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The Signpost: 31 December 2014

The Signpost: 07 January 2015

This Month in GLAM: December 2014



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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)

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]

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

18:13, 19 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

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

16:08, 26 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]

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

16:27, 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)

This Month in GLAM: January 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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)

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)

This Month in GLAM: February 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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.

15:15, 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)

.

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.

15:10, 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) 03:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Next meetups in North England

Hello. Would you be interested in attending one of the next wikimeets in the north of England? They will take place in:

If you can make them, please sign up on the relevant wikimeet page!

If you want to receive future notifications about these wikimeets, then please add your name to the notification list (or remove it if you're already on the list and you don't want to receive future notifications!)

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:29, 28 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

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

15:18, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost, 1 April 2015

DYK for Parliament in the Making

Andrew D. (talk) 06:53, 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.

15:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: March 2015



Headlines


Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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)

POTD notification

POTD

Hi Michael,

Just to let you know, the Featured Picture File:Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on May 4, 2015. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2015-05-04. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:05, 14 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) 01:58, 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)

The Signpost: 22 April 2015

Reference errors on 25 April

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:24, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Added "|ignore-isbn-error=true" --MichaelMaggs (talk) 06:17, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

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.

15:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2015

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.

15:14, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2015

This Month in GLAM: April 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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.

15:47, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 May 2015

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.

15:24, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

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.

16:19, 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.

15:39, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

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)

This Month in GLAM: May 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Richard Symonds

Dear Michael, I have previously asked that Wikimedia UK fully explain the actions of Richard Symonds. Your previous response was disappointing and underwhelming. I'd like Wikimedia UK to release all of the e-mails between the organisation and The Guardian, to release a full timeline of events and to produce a detailed explanation about how Richard and The Guardian journalist reached an understanding that the account (Contribsx) was believed at the time to be Grant Shapps and/or a representative of his.

The concern I have is that Richard previously investigated the Contribsx account in 2014 without taking action, as I understand it from the timeline of evidence, it wasn't until Richard dealt with an e-mail request to Wikimedia UK in 2015 (on behalf of another employee of Wikimedia UK, presumably Stevie, in their absence) that Contribsx was named publicly as both a sockpuppet of Hackneymarsh and of the politician Grant Shapps.

The questions I'd like answered specifically are (in no particular order)

(a) What non public information Wikimedia UK knew about this case, who they received that information from and whether they considered it relevant and appropriate. I understand precise information may not be released, but as much information as possible would be appreciated.
(b) What was the chain of correspondence between The Guardian and Wikimedia UK up to this point ?
  1. Did Randeep Ramesh or any other journalist, freelancer or interested party contact Wikimedia UK during 2014 concerning the same user account (Contribs), or any other user account being operated by Mr Shapps ?
  2. Similarly, did Randeep or any other journalist, freelancer or interested party contact Wikimedia UK at any point concerning undisclosed editing by Mr Shapps in general. I'd be specifically interested to know about any contact that occurred during 2012 when Hackneymarsh was blocked.
  3. Are you aware of any correspondence between The Guardian and any Wikimedia UK employee that wasn't undertaken via a Wikimedia UK e-mail account, and if so, what details do you have available ?
(c) The checkuser of the Contribsx account was undertaken during conventional office hours in the UK. Can you confirm that Richard was working and not on holiday, break etc during the time these accounts were checkusered ?
  1. In the event the checkuser work was undertaken during "Wikimedia UK time" what is Wikimedia UK's policy for allowing staff, particularly those with advanced permissions, to undertake work that isn't directly connected with their employment ?
  2. Or does Wikimedia UK regard the use of advanced permissions (such as checkuser) an integral part of their staff's employment when connected with information received or tasks being undertaken on behalf of Wikimedia UK ?
(d) The Wikimedia UK chapter was previously found to have poor management practices concerning board member conflict of interest, in light of this and applicable legislation surrounding charities, what policies does Wikimedia UK currently have instituted to manage conflicts of interest amongst staff members ? Have they changed recently and do you anticipate changes to the policies in light of the Arbitration case ?
(e) Does Wikimedia UK believe the actions of Richard and any other members of staff involved are consistent with the requirement of charity legislation in England and Wales (as detailed in [200] for the benefit of anybody else reading this) and do you believe Wikimedia UK has the appearance of being sufficiently independent ?
(f) Will Wikimedia UK be undertaking any form of investigation into the events that resulted in Richard being sanctioned by the Arbitration Committee and will there be any disciplinary procedures concerning this incident (I understand if employment legislation and/or contracts may limit what you can say about this) ?

Kind regards, Nick (talk) 11:49, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Nick, as this page is for English Wikipedia matters, and your questions are addressed to me as chair of Wikimedia UK, I have replied on the Wikimedia UK website. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:37, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I would say thank you, but again, the response is underwhelming, evasive and unhelpful. I'm disappointed by what isn't just a lack of transparency, but an overwhelming pursuit of absolute secrecy in this matter by all those involved. Wikimedia UK has been unhelpful whilst Richard has himself been evasive and obstructive to the Arbitration Committee and the users of the project. I'm most disappointed, though I cannot say I'm surprised by the behaviour of those involved any more. Nick (talk) 14:36, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 June 2015

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

I reverted some of your changes. Dillon is a major character in the novel, favorite to some published reviewers. That he does not survive does not lessen him as a character. This is the first book of a series, but who can know there is a second, or 19 more, in 1969? The link with Dillon and that time in Maturin's life, before 1800, does resurface in a later novel. Wiki links for Aubrey and Maturin are in the character list in the article for each novel, to avoid overlinking. Hope that is agreeable with you. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:16, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

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. [201]
  • Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [202]

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. [204]
  • If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [205] [206] [207]

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)

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. [208] [209]
  • You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [210]

Problems

  • On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [211] [212] [213]
  • On June 16, images were broken for several hours on wikis that use InstantCommons. [214] [215] [216]
  • 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. [217] [218] [219]

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.

15:24, 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. [220]
  • You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [221]
  • When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [222]
  • The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [223] [224] [225]
  • You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [226]

Problems

  • JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [227]

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. [228]
  • 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. [229]
  • If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [230]
  • Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [231]

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. [232]

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)

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)

This Month in GLAM: June 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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

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

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)

This Month in GLAM: July 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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)

The Signpost: 19 August 2015

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. [285]

Problems

  • There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [286]

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. [287][288]
  • The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [289]
  • VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Use ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init instead. [290]
  • Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [291]

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)

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. [293]
  • A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [294]
  • You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [295]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [296]
  • The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [297][298]

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. [299]
  • 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. [300][301]

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. [302]
  • Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [303][304]

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

This Month in GLAM: August 2015



Headlines


  • UK report: QRpedia AWOL; RSC holds another edit-a-thon
  • Special story: New toolkit on Photo Events documents best practices, strategies and more
  • Open Access report: Wikipedia as an amplyfier; horse face recognition, rhythm perception, fossil rodent teeth
  • Wikidata report: Wikidata this month
  • Calendar: September's GLAM events



Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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. [305]
  • 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. [306]
  • Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [307][308]

Problems

  • There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed. [309]
  • The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [310]

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. [311]
  • The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [312]

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

Help us improve wikimeets by filling in the UK Wikimeet survey!

Hello! I'm running a survey to identify the best way to notify Wikimedians about upcoming UK wikimeets (informal, in-person social meetings of Wikimedians), and to see if we can improve UK wikimeets to make them accessible and attractive to more editors and readers. All questions are optional, and it will take about 10 minutes to complete. Please fill it in at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JJMNVVD

Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

 Done --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! Mike Peel (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

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. [313][314]
  • 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. [315][316][317][318]
  • 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. [319]
  • The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users. [320]

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. [321]
  • 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. [322][323]
  • UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed. [324]

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. [325]
  • 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. [326]
  • Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata. [327]

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. [328]
  • UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look. [329]
  • You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one. [330]
  • When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well. [331]
  • You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50. [332]
  • The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded. [333]
  • 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. [334]

Problems

  • Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24. [335][336]

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. [337]
  • 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. [338]

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. [340]
  • The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [341]

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. [342]
  • UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [343]
  • A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [344]

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)

This Month in GLAM: September 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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. [345]

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. [346]
  • Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [347]

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)

Birmingham meetup

See you there? Well... not here... this photo is from a pub in Manchester... but that's cos there haven't been enough meetups in Birmingham.
 Hi there! Did you know that there will be a meetup in Birmingham on the 15th of November?

There hasn't been many meetups in Birmingham. I will be passing through on the 15th of November, so I thought I would see who fancied meeting up, while I'm in the area. I'm leaving this message on your talk page because you have previously expressed an interest in a meetup in Birmingham or Coventry.

Yaris678 (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 15 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). [348]

Problems

  • A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [349]
  • Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [350]
  • 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. [351]

Changes this week

  • Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [352]
  • Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [353][354][355][356]

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. [357]
  • 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. [358][359]
  • When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [360][361]
  • Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in $wgContentNamespaces. [362]

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)

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. [363]
  • If you are using the mobile version of Wikipedia, you can now see Wikidata descriptions under article titles in search results. [364]
  • Editing conflicts are now detected when you edit on a mobile device. Before, this did not work properly on mobile. [365]

Problems

  • On October 26 the Wikimedia sites went down for ten minutes. [366]

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. [367]
  • Empty list items could be allowed in the future. If so, this could affect some templates. [368]

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. [369]
  • You can now switch between the wikitext editor and the visual editor without saving. You will not lose the changes you have made. [370]
  • JSON dumps of the production search indexes are now available. They can be imported to Elasticsearch. [371]

Problems

  • Some translations for the Thanks and Echo extensions were missing. Translators have been asked to help and this should be solved soon. [372]

Changes this week

  • Thumbnails of 16-bit TIFF files will be displayed properly. Before, this didn't work. [373]
  • 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)

This Month in GLAM: October 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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. [376]
  • Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme. [377]
  • 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. [378]
  • 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. [379][380]

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) 13:58, 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. [381]

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

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. [382]
  • 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. [383]

Changes this week

  • Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [384][385]
  • 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. [386]
  • 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. [387]

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16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

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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. [388]

Problems

  • Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [389]

Changes this week

  • You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [390]
  • IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [391]
  • 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. [392]
  • It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [393]
  • You will be able to use syntax highlighting when you write math with LaTeX in the visual editor. [394]
  • UploadWizard will look a bit different. [395]
  • 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. [396]

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. [397]

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17:52, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: November 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

The Signpost: 09 December 2015

Proposed deletion of Airmail (email client)

The article Airmail (email client) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

non notable client--inadequate sources

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DGG ( talk ) 17:39, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Postbox (email client)

The article Postbox (email client) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no notability

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DGG ( talk ) 20:35, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

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