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The Signpost: 31 December 2012

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

The Signpost: 21 January 2013

The Signpost: 28 January 2013

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

Query

Dear Michael, for our student textbook about Charles Darwin we want to use two of your nice photos: Lyme-regis sediments; Chtalamus stellatus. Although you are bothered with copyright issues we will appreciate if we can kindly ask you for permission to use your two photos. Of course your name appears in the list of figures together with a hint of the licence conditions. With best regards Paul

Prof. Paul Wrede Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin Molekularbiologie und Bioinformatik Arnimallee 22 14195 Berlin (Germany) Tel.: 030-8387-1349 --Paul wrede (talk) 16:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC) --Paul wrede (talk) 15:23, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Galanthus nivalis (snowdrop) flower
Yes, that's fine. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

The Signpost: 25 February 2013

The Signpost: 04 March 2013

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

The Signpost: 25 March 2013

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

The Signpost: 15 April 2013

The Signpost: 22 April 2013

The Signpost: 29 April 2013

The Signpost: 06 May 2013

The Signpost: 13 May 2013

The Signpost: 20 May 2013

The Signpost: 27 May 2013

The Signpost: 05 June 2013

The Signpost: 12 June 2013

Your response to the current Signpost's op-ed

Hi MichaelMaggs, it is good to see you around active back again. I noticed your draft for a response and I would like to see it published. I'm in particular fond of the historical reference to the Tragedy of the Commons, this makes it a really good read right from the beginning. It is also good that you take some time to elaborate how Commons serves also other projects with other needs. I am not sure whether its length is a problem and if it is good to attempt to summarize the main strands of argument of two important debates. But it is definitively good to invite the readers to the current discussion at Commons. Best regards, AFBorchert (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi again, many thanks for your kind comments. I'm not sure if the Signpost editor will accept the piece, but I expect he will make a decision timorrow. In the meantime, any suggestions you may have for improvement are welcome at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Boneyard/Newsroom/Submissions#A response to 'The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons'. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 June 2013

The Signpost: 26 June 2013

The Signpost: 03 July 2013

Tech news: 2013-28

Latest [[<tvar|technews>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News</>|tech news]] from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. [[<tvar|more-transl>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/28</>|Translations]] are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

  • VisualEditor news:
    • VisualEditor deployment has been delayed by a week. It is now planned to enable the editor for logged–in editors on chosen Wikipedias on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 29.
    • A bug that made it impossible to save VisualEditor edits that triggered a CAPTCHA has been fixed. [1]
    • Several bugs that occurred on right–to–left wikis have been fixed last week (bug #49416, bug #49613, bug #50543).
  • Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploader group. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287). [2]
  • Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners. [3]

Future software changes

  • MediaWiki will allow choosing a specific page of a PDF document or a thumbnail of a video file to show up inside the
    tag (bug #8480). [4]
    • It will now be possible to create empty MediaWiki: messages, for instance in order to disable them (bug #50124). [5]
    • The Nearby feature will soon be enabled on Wikivoyage wikis again. [6]
    • The Notifications extension messages will now include a direct link to diffs on wiki as well as in notification e-mails (bug #48183). [7]
    • Table of contents will now use the HTML <div /> element instead of <table />, fixing a nine–year–old bug #658. [8]
    • First mock–ups of a mobile Wikidata application have been published by Pragun Bhutani as part of his Google Summer of Code project. [9]
    • A discussion on minimum documentation practices in MediaWiki code has been started and awaits comments from the community.

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

    18:30, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 10 July 2013

    Tech News: 2013-29

    Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

    Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

    Future software changes

    • A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos. [13]
    • The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed. [14]
    • Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them. [15] [16]
    • Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later. [17]
    • Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22. [18]
    • A new image gallery design has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
    • An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [19]

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

    17:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 17 July 2013

    Tech News: 2013-30

    Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

    Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

    Future software changes

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

    21:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 24 July 2013

    Tech News: 2013-31

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

    • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 25. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 29, and on all Wikipedias on August 1. [27]
    • Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24. [28]
    • Pywikipediabot moved their code from SVN to git; bot owners need to update their tools. [29]
    • The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon. [30]
    • It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon. [31]
    • The software that resizes large PNG images on all wikis was changed on July 25. Resizing of PNG files bigger than 35 megapixels should be faster and more reliable now. [32]
    • Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector. [33], [34], [35]
    • Special:MIMESearch, which gives a list of files by type, will be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis with MediaWiki version 1.22/wmf12 (bug #13438). [36]
    • A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
    • VisualEditor news:
      • On July 24, VisualEditor was added for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias; it will be added for all users on those wikis on July 29. [37]
      • A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24. [38]
      • Many bugs were fixed in right-to-left languages. [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]
      • It is possible again to scroll down in the template editing window (bug #51739).
      • VisualEditor now works with the FlaggedRevisions extension. (bug #49699)
      • If the user opens VisualEditor using a section edit link, the title of the section is added to the edit summary (bug #50872).
      • Invisible templates now can't be deleted by accident or on purpose (bug #51322).

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

    20:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 31 July 2013

    Uploading images on Listed monuments for Wiki Loves Monuments competition

    Hi Michael,

    I thought I would have a look at what is needed on the Grade I Listed Buildings list for Buckinghamshire for St Mary's Church Chesham. All fine on the text boxes but despite all my efforts I could not get the chuch image from Commons to format properly in the table. It seems to require a different configuration than the usual tables I am familiar with. I also tried the info box approach without success. Despite being pretty experienced and used of a 'try until it work's approach I am stumpted this time! Any ideas on the formate required for images? Tmol42 (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

    Hi, have a look at Grade I listed buildings in Bristol for a list that has embedded images. Each row in the template looks something like this:
    {{EH listed building row
| name = [[Avon Bridge]] 
| location = Whitby Rd, Brislington
| type = Bridge
| completed = {{sort|28|1839}}
| show_architect = yes
| architect = [[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]]
| show_listed = yes
| date_listed = 8 June 1990
| grid_ref = ST613724
| lat = 51.449707
| lon = -2.557578
| uid = 1219892
| show_img = yes
| image = Avonbridge.JPG
| show_ref = yes
| reference = <ref name="avonbridge">{{cite web | title=Avon Bridge | work=Images of England | url=http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/details /default.aspx?id=380854 | accessdate=2007-03-16}}</ref> 
}}

    Hope that helps. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC) =

    Yes it did, the minimalist approach which I failed to try!,thanks.Tmol42 (talk) 23:39, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

    WLM & listed building dates

    Please note the issue I have raised at User talk:Nev1#Listed building dates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:18, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

    Thanks for letting me know. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 07 August 2013

    Listing building row

    Hi, I was wondering what the |upload_desc= in the {{EH listed building row}} template is for. Is it it be edited as per the |name= field or should it remain as a record of what was uploaded? Keith D (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

    Not sure I'm afraid, as I have not been doing the uploads myself. Where do you find that field in use, as it doesn't appear in the finished list at Grade I listed buildings in Bristol (see the example given in the section above). If you could let me know I'll have to go away and find out the answer for you. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
    It is in the pages loaded by Nev1 as an example see Grade I listed buildings in the East Riding of Yorkshire Keith D (talk) 11:13, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
    OK, I see it now. That field is not actually needed (or used), and I believe was just included by default by one or two uploaders. You can safely ignore it, or even delete it if you're feeling really helpful :) If you look at Commons:Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom/Organizers' help desk you can see details of the typical format (which is the same as mentioned above). --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:44, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 14 August 2013

    Scandale Beck

    I created Scandale Beck last year, and other streams connected with Packhorse bridges. I have worked on or created several bridge articles. I am in Pennsylvania, but I know I can work on the databases and particular bridges in England. I suggest that you expand the notice you posted on the bridge project about editors who are not local, but can help, given the proper direction. I will poke around myself, but expand your call for help to the whole world.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:37, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

    Thanks. Help was requested from a number of international projects, including Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Architecture, but anything you can do to spread the word more widely would be great. Regards, --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

    Tech News: 2013-34;

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

    New features

    • The previous version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 15. It was enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 22. [45]
    • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 22. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 29. [46]
    • You can now use new styles of galleries. Please give feedback to User:Bawolff. [47]
    • You can now visit a random page in a category, for example Special:RandomInCategory/Science. (25931) [48]
    • You can now use the <wbr> HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468) [49]
    • Gadget authors: you can now use the wikipage.content hook, so that your scripts are re-run when a page is changed after the document-ready event (for example using Ajax). (30713) [50]

    Problems fixed

    • There was a bug where file redirects didn't work when a file was renamed; it is now fixed. There is still an issue with purging, but it should be fixed soon. (52200)
    • Maintenance reports provided by special pages will now all be updated on each wiki every six months. This will for example give you recent information on uncategorized pages, unused templates and most wanted pages (see details).
    • There was a bug that caused false positives for anti-blanking edit filters; it is now fixed. (52077) [51]

    VisualEditor news

    • The "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be changed more easily; for example, some wikis are using "edit source" for wikitext editing, and "edit beta" for VisualEditor. You can ask for the same change in bugzilla.
    • You can now edit references that are added inside a <references> block. (51741)
    • You can now test on mediawiki.org new basic tools to add and edit struck text (with the button for the <s> tag), lower text ( for <sub>), upper text ( for <sup>), underlined text ( for <u>), computer code ( for <code> and <tt>), math text ( for <math>), Egyptian hieroglyphs ( for <hiero>), and to say that text is in another language ( for lang="ar" dir="rtl"). (51609, 51612, 51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
    • You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser. [52]

    Future

    • Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites. [53]
    • Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications. [54]
    • Starting on August 28, all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. Some countries (like China) will not use HTTPS. If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on meta. [55]
    • Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis. [56]
    • The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead, Elasticsearch is now planned. [57]

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

    19:52, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 28 August 2013

    The Signpost: 04 September 2013

    The Signpost: 11 September 2013

    The Signpost: 18 September 2013

    The Signpost: 25 September 2013

    Tech News: 2013-40

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

    New features

    • Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
    • There is now an Android application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [58]

    VisualEditor news

    • VisualEditor now has a new toolbar with drop-down menus for advanced tools. [59]
    • Many bugs were fixed, some related to copy-and-paste. [60]
    • You can now move references, list of references, templates and other elements with the mouse ("drag-and-drop"). [61]
    • You are invited to comment on designs for the interface to add references in VisualEditor.

    Future

    • Developers are looking for ideas of small technical projects that new developers could work on. Please add your ideas. [62]
    • Developers are looking for wikis who would accept to try using secure links (HTTPS) for all users. [63]
    • You can join an IRC discussion about "Beta features", a tool to try new features, on October 3. [64]
    • You can join an IRC discussion about Flow, the new wiki discussion tool, on October 17.

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

    19:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 02 October 2013

    The Signpost: 09 October 2013

    The Signpost: 16 October 2013

    Tech News: 2013-42

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

    New features

    VisualEditor news

    • You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [66]
    • You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content. [67]
    • When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [68] [69]

    Future

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

    09:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 23 October 2013

    Tech News: 2013-43

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

    New features

    • The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [72]

    VisualEditor news

    • On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces. [73]

    Problems

    • On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours. [74]

    Future

    • MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
    • In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us. [75]
    • You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.

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

    09:43, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 30 October 2013

    Tech News: 2013-44

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

    New features

    • The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed. [76]

    VisualEditor news

    • You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future. [77]

    Problems

    • There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.

    Future

    • Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.

    JavaScript / Gadget developers

    • Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default. [78]
    • Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [79]

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

    10:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 06 November 2013

    Tech News: 2013-45

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

    New features

    • You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text. [80]

    Problems

    • There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [81]

    Future

    • The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [82]
    • MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [83]
    • The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [84]
    • The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [85]
    • You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}. [86]
    • In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [87]

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

    13:04, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 13 November 2013

    The Signpost: 20 November 2013

    Tech News: 2013-47

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

    New features

    • The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style. [88]
    • Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password. [89]

    Problems

    Future

    • There will be no major code changes on the week of November 25 because many developers will be on holiday for Thanksgiving.
    • The editing interface of Page: pages on Wikisource (working with the Proofread Page extension) will soon also work without JavaScript. [90]

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

    06:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 04 December 2013

    The Wales Coast Path WikiProject

    Living Paths! Logo

    As a member of WikiProject Wales, WikiProject Cardiff or an user who has contributed to Welsh articles we invite you to contribute to a new project, Living Paths!: articles, images, translations... Lonely Planet rated the coast of Wales "the best region on Earth" in 2012, yet there is a very low number of articles on the history and culture of places along the Coastal Path. This promises to be an exciting project as it gathers momentum with many Users joining in across the world.

    If you are interested in training groups in Wales, please leave a message on the Talk Page.
    Let's make this WikiProject, like the path itself, the best on earth! And let's put Wales back on the map!

    Diolch Michael!

    Llywelyn2000 (talk) 11:26, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

    Tech News: 2013-49

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

    This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery.

    New features

    • The CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by editing templates used to describe metadata. [91]
    • JavaScript code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally on your computer to load faster. [92]

    VisualEditor

    • You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows. [93]
    • You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [94]
    • Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [95]

    Problems

    • Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [96]

    Future

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

    08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 11 December 2013

    Tech News: 2013-50

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

    New features

    VisualEditor

    • The toolbar is now simpler; all text styles (bold, italics, underline, subscript, etc.) are in the same menu, and the "More" menu is called "Insert". [100]
    • You can now use a basic tool to add special characters to your text. You can add more characters (useful in your language) by editing the MediaWiki interface on translatewiki.net.
    • The tool to add and edit mathematical text is now called "formula". [101]

    Problems

    • There was a problem with the "Create a book" tool (Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone. [102]
    • The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week. [103] [104]
    • Because of a bug, this newsletter is delivered to users using the new MediaWiki message delivery, and to community pages using the old EdwardsBot. [105]

    Future

    • MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 was added to test wikis on December 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 17 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 19 (calendar).
    • You will soon be able to select the language of SVG images that have translations using a drop-down menu on the image page. (see example) [106]
    • GLAMToolset, a tool to help GLAM groups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17. [107]
    • A Draft namespace will be added to the English Wikipedia to make it easier to create new pages. You will be able to use VisualEditor for drafts if you have enabled it. [108] [109]

    Other

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

    08:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 18 December 2013

    Tech News: 2013-51

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

    Recent software changes

    • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
    • You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [111]
    • There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [112] [113]
    • You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [114]
    • If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code. [115]
    • You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [116] [117]
    • All edits made through Flow, the new discussion system for MediaWiki, are now visible in user's contributions. You can test it on the Flow talk page on MediaWiki.org. [118] [119]
    • You can test a visual tool that shows edits made to an article over time. It only works for English Wikipedia pages for now and is slow on long articles. [120]
    • You can test the first version of the new mobile Wikipedia app for Android and iOS. [121]
    • Translatewiki.net, the site where you can translate the MediaWiki software, now has a new main page for users without an account. [122]

    Future software changes

    • There will be no technical changes this week (December 23 to December 29) due to end-of-year holidays.
    • When someone deletes, restores, uploads, or moves a file on Commons, pages on all wikis that use that file will be refreshed. [123] [124]
    • New users will soon have their user and talk pages added to their watchlist as soon as they create an account. [125] [126].
    • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will not show the text of versions of a page that have been hidden. [127] [128]
    • You will soon be able to see the raw HTML created by some wikitext by using the Special:ExpandTemplates tool. [129] [130]

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

    08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

    The Signpost: 25 December 2013

    Tech News: 2014-01

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

    Recent software changes

    • You can now see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [131] [132]
    • With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [133]

    VisualEditor news

    • Images are now shown inside VisualEditor as HTML5 <figure /> elements. Comments are welcome. [134]
    • You can now test a basic version of VisualEditor on mobile devices; see this article as an example.

    Problems

    Future software changes

    • CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their Beta Features options.
    • AbuseFilter log entries will be visible in CheckUser tool reports. [136] [137]
    • It will soon be possible to search for log entries done by users without an account. [138] [139]
    • It will no longer be possible to globally hide users with more than 1,000 edits. [140] [141]

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

    08:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

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