User talk:Charles01/Archive 33

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For your edits to Ursula Kuczynski. Crossark (talk) 10:06, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Crossark. She - Ursula, Ruth, Sonja or whatever - is indeed an interesting subject on several levels. And while I am no expert on the deeper meanings and etiquette of barnstars, I am aware that you have sent me a good and positive message. I am duly buoyed and encouraged. I wish you every success and good health for 2015 and beyond Charles01 (talk) 10:40, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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You asked...

here, and thus you receive Ford Fiesta (first generation). That's the only one I've done so far, but... Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 22:18, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. And there's a hint that you're already working one the next one. The existing entry gets more and more muddy as one comes forward. Lots of (mostly) well intentioned and (mostly) well informed contributors each with different ideas of how it should look. And there are perfectly good reasons why it really does look very different from different continents as assembly moves outside Europe. But it's also interesting too see how they manufacture and market the things differently depending if you're in India, China, Thailand, Spain, Mexico, Taiwan, Vietnam (it says here...) and ... and... Anyhow, I follow your progress with interest (and some admiration) on splitting it up into digestible chronologically distinguished separate entries. Success Charles01 (talk) 06:55, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No question that it needs some more work; I did a fair amount on top of the basic article as it had been, but it's still iffy! :) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:42, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of Lotus Éclat at Shuttleworth Hall 2009

Hi Charles , I own the Lotus Éclat you took a picture of and posted. I was surprised and pleased to see it when I searched the 'net to show a friend recently. I also own a Porsche 968 Clubsport and a Lancia Montecarlo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butlers280766 (talk • contribs) 11:03, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Horrible confession: I don't think I ever went to Shuttleworth Hall. Though I did check out one or two "attractions" in the area one way and another early in the 1980s when I worked in the travel trade, so maybe.... anyhow that's a digression.

So ... I'm not sure which picture you mean. But if it's the red one near another Hall (I forget the name of it) near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire - and I think it must be that one - then I'm glad you like the picture. So do I, though the background is a tad too "busy". Still, I think I got the angle right: one never quite knows for sure till after one gets home and starts downloading the pictures. And though as far as I remember (and maybe I don't) it was a stormy day, I seem to have picked a sunny moment for it.

As you may have spotted, I have sent quite a few pictures of cars to wikipedia over the years, though I still find the habit a bit nerdy. But as one gets old one becomes less reluctant to be oneself (assuming a certain level of tolerance on the part of nearest and dearest). I catch myself wondering if your Lancia Monte Carlo is one of the early ones with solid side pieces behind the window or ... not. Here's one I photographed way back when ... when they had only recently been launched, and at five in the morning after emerging from a tent we'd (no doubt illegally) pitched at a motorway service area on the Siena side of Florence. Too much information? And here's another early one I photographed more recently. Sorry to bang on. Have a good weekend anyhow, and I wish you (continuing) joy with your beautifully judged car collection. Regards. Charles01 (talk) 11:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake. Goolging discloses that the airfield over the ridge is an aspect of the Shuttleworth Collection, so I guess the big house could easily be (a) Shuttleworth Hall. When I saw how you had headed your greeting I instantly thought of a big house somewhere in or near (or even a long way to the north of) Shropshire. Well, I guess it might be the same family...

Yes it is called Shuttleworth hall, and yes it's in Old Warden where the Shuttleworth collection is kept. My Lancia is the MK2 car, but I think both UK variants had glass filled buttresses behind the passenger compartment. The American ones were solid. Once I have mastered uploading and sizing images I will add some to this page for you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butlers280766 (talk • contribs) 14:09, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go Charles , some pictures as promised , a couple taken by me at the same event.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Butlers280766 (talk • contribs) 15:20, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. The metadata you uploaded with it shows that you took your picture of the Éclat at the "Shuttleworth" event approximately half an hour before I took "mine". You didn't ask me to critique your pictures, but I think that in terms of the way the authorities set up the lighting ,the shot you took at Shuttleworth from the (car's) front right is the best of the pictures you uploaded of the Lotus. It's a striking looking car. The Porsche, of course, is just plain beautiful. The 924 from which it derived was about to be launched as a Volkswagen but then there was a fuel crisis and so Porsche, rather than waste their work, tooled up to produce it (in smaller volumes and for sale at more Porscheish prices) as a Porsche. I think it's a beautifully proportioned car, and to judge by the way its derivatives outsold the more recent 928, I guess I'm, not the only one. BUT it's difficult getting a good picture of one that colour, especially in this country. You get lots of reflections in the polished paintwork and the door lines and panel gaps and creases sort of merge into the bodywork. And the rather murky nature of the light most of the time this far north in Europe can leave the paint looking rather murky unless you polish it to within an inch of its undercoat. Which takes us back to my comment about reflections. Still, I'm sure it can be done (a really good picture of a Porsche that colour). As for the Lancia, there are unkind people who express surprise if a Lancia from that period is able to move under its own steam. (On the subject of people prone to scepticism about the dependability of Italian cars, my son is very pleased with his Panasonic camera too. He was using something nice and compact called a Panasonic DMC-GF3 but I think he may have traded it in for another Panasonic now.)) But there are Lancias around ready to prove the unkind people wrong. You could get some stunning shots of yours, I think, given a brighter day. Doesn't necessarily need sunshine, but does need a good dollop of light and a sympathetic but not over eye catching background etc. Sorry if I seem to want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. No disrespect intended. Success. Charles01 (talk) 16:21, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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de Vries

Danke!

Wenn Du was brauchst, immer fragen. Habe mich mehr als 40 Jahre in der Branche rumgetrieben ....

B 11:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Danke. Gut zu wissen: bin heutzutage mit ehemaligen DDR-Menschen wiki-beschäftigt. Aber für Auto-industrie - für Autos - bin ich immer noch besessen. Und wann es um Japan geht, eine von unsere "Kinder" studiert jetzt bei der Uni die Spräche und Kultur Deutschlands und Japans. Über Deutschland bekommt sie ein Bisschen Unterstützung von die Eltern,(Gemischter-Engländer u. Holländerin) aber wenn es um Japan geht finden wir uns gleichzeitig am erst Stufe (oder Alex, vielleicht, schon am 2. / 3. ... usw.) Charles01 (talk) 12:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
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The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

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Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	For contributing many good articles to Wikipedia. The entry on Ewald Munschke drew my attention. gidonb (talk) 00:13, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Regards Charles01 (talk) 06:33, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now the article looks even better! Kudos for a great job!!! gidonb (talk) 15:02, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Of course I write and set stuff out the way I'd like to read it. Why should we wish to do otherwise? Then again, one is properly constrained by the availability of sources and facts and ... and .... the number of wiki-hours available. And when you take as your starting point a wiki entry in another wiki-language version you are piggy backing directly on thought patterns (and - often necessarily - wiki-simplifications) created by other folks: there's a good side and a bad side to that - maybe even several of each. Anyhow, we all of us (as far as I can figure out) draw spiritual sustenance from the appreciation, encouragement and yes, even the "constructive criticism", of other people. So thank you again for taking the time to share your positive thoughts on this one. Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:45, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Most welcome! gidonb (talk) 14:16, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

"must be at the service of its readers"
Thank you, Charles, addicted to photographing cars, for the anti-war novel Vergeltung, for quality biographies such as William Henry Brisbane and ("kicking off" from German and other languages) Tino-Antoni Schwierzina, for adding historic views to places such as Mannheim, for "Wikipedia ... must be at the service of its readers", for listening, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Lost for words (me) but the condition is (probably) temporary. Thank you, Gerda, for taking the time to share your kind thoughts. Makes a difference. But I guess you knew that already. Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You make the difference, thank you. - I read more of the interesting novel article and made a few changes, recommend to use {{lang}} and {{ill}} generously, - one of the goals of WP:QAI ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:10, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

After reading a bit more, two more hints: I choose short ref names and place refs in a different section, for more advanced articles I take harv refs. I am unsure about capitalisation of translated titles, - it should certainly be "a professor", "a lecturer" etc. Perhaps give the original title also? (Especially if it would link in German?) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, these are issues where usually I don't think too hard about what I am doing. They are not unimportant, but the sense of the text is more important. The important thing, to me, with a ref name is to use something that I will remember till I have finished with the entry - ie to reduce the risk of inserting the "wrong" reference if repeating a source link reference further down the entry. As for Professor vs professor, again my decision process mostly takes place beneath consciousness, though I quite often find myself reversing the initial call - either way - after a quick read through. As you say, where Professor Smith is part of the title there is no question. But where he is the Professor for Microwaves (The Professor for Microwaves, professor of miocrowaves....) different nuances come into play. With reference details I have a sense of what I should wish to include - sufficient and unambiguous attribution as to where it comes from and when, and the headings in the standardised templates help to avoid oversights. Sometimes in German entries people simply include a template in lieu of the details, referring to a source document separately listed. That can slow a person down when trying to copy, paste and adapt for eng-wiki The bigger issue where you are heavily reliant on online citations is to try and second guess which ones will still be there after five/ten/fifty years. An awful lot of them seem to disappear or - which is almost as bad - hide behind paywalls when you come back to them a few years later. I believe knowledge should be free (and I think on this Wikipedia agrees with me...) Hmmm Charles01 (talk) 06:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the time for musings! I agree with all that you said. "Professor Smith" would rarely appear, no titles ;) - I try to have the refs in a separate section, sorted by alphabet, because it's easier to find years after, especially for others. They all have short names, recognizable at a glance. With a long name, hard to tell if two differ in the 20th character ;) - For advanced articles, as said, I use harv (learned by copying from others), - working on BWV 165 where I just made the transition, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for two ladies for women's month! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Tax horsepower

Impact on engine design and on auto-industry development
"The fiscal benefits of reduced cylinder diameters (bore) in favor of longer cylinders (stroke) may have been a factor in encouraging the proliferation of relatively small six cylinder engined models appearing in Europe in the 1930s, as the market began to open up for faster middle-weight models[1]."
I am unable to comprehend this very well-written passage. I am unable to view the reference. What fiscal benefits might arise from more cylinders? Regards, Eddaido (talk) 06:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, the source was not online.

It can't be that well written if it is incomprehensible! BUT it only makes sense (of course) if the reader has digested information in the previous paras. I'll try and spell it out again.

You pay car tax annually (at least you do in the UK, France, Germany (till the 1930s)...)

The rate of tax varies according to engine size. The bigger your car's engine the bigger your annual car tax bill.

BUT .... the tax authorities don't simply take the engine size in terms of cc to determine their version of engine size. That might involve knowing the formula for determining the volume of a cylinder. Not a skill necessarily universally recalled among legislators, though presumably they did some sort of arithmetic at Eton.....

So they use instead a formula using just the surface area of the cylinders. They know about PI, even if they haven't got to the point of remembering how to cube something.

So the bigger your cylinder surface area the bigger your engine is deemed to be for tax purposes.

BUT the length of the cylinder is ignored in the calculation. So cars with engines featuring long but thin cylinders are taxed less than engines featuring short fat "oversquare" cylinders.

Because of the way the sums work, if you take a six cylinder two litre engine the combined surface areas of the six cylinders will tend to be smaller than the combined surface area of four cylinders in a four cylinder two litre engine. The effect is compounded where the six cylinder engine has a longer stroke in order to stay within the two litre "envelope". If you're still not convinced, find a nice small 2-litre 6-cylinder engine - BMW do some - and sit down with a calculator and work out the surface area of each cylinder using PI x d squared (or 2 x PI x r squared if that's what they taught at your school. Then multiply by 6 to get a total cylinder surface area for the engine. Then find a nice four cylinder engine - maybe an old Vauxhall or Ford, but there are lots of other possibilities - also of 2-litres and do the same thing.

Any accountant can tell you, there are plenty of examples in tax legislation where an understanding of basic maths may reduce your chances of understanding what was in the legislators' minds when they invented a new tax. This is simply an example of that, I think.

I hope this helps. If it did, feel free to rewrite the wiki-page in question so as to clarify it. And thank you. Happy day Charles01 (talk) 07:01, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Stasi Records Agency

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Stasi Records Agency, and it appears to include material copied directly from http://www.routeandgo.net/place/291119/germany/federal-commissioner-for-the-stasi-records.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. The article will be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues.

If substantial content is duplicated and it is not public domain or available under a compatible license, it will be deleted. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. You may use such publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.) CorenSearchBot (talk) 10:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The "new article" is merely the renaming of an existing wiki entry, following discussion on the talk page between the (apprently only two) people who take an interest in the matter. No alleged copyright issues were flagged up under the old title so there is no obvious reason why they should be flagged up now UNLESS (which of course would not be without precedent) someone has copied wiki text to another place subsequent to its appearing in wikipedia. Anyhow, I'll follow the links indicated by your robot and see if I can figure out what is going on with this. You could help by doing the same! Regards Charles01 (talk) 11:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed, I followed your link and here is what it said (my italics):

Following excerpt is taken from Wikipedia

The Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (German: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Stasi-Unterlagen, or BStU) ...rhubarb rhubard..... http://www.routeandgo.net/place/291119/germany/federal-commissioner-for-the-stasi-records#sthash.fAaTmqVK.dpuf

with apologies if I upset your robot by pointing this out. Happy day Charles01 (talk) 11:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Panhard

Excuse me, Sir (Mr Botcrusher, sir) was there not a period when Panhard et Levassor used the name on their products Panhard-Levassor or is this just a laziness. Excuse me, the neighbour is burying something in his back garden I must go and prepare a suitable generous free meal for him and his wife (and dog) and make arrangements for his garden to be dug up after dark but as Douglas MacArthur said when over the ditch at Terowie . . . Eddaido (talk) 22:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry have just noticed about tax etc above will be back, regards, Eddaido (talk) 22:53, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think so, yes. Though any automaker with a six syllable name runs the risk of having his name truncated in conversation or in print media by folks short of time and/or newsprint (/?toner). And if your name is in one language and you are judging matters by a different language, there is the added complication that none of us is quite sure how to pronounce or spell Levassor. (Did I ever raise the topic of Otto Kässbohrer aka Mr Setra?) As far as I remember the wiki entry gives more information on the name of P(&L) than I could attempt on a talk page, but I'm pretty sure that even in the late 1950s the name Panhard PL17 included the letters PL because they stood for Panhard et Levassor.

Please pass my condolences to the gentleman burying his dog. Or was it his wife? Or am I missing something obvious here? Happens quite a lot these days. The best Charles01 (talk) 06:49, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Dagmar Hülsenberg

On 14 March 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Dagmar Hülsenberg, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Dagmar Hülsenberg, with a doctorate in both cost accounting and materials science, was the youngest professor in the German Democratic Republic? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Dagmar Hülsenberg. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:02, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you much (though ... why Dagmar H? well yes, I know its says why: but still....)

Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:59, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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DYK for Ilse Thiele

On 18 March 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ilse Thiele, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Ilse Thiele (pictured) was the president of the Democratic Women's League of Germany from 1953 to 1989? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ilse Thiele. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 12:01, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, coffee. Which reminds me... Regards Charles01 (talk) 16:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The ladies are featured on Portal:Germany, did you know? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't (know) but now I do. Thanks. Of the ones I've translated in the last month or so I had much more fun with Karl Wilhelm Fricke than with either of these two. But of course he isn't a woman, and I think this month that's (part of) the point. And KWF does have more online sources than (1) you can shake a stick at or (2) most. Which makes untangling the bits that matter all the more tantalising - tho doing it properly would take much longer than I gave the fellow. Anyhow, in terms of my own further education I think the real benefit of translating these mini-biographies is in large measure synergistic. Even where they are individually a little bit dull - at least in terms of the information accessible on them - taking a few together one gets a bit of a picture of what a .... different sort of a place the old DDR was, and a bit more insight and context into one or two half remembered conversations in my younger years with people who had left it. Of course it's never entirely fair to "judge" any place according to the testimonies only of the folks who decided to go and live somewhere else. Still, those guys all knew and went through a whole lot of things I never did or will. Sorry, Gerda, you really didn't deserve a ramble. (But at least I have lived in England for long enough now to apologise a lot - whether I mean or ... not.) Regards Charles01 (talk) 17:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's your man, - and yes, the others were chosen because they are women, for March ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. Well yes, I guess it might have been a hint at least in part. Is that how the system works? Don't answer that. But thanks anyhow.... Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

System? It's a nomination, watch and comment if you like ;) - I had no time for copy-edit, because today was the last day for nomination, it's one week after creation (or expansion). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:52, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for March 25

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Horst Metz, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Bloc party and Christian Democratic Union. 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) 08:56, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Cläre Jung

On 28 March 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Cläre Jung, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that Cläre Jung has been called "the soul and muse" of a circle of Berlin-based expressionist poets that includes Else Lasker-Schüler? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Cläre Jung. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 12:01, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Featuring your work on Wikipedia's front page: DYKs

Thank you for your recent articles, including Arthur Lieutenant, which I read with interest. When you create an extensive and well referenced article, you may want to have it featured on Wikipedia's main page in the Did You Know section. Articles included there will be read by thousands of our viewers. To do so, add your article to the list at T:TDYK. Let me know if you need help, _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject assessment tags for talk pages

Thank you for your recent articles, including Arthur Lieutenant, which I read with interest. When you create a new article, can you add the WikiProject assessment templates to the talk of that article? See the talk page of the article I mentioned for an example of what I mean. Usually it is very simple, you just add something like {{WikiProject Keyword}} to the article's talk, with keyword replaced by the associated WikiProject (ex. if it's a biography article, you would use WikiProject Biography; if it's a United States article, you would use WikiProject United States, and so on). You do not have to rate the article if you do not want to, others will do it eventually. Those templates are very useful, as they bring the articles to a WikiProject attention, and allow them to start tracking the articles through Wikipedia:Article alerts and other tools. For example, WikiProject Poland relies on such templates to generate listings such as Article Alerts, Popular Pages, Quality and Importance Matrix and the Cleanup Listing. Thanks to them, WikiProject members are more easily able to defend your work from deletion, or simply help try to improve it further. Feel free to ask me any questions if you'd like more information about using those talk page templates. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for April 1

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Horst Metz, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Michael Weiss. 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) 09:16, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:

Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:

After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]