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The Signpost: 07 January 2015

Tech News: 2015-03

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

Recent software changes

  • Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [1]
  • You can now use the {{!}} magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [2]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
  • A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [3]
  • The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [4]
  • The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [5] [6] [7]
  • The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [8]

Future changes

  • You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [9]

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

16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Moving James Gill (artist)

Hello Christian,

Isn't it possible to move "James Gill (artist)" => "James Gill"? There are no entries yet for "James Gill". In German and French Wikipedia, the related articles are also named "James Gill". Kind regards, Norbert Schott 17:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norbert Schott (talk • contribs)

Hello @Norbert Schott: The problem is that James Gill does exist. You moved the article to template:James Gill. Which is the place (Wikipedia:Namespace) for templates. Christian75 (talk) 07:47, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello Christian, when I follow the link, there is NO direct link to James Gill, only to "Senses Fail". In this case, isn't it possible to simply rename "James Gill (artist)" to "James Gill"? Many thanks, Norbert

James E. Gill (1901–1980), scientist, teacher, explorer and mine developer James Elgin Gill (born 1987), world's most premature baby James Gill (artist) (born 1934), American pop-artist James Gill (columnist), columnist for The Advocate (Louisiana) James Gill (cricketer) (1911–2000), Irish cricketer James Gill, former bassist for American hardcore band Senses Fail Jimmy Gill (1894–?), English footballer of the 1910s and '20s Jim Gill (1865–1923), American baseball player 

Comment added by Norbert Schott 10.12, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello @Norbert Schott:
Im not sure what you try telling me.
You moved James Gill (artist) to template:James Gill which isnt a good idea because pages starting with template: are reserved to templates (not articles). I moved it back. The page James Gill (a disambiguation page) contains a link to James Gill (artist). There are two James which redirects to Senses Fail (James_Anthony_Nielsen and James Nielsen (see for all redirects to Senses Fail.

The Signpost: 14 January 2015

Tech News: 2015-04

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

Recent changes

  • You can download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[10] [11]
  • Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.

Problems

  • All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [12]

Software changes this week

  • There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [13]

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18:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for redirecting List of Nepal-related topics to Outline of Nepal.

Somehow I missed that. The Transhumanist 11:10, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2015

Tech News: 2015-05

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

Recent software changes

This week

  • There are no software changes this week due to annual meetings. [15]

Future changes

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16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Huggle message

Hey Christian75! You are receiving this message because you are subscribed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Huggle/Members#Beta_testers

I have recently launched a new downloads for beta testers that contains nightly builds of huggle, eg. versions that are built every day from our master branch and contains latest huggle. These builds are currently provided only for Windows and Ubuntu. You can find them here: http://huggle.wmflabs.org/builds/

Please keep in mind that these don't have any automatic updates and if you download and start using nightly build, you will need to update it yourself! So don't get yourself to running old version, it's possible to install both stable and nightly huggle, which is what I suggest.

Keep the bug reports coming to phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=Huggle Many thanks! Petrb (talk) 10:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 January 2015

Tech News: 2015-06

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

Problems

  • There was a security issue on Wikimedia Labs. Many Labs tools were down after the issue was fixed. [18]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 4 (calendar).
  • The "Save page" button in the VisualEditor toolbar is now blue rather than green. This is the same as on the mobile site. [19]
  • You can now edit pages on the draft namespace with VisualEditor on the Russian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia. You can ask to get VisualEditor for a namespace on your wiki. When your community agrees, ask in Phabricator. [20] [21]

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

16:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 February 2015

Tech News: 2015-07

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

Recent software changes

Problems

  • MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [23]
  • UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [24]
  • All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [25]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
  • You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [26] [27] [28]
  • You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [29] [30]
  • It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [31]
  • You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).

Future changes

  • Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [32]
  • In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [33]

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16:26, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1

Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:

  • "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
  • "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
  • "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 February 2015

Tech News: 2015-08

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

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
  • On Wednesday your Meta user page will be shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. [34] [35] [36]
  • You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [37]
  • In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [38]
  • The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first.​ [39]

Meetings

  • The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [40]
  • You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [41]
  • You can join a meeting with the developers of the Content Translation tool. It will be on February 18 at 13:00 (UTC). [42]

Future changes

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

17:57, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 February 2015

Tech News: 2015-09

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

Recent software changes

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 25. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 26 (calendar).
  • It is now easier to see template fields in VisualEditor. The fields are bigger. [47]
  • It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [48]
  • Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [49]
  • Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [50]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 26 at 00:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • At the moment you need to log in to edit Wikimedia wikis on mobile devices. You can say if anyone should be allowed to edit on the mobile sites. The discussion ends on March 15.
  • Images in the interface will soon work better in Opera 12. [51]

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

16:28, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:March7th

Template:March7th has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ricky81682 (talk) 10:45, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

Tech News: 2015-10

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

Recent software changes

  • A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [52]
  • You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
  • You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [53] [54]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
  • You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
  • Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [55] [56] [57] [58]
  • The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [59]
  • The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [60]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [61]

Future changes

  • You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [62]

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

16:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015

Tech News: 2015-11

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

Recent changes

  • You can now create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [63] [64]
  • VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [65] [66] [67]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
  • In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [68] [69]
  • The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [70] [71]
  • You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [72] [73]
  • You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [74] [75]
  • If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [76]

Future changes

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

15:18, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015

Tech News: 2015-12

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

Recent changes

  • The servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [79]
  • You can now see lists of bugs about Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary. [80]
  • It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [81] [82]

Problems

  • Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
  • A puzzle piece icon (icon) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [83] [84]
  • You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [85] [86]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [87] [88]
  • You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [89]
  • The final steps of single user login (SUL) will happen in April. You can see the rules to rename accounts. [90]

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

15:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

  • Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
  • WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

.

Thanks

Thank you for thanking my edit to Template:Bromine compounds. DudeWithAFeud (talk) 18:48, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

@DudeWithAFeud: You are welcome. I have added the template to a few articles, but stopped because of lack of time :-) Christian75 (talk) 09:44, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-13

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
  • The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [91]
  • VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [92] [93] [94]
  • When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [95]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [96]

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

15:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-14

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

Recent changes

  • You can now hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [97]
  • You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [98] [99] [100]
  • All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [101]
  • You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [102]
  • VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [103]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
  • VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [104]
  • You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [105]
  • You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [106]
  • You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [107]
  • VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [108] [109] [110] [111]

Meetings

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15:18, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost, 1 April 2015

Edit in Wikidata

User:Evad37/sandbox/Template:Edit wikidata is the sort of code I had in mind for the edit in wikidata template I described at Template talk:Official website. What do you think? Actually adding it to a template will be a bit more complicated, as parser functions will have to be used to only show the link when data is actually being extracted from Wikidata. It might also be a good idea to go to the village pumps, to get feedback at WP:VPI and then possibly to get consensus for use at WP:VPPR - Evad37 [talk] 03:56, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

@Evad37: - looks very nice :-) I have not tested it, but I like the options to have different "edit box". Christian75 (talk) 19:18, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2015

Tech News: 2015-15

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [118]
  • Labs was broken several times this week. [119] [120] [121] [122]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
  • You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [123]
  • Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [124] [125]
  • You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [126]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [127]

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

15:41, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2015

Tech News: 2015-16

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

Recent changes

Problems

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
  • Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [133] [134]
  • All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [135]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 April 2015

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:

  • A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
  • An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-17

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

Recent changes

  • There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [136]
  • VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [137]
  • You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [138]
  • If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [139]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [140]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
  • Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [141] [142] [143]
  • If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [144]
  • You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [145]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

15:30, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Discussion Notice

Based on your comments at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 April 9, you may want to participate in the WP:RFC at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Actors_and_Filmmakers#RFC:_Filmography_navboxes.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 April 2015

Tech News: 2015-18

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

Recent changes

  • All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [148] [149]
  • You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [150]
  • There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [151]
  • You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [152]

Problems

  • Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [153]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
  • It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [154]
  • You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [155]
  • You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [156]
  • You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [157]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:10, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2015

Your common.css page

Hi; I notice that in User:Christian75/common.css you have the CSS rule 

.ambox-Orphan{display: inherit !important;}

- please note that there is an error in this (almost certainly copied from an old version of Template:Orphan#Visibility) which causes incorrect display in some browsers.

To check this, visit this page and look at the second bullet (the one that precedes the text "This article is an orphan ..."). If this bullet is not in the same alignment as the other four, but displaced to the left, you can fix it by altering inherit to table in the CSS rule mentioned earlier. If that doesn't work either, alter it to block.

Template:Orphan#Visibility has been amended. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:35, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-19

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

Recent changes

  • You can now chat with other users in Phabricator. [158]
  • There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [159] [160]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
  • It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [161]

Meetings

  • You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [162]
  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [163]

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

15:08, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Persondata RfC

Hi, You participated in the previous Persondata RfC. I just wanted to notify you that a new RfC regarding the methodical removal of Persondata is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Thanks, —Msmarmalade (talk) 08:01, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2015

Tech News: 2015-20

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

Recent changes

  • You can now make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [164] [165] [166]
  • You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [167]
  • The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [168] [169]

Problems

  • There was a problem that caused slow editing. [170]
  • Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [171]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
  • You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [172] [173]
  • You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [174]
  • When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [175]
  • When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [176]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:38, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 May 2015

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thank you for all of the work you do related to quality assessment, especially for articles related to public art! --Another Believer (Talk) 08:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-21

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

Recent changes

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
  • References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [177]
  • You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [178]
  • The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [179]
  • You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [180] [181]
  • UploadWizard now shows better matches when you add a category to your file. [182]
  • A test about VisualEditor will start on the English Wikipedia on Thursday. [183]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join a technical meeting in France this week.

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

15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.

The Signpost: 20 May 2015

Tech News: 2015-22

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

Problems

  • VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [184]
  • Some Labs tools had issues last week. [185] [186]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

16:12, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-23

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

Problems

  • Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [188]
  • Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [189]
  • Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [190] [191]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
  • You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [192]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:35, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

Morphine (data page) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Morphine (data page). Since you had some involvement with the Morphine (data page) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so.

Tech News: 2015-24

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [193] [194]
  • If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [195]
  • When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [196]
  • The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [197]

Meetings

Future changes

  • If you have a bot, you may need to fix it. The default continuation mode of the API for action=query will change at the end of June. [199]

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

15:21, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 June 2015

Tech News: 2015-25

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

Recent changes

  • Users have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [200]
  • Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [201]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Developers are working on a new tool to get and send newsletters. If you read or write a newsletter, share your ideas about it. [203]
  • If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [204] [205] [206]

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

15:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

A little help with Phabricator?

Every time I try to sign in, I get this "your cookies aren't right" message. I even get that when I click on the confirmation email phabricator is sending me. Is there some magic required? (I am just trying to use my "regular" mediawiki/wikipedia login credentials) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Riventree (talk • contribs)

@Riventree: I have no idea whats wrong. But you could try asking at Wikipedia:TECHPUMP or at the MediaWiki site at mediawikiwiki:Project:Support_desk. Btw. I didnt see your email until today. Enwiki (english wiki; this wiki :-). Christian75 (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Bots


You are receiving this message because a technical change may affect a bot, gadget, or user script you have been using. The breaking change involves API calls. This change has been planned for two years. The WMF will start making this change on 30 June 2015. A partial list of affected bots can be seen here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-June/081931.html This includes all bots that are using pywikibot compat. Some of these bots have already been fixed. However, if you write user scripts or operate a bot that uses the API, then you should check your code, to make sure that it will not break.

What, exactly, is breaking? The "default continuation mode" for action=query requests to api.php will be changing to be easier for new coders to use correctly. To find out whether your script or bot may be affected, then search the source code (including any frameworks or libraries) for the string "query-continue". If that is not present, then the script or bot is not affected. In a few cases, the code will be present but not used. In that case, the script or bot will continue working.

This change will be part of 1.26wmf12. It will be deployed to test wikis (including mediawiki.org) on 30 June, to non-Wikipedias (such as Wiktionary) on 1 July, and to all Wikipedias on 2 July 2015.

If your bot or script is receiving the warning about this upcoming change (as seen at https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages ), it's time to fix your code!

Either of the above solutions may be tested immediately, you'll know it works because you stop seeing the warning.

Do you need help with your own bot or script? Ask questions in e-mail on the mediawiki-api or wikitech-l mailing lists. Volunteers at m:Tech or w:en:WP:Village pump (technical) or w:en:Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard may also be able to help you.

Are you using someone else's gadgets or user scripts? Most scripts are not affected. To find out if a script you use needs to be updated, then post a note at the discussion page for the gadget or the talk page of the user who originally made the script. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

  • A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
  • A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
  • New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
  • SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
  • Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.


Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 June 2015

Tech News: 2015-26

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

Recent changes

  • Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [207] [208]
  • You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [209]

Problems

  • On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [210] [211] [212]
  • On June 16, images were broken for several hours on wikis that use InstantCommons. [213] [214] [215]
  • Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [216] [217] [218]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:23, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 June 2015

Tech News: 2015-27

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

Recent changes

  • Long lines in code blocks now look better. [219]
  • You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [220]
  • When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [221]
  • The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [222] [223] [224]
  • You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [225]

Problems

  • JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [226]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
  • You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [227]
  • When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [228]
  • If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [229]
  • Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [230]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

  • When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [231]

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

15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Consultation (object-oriented programming)

[232] Why? —Ruud 11:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 July 2015

Tech News: 2015-28

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

Recent changes

  • On the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [233]

Problems

  • The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [234]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
  • The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [235] [236]
  • You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [237]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Artiom Haceaturov, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Valence. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:06, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 July 2015

Tech News: 2015-29

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [239]
  • There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [240]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [241]

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

15:06, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 July 2015

Disputed move

Your move is is disputed, and you knew it. Undo it. -DePiep (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Im going to make a recent changes for WP Chemistry, see Category:WikiProject Chemistry articles and compare it with Category:WikiProject Chemicals articles which contains all the articles with a {{chembox}} Christian75 (talk) 00:02, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

ANI

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Copy/paste content after move. Thank you. DePiep (talk) 01:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Recent changes in WikiProject Chemistry

Template:Recent changes in WikiProject Chemistry has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. In favor of original {{Recent changes in Chemistry}} -DePiep (talk) 15:30, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Not about beauty pageants

I've removed your "WikiProject Beauty Pageants" template from Beauty parade. If you read the article (it's only three lines), I think you'll see why. Bishonen | talk 07:54, 17 July 2015 (UTC).

@Bishonen: thanks. Yes, I should have read the article :-) and I would have known that its a ironic reference to the beauty pageant. Christian75 (talk) 10:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't know much about wikiprojects, especially not to do with things like "procurement" — maybe you know a project this article can be added to? Bishonen | talk 10:45, 17 July 2015 (UTC).
@Bishonen: I have tagged it with {{WikiProject Business}} because request for tender (link in the first line), and the parent article of the category:Procurement is also WP Business. Christian75 (talk) 16:06, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Sounds right! Bishonen | talk 16:08, 19 July 2015 (UTC).

Tech News: 2015-30

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
  • You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [242]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [243]

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

03:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2015

Tech News: 2015-31

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
  • There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [249]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
  • JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [250]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 July 2015

Tech News: 2015-32

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

Recent changes

  • The ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
    • You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [251]
    • Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [252] [253] [254] [255]
  • The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [256]
  • MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [257]
  • Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [258]

Problems

  • There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [259]
  • We can't search by file type on Wikimedia wikis now. [260]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 August 2015

VisualEditor News #4—2015

Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition

Did you know?

You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.

Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).

Screenshot showing the special character tool, selected text, and the special character that will be inserted


Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.

Screenshot showing the special character tool and the same text after the special character has been inserted


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

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)

Tech News: 2015-33

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

Recent changes

  • MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [261]
  • The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [262]
  • You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [263]
  • You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [264]
  • It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [265]
  • JavaScript authors:
  • The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [270]

Problems

  • More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [271]
  • Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [272]
  • Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [273]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
  • UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [274]
  • You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [275]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [276]

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

14:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 August 2015

Tech News: 2015-34

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

Recent changes

  • Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [277] [278] [279]
  • Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [280]

Problems

  • Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [281] [282]
  • On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [283]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
  • You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [284]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Jesse Aungles

I followed an IP to Jesse Aungles and ended up reverting their edits along with yours. Regarding the image, see Charlie G. Hawkins which suggests, along with the text added, that the IP was just having fun. This is FYI in case you want to check whether I've done the right thing. Johnuniq (talk) 05:40, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Ok. I do not know anything about the image - I just moved it inside the infobox. I did check his date of birth. Right now the article says he is born 6 aug AND 8 june 1995; The reference says 06/08/1995 and its an Australian page, and they use DD/MM/YYYY, i.e. 6 Aug 1995. If you do not have any objection I will change the date of birth to 6. Aug. Christian75 (talk) 06:30, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, please fix it. Johnuniq (talk) 07:17, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Fixed :-) Christian75 (talk) 07:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Please see the latest

…at the discussion at the Infobox page, on how to deal with data and references, here [285]. Cheers, Le Prof

The Talk sections DePiep deleted have been restored. Your comments invited and welcome. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 01:44, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 August 2015

Returning chemical substance article to the text written by a chemist

Rather than the reversion done by non-chemists. See the talk page at that article. Le Prof 71.201.62.200 (talk) 00:36, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-35

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

Recent changes

  • Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [286]

Problems

  • There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [287]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

13:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 August 2015

Tech News: 2015-36

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

Recent changes

  • VisualEditor will now automatically create a link when you type in or paste an ISBN, PMID, or RFC. [288][289]
  • The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [290]
  • VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Use ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init instead. [291]
  • Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [292]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 3 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 1 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

21:36, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Need help with a template on a local wiki

Hi, could you please help me with a template on a local wiki? Im trying to figure out to put a collapsible show button on the left of the template.--Glacious (talk) 05:50, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 September 2015

Tech News: 2015-37

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

Recent changes

  • You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users. [294]
  • A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [295]
  • You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [296]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [297]
  • The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [298][299]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
  • The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters. [300]
  • The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page. [301][302]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours. [303]
  • Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [304][305]

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

17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 September 2015

Tech News: 2015-38

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

Recent changes

  • You can now use the Wikidata query service. [306]
  • Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved. [307]
  • Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [308][309]

Problems

  • There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed. [310]
  • The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [311]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations. [312]
  • The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [313]

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

16:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2015

Tech News: 2015-39

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

Recent changes

  • There is now an experimental Wikimedia maps service. You can give feedback here. [314][315]
  • Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong. [316][317][318][319]
  • More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [320]
  • The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users. [321]

Problems

  • Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time. [322]
  • Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week. [323][324]
  • UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed. [325]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
  • The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms. [326]
  • You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it. [327]
  • Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata. [328]

Meetings

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

18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 September 2015

Tech News: 2015-40

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

Recent changes

  • In UploadWizard, the dialog to see an image preview has been removed. You already see the images in the thumbnails when you upload them. [329]
  • UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look. [330]
  • You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one. [331]
  • When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well. [332]
  • You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50. [333]
  • The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded. [334]
  • MediaWiki developers spent a day looking at proposed code changes in Gerrit. The goal was to clean up the backlog and give feedback to volunteer developers. [335]

Problems

  • Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24. [336][337]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 30. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 1 (calendar).
  • There will be a new beta feature that allows editors to use Flow on their user talkpage if they want to. Each wiki can decide if they want to enable it. [338]
  • The Content Translation tool can give translation suggestions. This feature will now be available in more languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, and Catalan. [339]

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia Foundation developers want the community to decide who can use OAuth in the future. You can discuss it on Meta.

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

15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 September 2015

Tech News: 2015-41

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

Recent changes

  • The link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile. [341]
  • The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [342]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
  • UploadWizard will remind users to add a category. [343]
  • UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [344]
  • A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [345]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

18:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor update

This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.

The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.

This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.

We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 October 2015

Tech News: 2015-42

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

Recent changes

  • The database size lists have been updated. These control special page update frequency and which wikis use global abuse filters. [346]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 15 (calendar).
  • You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons using the visual editor. When the image is uploaded it will be added to the article you're editing. [347]
  • Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [348]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:29, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 October 2015

Tech News: 2015-43

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

Recent changes

  • Tech News is trying to make reading the newsletter easier. The Recurrent item icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The For technical readers icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change.
  • Timestamps in the protection log will now be in the user's timezone. Previously they would show Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [349]

Problems

  • A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [350]
  • Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [351]
  • The deployment of the new MediaWiki version was stopped on October 14. No new code was deployed for the rest of week. This meant planned changes did not happen. [352]

Changes this week

  • Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [353]
  • Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [354][355][356][357]

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 October 2015

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-44

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

Changes this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
  • The first time you use the visual editor, pop-ups will explain why and when you should use the citation and link tools. [358]
  • You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons from inside the wikitext editor by clicking "Upload" in the "Insert file" dialog. You will also be able to drag and drop them into an article when using the visual editor. [359][360]
  • When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [361][362]
  • Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in $wgContentNamespaces. [363]

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

18:04, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #5—2015

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

Did you know?
You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.

Screenshot showing the menu for switching from the wikitext editor to VisualEditor

Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.

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

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.

Links:  It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558)  These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.

Uploads:  Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile:  Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630)  Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.

Rich editing tools:  You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925)  There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354)  When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes

You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together

If you can't read 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) 23:25, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 October 2015

Tech News: 2015-45

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

Recent changes

  • You can now see how many editors are using a gadget on a wiki on Special:GadgetUsage. [364]
  • If you are using the mobile version of Wikipedia, you can now see Wikidata descriptions under article titles in search results. [365]
  • Editing conflicts are now detected when you edit on a mobile device. Before, this did not work properly on mobile. [366]

Problems

  • On October 26 the Wikimedia sites went down for ten minutes. [367]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • A help link will be added to Special:Search. Administrators might have to update the MediaWiki:Search-summary message to avoid two help links. [368]
  • Empty list items could be allowed in the future. If so, this could affect some templates. [369]

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

16:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 November 2015

Tech News: 2015-46

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

Recent changes

  • Superprotect has been removed. [370]
  • You can now switch between the wikitext editor and the visual editor without saving. You will not lose the changes you have made. [371]
  • JSON dumps of the production search indexes are now available. They can be imported to Elasticsearch. [372]

Problems

  • Some translations for the Thanks and Echo extensions were missing. Translators have been asked to help and this should be solved soon. [373]

Changes this week

  • Thumbnails of 16-bit TIFF files will be displayed properly. Before, this didn't work. [374]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

17:18, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 November 2015

Tech News: 2015-47

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

Changes this week

  • You can use TemplateData to indicate how you want a template to be displayed in wikitext. Tools like VisualEditor that edit templates will soon use this information. [377]
  • Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme. [378]
  • The Community Tech team is doing a community wishlist survey to understand what they should be working on. They are now accepting proposals in all languages. You can create your proposal in the small box above the blue button and click it when you're done.
  • Wikis can make the welcome notification link to a specific page. [379]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. The change will happen in January 2016. [380][381]

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

19:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 November 2015

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-48

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

Recent changes

  • A new Pageview API has been announced. Feedback is requested to help decide which data to add to it next.

Changes this week

  • There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • From 1 December, the MediaWiki API will no longer support the dbg, txt, and yaml output formats. [382]

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

20:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 November 2015

AWB

Hi. Please read the rule of use of AWB, esp. rule #4. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:07, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

@Lugnuts:Rule 4 says "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits". I guess you are thinking about putting stub at the bottom (two lines). I do not think that is insignificant - it has a visible effect, and the categories are listed at the end. Per WP:STUBSPACING. In matter of fact I'm doing that even when editing normally. Christian75 (talk) 10:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, they are insignificant edits and against the rules of use. WP:STUB states "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines...". Not that you must do it. Find me the policy that states you must do this. I would review your use of AWB too. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:23, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I do not agree. It has a visible effect as rule #4 states it should have, and its usually desirable to have two lines. Christian75 (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
That's fine you don't agree, but you're wrong. And per Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Rules_of_use - "if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further edits." And you can stop your WP:HOUNDING/stalking of my edits right now, before you find yourself at ANI and being blocked. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:07, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I havent made any "stub newlines" with AWB since your comment at my talk page - consensus seeking you know. And I have not reverted any of your reverts too; You said "I would review your use of AWB too."; so I thought I would review your edits too. I see from your talk page that you hate AWB (eg. "fuck AWB"). And btw. its not really nice you call med a "troll"[383] - I care about the Danish articles... Christian75 (talk) 13:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-49

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

The symbol for advanced news items has been changed. This is because the symbols were too similar. If a news item is for more technical readers it now looks like this: . You can give feedback on this change.

Problems

  • On September 29 users' skin preferences were removed by mistake on small and medium-sized wikis. This changed preferences back to Vector. Restoring all data would cause even more problems. Affected users who want to have their preference changed back globally can ask for it as a comment on Phabricator task T119206 until December 21 2015. [384]
  • Some scheduled tasks were not working properly from September to recently. This meant some pages in the special pages namespace were not updated. It has now been fixed. [385]

Changes this week

  • Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [386][387]
  • There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Category watchlists are now available on test wikis and MediaWiki.org. The plan is to enable it on most wikis in January. [388]
  • Cross-wiki notifications are being developed. When this is done you will not have to go to the wiki where something happened to be notified. [389]

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

16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 December 2015

Tech News: 2015-50

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

Recent changes

  • Revision scoring will help to automatically identify bad-faith and good-faith edits. The point is to make it easier to block vandals and welcome newcomers. It currently supports Wikidata and 14 Wikipedias. [390]

Problems

  • Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [391]

Changes this week

  • You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [392]
  • IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [393]
  • You will be able to edit the graph size in the visual editor. You can either specify the size in the graph dialog or drag it to be the size you want it to be. [394]
  • It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [395]
  • You will be able to use syntax highlighting when you write math with LaTeX in the visual editor. [396]
  • UploadWizard will look a bit different. [397]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 10 December. (calendar).
  • New MediaWiki versions will now be on Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedia on Wednesdays. Other Wikipedias get the new MediaWiki version on Thursdays. [398]

Meetings

Future changes

  • A new beta feature will show users links to related articles at the bottom of an article. It will not be enabled by default. [399]

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

17:52, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 December 2015

Tech News: 2015-51

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

Changes this week

  • Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [400]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 17 December. (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

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

17:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 December 2015

Tech News: 2015-52

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

Tech News

  • Because of the holidays, the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2016.
  • The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2015? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

  • CompletionSuggester is a new suggestions algorithm for Search. It is available as a Beta feature since 17 December. (more information)
  • The Multimedia team is running an A/B test for the cross-wiki upload tool. They are testing four different interfaces. The test is running from 16-23 December. (more information)

Changes this week

  • There is no deployment of MediaWiki scheduled until 12 January 2016 (calendar).

Meetings

  • Should administrators and other users with advanced tools need stronger passwords? You can discuss about it in a Request for Comments.
  • No meeting with the VisualEditor team on 22 and 29 December, and 5 January.

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

18:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #6—2015

Read this in another language • Subscription list

Did you know?

A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.

Screenshot showing a pop-up dialog for switching from the wikitext editor to VisualEditor
If you prefer having separate edit buttons, then you can set that option in your preferences, either in a pop-up dialog the next time you open the visual editor, or by going to Special:Preferences and choosing the setting that you want:
Screenshot showing a drop-down menu in Special:Preferences

The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.

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

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.

The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.

In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)

Testing opportunities

  • Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
    • Remember my last editor,
    • Always give me the visual editor if possible, 
    • Always give me the source editor, and 
    • Show me both editor tabs.  (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
  • 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, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).

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), 00:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Kestigia

Hello. You have added the article Kestigia to the WikiProject Faroe Islands. I was just wondering why that is? I can't see the Faroe Islands mentioned in the article at all, it is about a Dutch law known from medieval Frisian texts as far as I can understand from the article. But what has that to do with the Faroe Islands? Kind regards --EileenSanda (talk) 09:13, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

@EileenSanda: Its a mistake. I will fix it. Thanks for mention it :-) (og glædelig jul :-) - kan ikke skrive færøisk, men har en fætter der bor deroppe) - Christian75 (talk) 16:05, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for your answer. Hvor på Færøerne bor din fætter? --EileenSanda (talk) 16:46, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
By the way, Frisian people were living in Akraberg in the southernmost place in the Faroes sometimes in the Middle Ages, before they died because of the Black Death around 1350 AD. I thought that this might have been the reason for adding the article to the Faroese WP-project, but couldn't find anything about them, and also they were not known for keeping the laws (Norwegian law back then I think). --EileenSanda (talk) 16:53, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
@EileenSanda: So much history I do not know :-) Christian75 (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Han bor i Leynar (Never been there, so I had to check Facebook first.) Christian75 (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Ok, Leynar er en smuk bygd med en god sandstrand. Tak for svaret :) Mvh. --EileenSanda (talk) 23:58, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Uploading and downloading listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Uploading and downloading. Since you had some involvement with the Uploading and downloading redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 19:33, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 December 2015

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Christian75/Archive_2015&oldid=1125488026"