Arbitration report: Bradspeaks—impact, regrets, and advice; current cases hinge on sex, religion, and ... infoboxes
- Interview: Meet a paid editor
- Featured content: Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Signpost: 11 March 2015
- Special report: An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey
- In the media: Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West
- Traffic report: Wikipedia: handing knowledge to the world, one prank at a time
- Featured content: Here they come, the couple plighted –
- Op-ed: Why the Core Contest matters
Revision redaction request
Please can you redact this slanderous revision posted to my user page by an anonymous user. I have reverted the vandalism, but it's still in the history. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAndrew_Duffell&diff=651830238&oldid=641079781 Thanks 86.19.238.1 (talk) 22:33, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Banning warning
Hello. I wanted to let you know that earlier to day I warned a user about vandalism. I noticed one of his edits to the American Civil War page was unproductive and unnecessary. I will let you know if he continues to make vandalous edits, as I cannot ban him. Thanks, and have a nice day. --XxThose ShadesxX (talk) 00:52, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 March 2015
- From the editor: A salute to Pine
- Featured content: A woman who loved kings
- Traffic report: It's not cricket
.
The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy
- Featured content: A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude
- Special report: Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2014
- Traffic report: Oddly familiar
- Recent research: Most important people; respiratory reliability; academic attitudes
Orphaned non-free image File:Rushden Community College Logo.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Rushden Community College Logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 00:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost, 1 April 2015
- In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism
- Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.
- Traffic report: All over the place
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
The Signpost: 01 April 2015
- In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism
- Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.
- Traffic report: All over the place
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
VisualEditor News #2—2015
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.
Recent improvements
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.
The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.
Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.
Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.
The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.
You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.
The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.
Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.
Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).
Looking ahead
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.
The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- Traffic report: Resurrection week
- Featured content: Partisan arrangements, dodgy dollars, a mysterious union of strings, and a hole that became a monument
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Christianity
- Arbitration report: New Functionary appointments
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- Traffic report: Resurrection week
- Featured content: Partisan arrangements, dodgy dollars, a mysterious union of strings, and a hole that became a monument
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Christianity
- Arbitration report: New Functionary appointments
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
I believe my Article was notable enough this time
Hello. I believe my Article was notable enough this time however it is deleted without giving me any satisfactory explanation. The procedure i have followed: Make draft, join chat and spend 1 whole day to edit and compose excellent article based on suggestion and edits by experts at the chat, submit draft, draft accepted, draft reviewed and edited by WikiProject_Video_games editor and completely published. Then i ask chat again about isn’t this too much edit? then primefac opens speedy delete then it is deleted without giving me any explanation in matter of minutes. If you check the issue i appreciate ty very much : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonsterMMORPG . And there were not any discussion it was deleted immediately. One more notice: I checked same genre games articles and majority of them have way more less authority references and even some have 0 references. Thank you very much for your help. OnlineGamesExpert (talk) 12:40, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 April 2015
- Traffic report: Furious domination
Orphaned non-free image File:Biggleswade United Football Club Logo.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Biggleswade United Football Club Logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. B (talk) 00:14, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 April 2015
- In the media: UK political editing; hoaxes; net neutrality
- Featured content: Vanguard on guard
- Traffic report: A harvest of couch potatoes
- Gallery: The bitter end
The Signpost: 29 April 2015
- Featured content: Another day, another dollar
- Traffic report: Bruce, Nessie, and genocide
- Recent research: Military history, cricket, and Australia targeted in Wikipedia articles' popularity vs. quality; how copyright damages economy
- Technology report: VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates
WikiCup 2015 May newsletter
The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was Cas Liber (submissions) in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus.
Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.
- Coemgenus (submissions) was one of several users who worked on improving Ulysses S. Grant. Remember, you do not need to work on an article on your own - as long as each person has completed significant work on the article during 2015, multiple competitors can claim the same article.
- Cwmhiraeth (submissions) took Dragonfly to Good Article for a 3x bonus - and if that wasn't enough, they also took Damselfly there as well for a 2x bonus.
- LeftAire (submissions) worked up Alexander Hamilton to Good Article for the maximum bonus. Hamilton was one of the founding fathers of the United States and is a level 4 vital article.
The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) 16:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 May 2015
- News and notes: "Inspire" grant-making campaign concludes, grantees announced
- Featured content: The amorous android and the horsebreeder; WikiCup round two concludes
- Special report: FDC candidates respond to key issues
- Traffic report: The grim ship reality
The Signpost: 13 May 2015
- Foundation elections: Board candidates share their views with the Signpost
- Traffic report: Round Two
- In the media: Grant Shapps story continues
- Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way
The Signpost: 20 May 2015
- From the editor: Your voice is needed: strategic voting in the WMF election
- Traffic report: Inner Core
- News and notes: A dark side of comedy: the Wikipedia volunteers cleaning up behind John Oliver's fowl jokes
- Featured content: Puppets, fungi, and waterfalls
- In the media: Jimmy Wales accepts Dan David Prize
- WikiProject report: Cell-ebrating Molecular Biology
- Arbitration report: Editor conduct the subject of multiple cases
The Signpost: 27 May 2015
- News and notes: WMF releases quarterly reports, annual plans
- Discussion report: A relic from the past that needs to be updated
- Featured content: When music was confined to a ribbon of rust
- Recent research: Drug articles accurate and largely complete; women "slightly overrepresented"; talking like an admin
- Traffic report: Summer, summer, summertime
- Technology report: MediaWiki blows up printers
The Signpost: 03 June 2015
- News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out
- Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia
- Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings
- Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier
- Special report: Towards "Health Information for All": Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013
- Traffic report: A rather ordinary week
VisualEditor News #3—2015
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.
The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).
The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).
Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).
The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.
The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
- If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
- If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 10 June 2015
- News and notes: Chapter financial trends analyzed, news in brief
- Traffic report: Two households, both alike in dignity
- Featured content: Just the bear facts, ma'am
- Technology report: Wikimedia sites are going HTTPS only
The Signpost: 17 June 2015
- Arbitration report: An election has consequences
- News and notes: Labs outage kills tools, self; news in brief
- Featured content: Great Dane hits 150
- Discussion report: A quick way of becoming an admin
- WikiProject report: Western Australia speaks – we are back
The Signpost: 24 June 2015
- From the editor: The Signpost tagging initiative
- Featured content: One eye when begun, two when it's done
- Technology report: 2015 MediaWiki architecture focus and Multimedia roadmap announced
- News and notes: Board of Trustees propose bylaw amendments
- Arbitration report: Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration
Tunisian Arabic
Dear User,
As you are one of the contributors to Tunisian Arabic. You are kindly asked to review the part about Domains of Use and adjust it directly or through comments in the talk page of Tunisian Arabic.
Yours Sincerely,
--Csisc (talk) 14:00, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 01 July 2015
- News and notes: Training the Trainers; VP of Engineering leaves WMF
- In the media: EU freedom of panorama; Nehru outrage; BBC apology
- WikiProject report: Able to make a stand
- Featured content: Viva V.E.R.D.I.
- Traffic report: We're Baaaaack
- Technology report: Technical updates and improvements
The Wikipedia Library needs you!
We hope The Wikipedia Library has been a useful resource for your work. TWL is expanding rapidly and we need your help!
With only a couple hours per week, you can make a big difference for sharing knowledge. Please sign up and help us in one of these ways:
- Account coordinators: help distribute free research access
- Partner coordinators: seek new donations from partners
- Communications coordinators: share updates in blogs, social media, newsletters and notices
- Technical coordinators: advise on building tools to support the library's work
- Outreach coordinators: connect to university libraries, archives, and other GLAMs
- Research coordinators: run reference services
Send on behalf of The Wikipedia Library using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 08 July 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation annual plan released, news in brief
- In the media: Wikimania warning; Wikipedia "mystery" easily solved
- Traffic report: The Empire lobs back
- Featured content: Pyrénées, Playmates, parliament and a prison...
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 15 July 2015
- Op-ed: On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it
- Traffic report: Belles of the ball
- WikiProject report: What happens when a country is no longer a country?
- News and notes: The Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania
- Featured content: When angels and daemons interrupt the vicious and intemperate
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Orphaned non-free image File:The AdSense Code.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:The AdSense Code.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:45, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 July 2015
- From the editor: Change the world
- News and notes: Wikimanía 2016; Lightbreather ArbCom case
- Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015 report, part 1, the plenaries
- Traffic report: The Nerds, They Are A-Changin'
- WikiProject report: Some more politics
- Featured content: The sleep of reason produces monsters
- Gallery: "One small step..."
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 29 July 2015
- News and notes: BARC de-adminship proposal; Wikimania recordings debate
- Recent research: Wikipedia and collective intelligence; how Wikipedia is tweeted
- In the media: Is Wikipedia a battleground in the culture wars?
- Featured content: Even mammoths get the Blues
- Traffic report: Namaste again, Reddit
The Signpost: 05 August 2015
- Op-ed: Je ne suis pas Google
- News and notes: VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief
- WikiProject report: Meet the boilerplate makers
- Traffic report: Mrityorma amritam gamaya...
- Featured content: Maya, Michigan, Medici, Médée, and Moul n'ga
VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.
In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
- If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
- Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 12 August 2015
- News and notes: Superprotect, one year later; a contentious RfA
- In the media: Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj
- Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015, part 2, a community event
- Traffic report: Fighting from top to bottom
- Featured content: Fused lizards, giant mice, and Scottish demons
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
- Blog: The Hunt for Tirpitz
Orphaned non-free image File:Duncan.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Duncan.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 23:35, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 August 2015
- Travelogue: Seeing is believing
- Traffic report: Straight Outta Connecticut
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New message
The user Gvf23 didn't fulfill the consensus on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Gvf23. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.119.95.155 (talk) 20:34, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 August 2015
- In focus: An increase in active Wikipedia editors
- In the media: Russia temporarily blocks Wikipedia
- News and notes: Re-imagining grants
- Featured content: Out to stud, please call later
- Arbitration report: Reinforcing Arbitration
- Recent research: OpenSym 2015 report
WikiCup 2015 September newsletter
The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.
In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far Casliber (submissions) in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was Coemgenus (submissions) at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.
The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:
- Cas Liber (submissions), who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy. A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.
- Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points), second place both in Pool B and overall, earned the bulk of his points with FPs, mostly depicting currency.
- Cwmhiraeth (submissions), first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany. Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.
- Harrias (submissions), second in Pool A, took fourth overall. He tends to focus on articles about cricket and military history, specifically the 1640s First English Civil War.
- West Virginian (submissions), from Pool A, was our highest-scoring wildcard. West Virginia tends to focus on articles about the history of (what for it!) the U.S. state of West Virginia.
- Rodw (submissions), from Pool A, likes to work on articles about British geography and places. Most of his points this round were earned from two impressive accomplishments: a GT about Scheduled monuments in Somerset and a FT about English Heritage properties in Somerset.
- Rationalobserver (submissions), from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.
- Calvin999 (submissions), also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.
The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.
Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!
Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 11:47, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 02 September 2015
- Special report: Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flow placed on ice
- Discussion report: WMF's sudden reversal on Wiki Loves Monuments
- Featured content: Brawny
- In the media: Orangemoody sockpuppet case sparks widespread coverage
- Traffic report: You didn't miss much
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 09 September 2015
- Gallery: Being Welsh
- Featured content: Killed by flying debris
- News and notes: The Swedish Wikipedia's controversial two-millionth article
- Traffic report: Mass media production traffic
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Kenneth Morse RD1 request
Hi Acather96,
Someone has made an RD1 on Kenneth Morse's page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Morse ) because it contains content from his profile on the ESADE website ( http://www.esade.edu/faculty/ken.morse ), but all of the content on the ESADE website was written by Ken and provided by him to ESADE, so the copyright for all that material belongs to Ken.
I don't know much about editing on Wikipedia, but it would be great if you could help resolve this issue.
Thanks so much!