User talk:Ocaasi/Archive 8

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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. [1]

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. [2]
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. [3] [4]

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)

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray.

The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.

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

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

Looking ahead

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

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.

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

The Signpost: 04 February 2015

News and notes: No men beyond this point: the proposal to create a no-men space on Wikipedia

Op-ed: Is Wikipedia for sale?

In the media: Gamergate and Muhammad controversies continue

Traffic report: The American Heartland

Featured content: It's raining men!

Arbitration report: Slamming shut the GamerGate

WikiProject report: Dicing with death – on Wikipedia?

Technology report: Security issue fixed; VisualEditor changes

Gallery: Langston Hughes

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

You can now use {{#lsth: PageName | SectionName }} to transclude a section with its title. [5]

Problems

MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [6]
UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [7]
All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [8]

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. [9] [10] [11]
You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [12] [13]
It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [14]
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. [15]
In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [16]

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)

Any data on TWA usage?

Hi Jake, Just curious if usage of TWA has gone up since the link was added to the welcome template. Thanks, --Biblioworm 18:01, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey Biblioworm, it will be easier to see a definitive jump (if one exists) after a few weeks. One context is that for the first 6 months of TWA, User:HostBot was inviting people automatically, then the bot stopped doing that for about 6 months, and now we have Welcome template but no HostBot invites. So I'd expect that we see more of a return to earlier levels and only a relative increase over no invites or templates at all. We don't have a very easy way to track game completion without doing a database query; we get an approximate look by checking the global usage for the final badge received in the game: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsage/TWA_badge_12.png

Just looking through the page history of those users, it doesn't look like more than a couple dozen recent completions. Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 19:34, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: January 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue I, January 2015
Headlines
Belgium report: SOIMA 2015; Wiki Loves Art; European Commission; FOSDEM Czech Republic report: Czech GLAM discusses why institutions are afraid to release their media France report: Celebrating public domain and more Germany report: GLAM on Tour in Wuppertal Italy report: 1600 usages for BEIC images in 165 wikis Netherlands report: Europeana Sounds edit-a-thon; Symposium & Erasmus Prize; Honorary doctorate for Wikipedia; New years drink Spain report: Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon; Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 Awards ceremony; Benito Prieto Coussent Sweden report: Europeana; Working Life Museums UK report: Armenian Genocide; Diversity in Film; Residency Hat-Trick USA report: Philadelphia & New York Open Access report: Wikidata for research: proposal submitted; Open Access Media Importer: featured media Catalan areas report: Catalan Network of Public Libraries Calendar: February'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 05:58, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Talkback from Technical 13

Hello, Ocaasi. You have new messages at Technical 13's talk page.
Message added 20:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

— {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 20:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Percent of spam on Wikipedia

Hi Jake - I'm writing something about GLAMs and the GLAM-Wiki Initiative, and I was hoping you could help me find a particular piece of information. If I remember correctly, you talked briefly about spam in your presentation at ALA 2014 (Las Vegas). Did you have a percentage for the number of Wikipedia edits marked as spam? Or would you know if that statistic exists and where I could look for it? Thanks! extabulis (talk) 19:25, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Extabulis! Nice to see you on-wiki. I have not used spam stats in any presentations. The closest I can find is our revert rate, which across all of Wikipedia is around 9%. That's the number of edits that are entirely removed and returned to their prior state, a large number of which are vandalism or spam: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/EditsRevertsEN.htm I hope that helps! Excited that you're writing about GLAM-Wiki :) Please share a link whenever it's published. Cheers, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 20:09, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much - this is great! I'll definitely share a link. Hopefully I'll have another to share soon: our fall intern participated in the TWL Interns program and wrote a great post about her experience. I've been meaning to ask you or Sadads whether there's a place we can share that. Perhaps on the program page in a results section? We're still working on a few edits before I send it to our blog coordinator, but I hope to have it posted on our blog within the next month or so. extabulis (talk) 20:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey Extabulis: I have been meaning to talk with you more about the Interns program, and we would most certainly be able to crosspost it with the Wikimedia Foundation blog as well (probably with a bit of a frame). I will get an email off to you: in the meantime. Cheers, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey Astinson! Sounds great - I look forward to your email. extabulis (talk) 20:51, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 February 2015

From the editors: We want to know what you think!

News and notes: One editor faces likely ban for work on Wikipedia; Jimmy Wales awarded $1 million

In the media: Is Wikipedia eating itself?

Featured content: A grizzly bear, Operation Mascot, Freedom Planet & Liberty Island, cosmic dust clouds, a cricket five-wicket list, more fine art, & a terrible, terrible opera...

Traffic report: Bowled over

WikiProject report: Brand new WikiProjects profiled

Gallery: Feel the love

Valentine Greets!!!

Valentine Greets!!!

Hello Ocaasi, love is the language of hearts and is the feeling that joins two souls and brings two hearts together in a bond. Taking love to the level of Wikipedia, spread the WikiLove by wishing each other Happy Valentine's Day, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person.
Sending you a heartfelt and warm love on the eve,
Happy editing,
- T H (here I am) 12:10, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Valentine Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

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. [17] [18] [19]
You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [20]
In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [21]
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. [22]

Meetings

The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [23]
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. [24]
You can join a meeting with the developers of the Content Translation tool. It will be on February 18 at 13:00 (UTC). [25]

Future changes

You can comment on a proposal about abandoned Labs tools.

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)

Structured Data on Commons update

Greetings,

After a delay in updates to the Structured data on Commons project, I wanted to catch you up with what has been going on over the past three months. In short: The project is on hold, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.

The meeting in Berlin in October provided the engineering teams with a lot to start on. Unfortunately the Structured Data on Commons project was put on hold not too long after this meeting. Development of the actual Structured data system for Commons will not begin until more resources can be allocated to it.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany have been working to improve the Wikidata query process on the back-end. This is designed to be a production-grade replacement of WikidataQuery integrated with search. The full project is described at Mediawiki.org.This will benefit the structured data project greatly since developing a high-level search for Commons is a desired goal of this project.

The Wikidata development team is working on the arbitrary access feature. Currently it's only possible to access items that are connected to the current page. So for example on Vincent van Gogh you can access the statements on Q5582, but you can't access these statements on Category:Vincent van Gogh or Creator:Vincent van Gogh. With arbitrary access enabled on Commons we no longer have this limitation. This opens up the possibility to use Wikidata data on Creator, Institution, Authority control and other templates instead of duplicating the data (what we do now). This will greatly enhance the usefulness of Wikidata for Commons.

To use the full potential of arbitrary access the Commons community needs to reimplement several templates in LUA. In LUA it's possible to use the local fields and fallback to Wikidata if it's not locally available. Help with this conversion is greatly appreciated. The different tasks are tracked in phabricator, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T89594 .

Volunteers are continuing to add data about artworks to Wikidata. Sometimes an institution website is used and sometimes data is being transfered from Commons to Wikidata. Wikidata now has almost 35.000 items about paintings. This is done as part of the WikiProject sum of all paintings. This helps us to learn how to d:Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structuremodel and refine metadata about artworks. Experience that will of course be very useful for Commons too.

Additionally, the metadata cleanup drive continues to produce results. The drive, which is intended to identify files missing {{information}} or the like structured data fields and to add such fields when absent, has reduced the number of files missing information by almost 100,000 on Commons. You can help by looking for files with similarly-formatted description pages, and listing them at Commons:Bots/Work requests so that a bot can add the {{information}} template on them.

At the Amsterdam Hackathon in November 2014, a couple of different models were developed about how artwork can be viewed on the web using structured data from Wikidata. You can browse two examples here and here. These examples can give you an idea of the kind of data that file pages have the potential to display on-wiki in the future.

The Structured Data project is a long-term one, and the volunteers and staff will continue working together to provide the structure and support in the back-end toward front-end development. There are still many things to do to help advance the project, and I hope to have more news for you in the near future. Contact me any time with questions, comments, concerns.

-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 February 2015

Editorial: Recent retirements typify problem of admin attrition

In the media: Students' use and perception of Wikipedia

Special report: Revision scoring as a service

Gallery: Darwin Day

Traffic report: February is for lovers

Featured content: A load of bull-sized breakfast behind the restaurant, Koi feeding, a moray eel, Spaghetti Nebula and other fishy, fishy fish

Arbitration report: We've built the nuclear reactor; now what colour should we paint the bikeshed?

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

All new accounts are now global. [26]
Your Meta user page is now shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can report problems if you see any. You can ask a bot to delete your old user pages. [27] [28] [29]

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. [30]
It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [31]
Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [32]
Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [33]

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. [34]

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

16:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm

Op-ed: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own

In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot

Featured content: The Moon, Mars, Venus, and Saturn, in no particular order. Also, Kaiser Kong.

Gallery: Far from home

Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?

Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired

WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight

Blog: Join the Wikimedia strategy consultation

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm

Op-ed: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own

In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot

Featured content: The Moon, Mars, Venus, and Saturn, in no particular order. Also, Kaiser Kong.

Gallery: Far from home

Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?

Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired

WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight

Blog: Join the Wikimedia strategy consultation

Wikipedia Library and WikiEdu

Hi Jake,

It just occurred to me that we at WikiEdu don't really utilize the Wikipedia Library's resources in any way I can think of...and I don't know why. I'm hoping you'll indulge a few questions -- and I'm also hoping these aren't redundant to conversations you've had with my colleagues in the past (this message is just based on a thought I had rather than an official inquiry).

Is there a good brochure-type overview of what the Library offers? What are your thoughts on one for higher education students in particular?

Regarding databases: We support classes in the US/CA working on the English Wikipedia, but some don't have access to all the databases the Library does. Does a request for database access for students in a class conflict with the terms you've arranged with the publishers? What if it's on a per-student as needed basis rather than a whole class? (The problem I could see is that it could be seen as institutional rather than individual access, even though the institution wouldn't actually be involved).

Regarding the resource exchange, I was surprised not to find any clear overview of copyright issues. From looking at the talk page, it looks like people have identified parts of database terms of service that state the resources can be shared with other individuals privately for educational purposes, but before I direct instructors/students there I feel like I'd need something more concrete (to the extent anything regarding fair use can be concrete).

Thanks very much, and feel free to email me if it's easier for you (ryan [at] wikiedu [dot] edu). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:17, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

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. [35]
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. [36] [37]

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. [38] [39] [40] [41]
The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [42]
The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [43]

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. [44]

Future changes

You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [45]

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)

Books and Bytes - Issue 10

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 10, January-February 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

New donations - ProjectMUSE, Dynamed, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and Women Writers Online
New TWL coordinator, conference news, and a new guide and template for archivists
TWL moves into the new Community Engagement department at the WMF, quarterly review

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015

From the editor: A sign of the times: the Signpost revamps its internal structure to make contributing easier

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation and OTRS team both publish reports, indicate operating changes

Editorial: Conspiracy theories distract from real questions about grantmaking report

Traffic report: Attack of the movies

Arbitration report: Bradspeaks—impact, regrets, and advice; current cases hinge on sex, religion, and ... infoboxes

Interview: Meet a paid editor

In the media: Kanye West rebranded; Wikipedia in court; editors for hire

Featured content: Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur

Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Blog: Black History Month edit-a-thons tackle Wikipedia’s multicultural gaps

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. [46] [47]
VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [48] [49] [50]

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. [51] [52]
The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [53] [54]
You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [55] [56]
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. [57] [58]
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. [59]

Future changes

You can get help to become a developer. You can learn more on the Google Summer of Code and Outreachy pages. [60]
You will soon be able to read technical reports in Phabricator. [61]

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

15:19, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: February 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue II, February 2015
Headlines
Africa report: Photo Hunt in museum in Uganda Armenia report: Free Book for Wikipedians Belgium report: Conferences & workshops Catalan areas report: Edit-a-thons about archaeology in Gavà and biochemistry in Barcelona Finland report: Hacking Heritage France report: From prehistoric era to pirates: an usual month at WMFR Germany report: Open GLAM is one thing - open funds quite another Greece report: 10th Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon organised by Athens' Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation Italy report: OCLC conference in Florence; Wiki Loves Monuments exhibition; continued BEIC activities Netherlands report: Report of activities: February Poland report: Developing GLAM collaborations in Poland Spain report: Workshops at Reina Sofía Library in Valladolid Sweden report: Strange noise, public art and old maps Switzerland report: First Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon UK report: Continued Catalan Collaboration; Steam Sounds; Glasgow GLAMs; Edinburgh Editathons USA report: Wikipedia in Philadelphia (and Ocean City, MD!) Special story: Europeana's Wikimedia Task Force reports Open Access report: Tracking recent uploads; Wikidata for research meetups; Ant-decapitating flies, Lego and a new frog Calendar: March'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 23:29, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015

Special report: An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey

News and notes: WikiWomen's History Month—meetups, blog posts, and "Inspire" grant-making campaign

In the media: Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West

In focus: WMF to NSA: "stop spying on Wikipedia users"

Traffic report: Wikipedia: handing knowledge to the world, one prank at a time

Featured content: Here they come, the couple plighted –

Op-ed: Why the Core Contest matters

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. [62]
You can now see lists of bugs about Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary. [63]
It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [64] [65]

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 () now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [66] [67]
You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [68] [69]

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. [70] [71]
You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [72]
The final steps of single user login (SUL) will happen in April. You can see the rules to rename accounts. [73]

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)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015

From the editor: A salute to Pine

News and notes: SUL finalization imminent; executive office shake-ups at the Foundation

In the media: NYPD editing articles regarding allegations of police brutality and misconduct

Op-ed: Does the Wikimedia fundraising survey address community concerns?

Featured content: A woman who loved kings

Traffic report: It's not cricket

* 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. [74]
VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [75] [76] [77]
When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [78]

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. [79]

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)

quick question

do you know if the CURE Award for top 300 medical editors will be given this year? (just curious)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:Ozzie10aaaa, I don't, but I bet that Doc James does. Thanks for asking! Cheers, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 23:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Will look into it with our data person. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

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

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy

Op-ed: How my father's railroad image collection now benefits the world: the value of digitization

Featured content: A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude

Special report: Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2014

Traffic report: Oddly familiar

Recent research: Most important people; respiratory reliability; academic attitudes

Blog: The Wikipedia Library Team reflects on its new Visiting Scholars program

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-14

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

Recent changes

You can now hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [80]
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. [81] [82] [83]
All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [84]
You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [85]
VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [86]

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. [87]
You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [88]
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. [89]
You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [90]
VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [91] [92] [93] [94]

Meetings

You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on IRC on March 31 at 16:00 (UTC). [95]
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
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 1 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.

15:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost, 1 April 2015

In focus: WMF's latest strategy document shows successes, vagueness, and the need for better data

In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism

Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.

Traffic report: All over the place

News and notes: New edits-by-mail option will "revolutionize" Wikipedia and its editor base

Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015

Talk back

Hello, Ocaasi. You have new messages at User talk:The Herald/Talkback.
Message added 05:40, 1 April 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Signpost: 01 April 2015

In focus: WMF's latest strategy document shows successes, vagueness, and the need for better data

In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism

Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.

Traffic report: All over the place

News and notes: New edits-by-mail option will "revolutionize" Wikipedia and its editor base

Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

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

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

You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [96]
You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [97] [98]
The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [99]
You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [100]

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. [101]
Labs was broken several times this week. [102] [103] [104] [105]

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. [106]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [107] [108]
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. [109]

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. [110]

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)

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

You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [111]
You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [112] [113]
The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [114]
You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [115]

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. [116]
Labs was broken several times this week. [117] [118] [119] [120]

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. [121]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [122] [123]
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. [124]

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. [125]

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

16:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: March 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue III, March 2015
Headlines
Africa report: Closing the gap of the Global South Belgium report: Gendergap and Belgiumgap Catalan areas report: One day at the radio France report: A very busy month! Germany report: 1 topic, 2 talks, 3 hours Italy report: Agreements with national cultural institutions and professional associations Mexico report: Wiki rides the subway editathon and second edition of the Editatona gender gap marathon Netherlands report: Nature, Art, Feminism and a GLAM-WIKI conference Poland report: Six months in Spain report: Women's edit-a-thons, Workshops and Miguel Delibes Sweden report: Fashion; BARK; Council of Central Museums UK report: GLAM activities in the UK USA report: Wikipedia in Philadelphia & New York Open Access report: Wikimania Open Access policy; Wikimania; Wikipedia Science Conference; Punch-card microfluidics Calendar: April'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 05:36, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2015

Op-ed: We are drowning in promotional artspam

News and notes: Advancement department to be created at the Foundation, milestone fixes

In the media: Wikipedia on 60 Minutes, Kickstarter, and in the classroom

Traffic report: Resurrection week

Featured content: Partisan arrangements, dodgy dollars, a mysterious union of strings, and a hole that became a monument

WikiProject report: WikiProject Christianity

Arbitration report: New Functionary appointments

Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

A new reference tool

Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

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

You can read the latest news about VisualEditor.
You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [126]
The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [127] [128]

Problems

Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [129] [130]

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. [131] [132]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [133]

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.

16:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Look after it!

LewisMCYoutube (talk) 09:31, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Adventure - a small suggestion

Hi Ocaasi, long time no see. I'm just dropping by to voice a small concern regarding the Wikipedia Adventure - a user whom I happen to be watching is currently working through it, and as a result of Mission One ended up posting some personal information on their userpage that I felt it was necessary to redact. Since the Adventure is likely to be popular with younger users, would it be at all possible to slightly amend this section in order to put a bit more emphasis on not revealing personal information like your real name, age, school or location for editors under the age of majority? Cheers, Yunshui ^雲 _水 11:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey Yunshui, will this do? Cheers, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 17:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That looks fine to me - can't say we didn't warn them! Thanks for being so quick off the mark. Yunshui ^雲 _水 07:22, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

What a coincidence that I found this (being the user you mentioned). --LewisMCYoutube (talk) 09:32, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 April 2015

News and notes: Erik Möller leaving Foundation; annual plan grants under community review

In the media: Saving Wikipedia; Internet regulation; Thoreau quote hoax

Blog: Single-User Login provides access to all wikis

Traffic report: Furious domination

Featured content: Au-delà de les Alpes, le chien lit de Sainte Bernard. Sous les pavés, les trimes d'argent! Mes enfants, suivez-moi!

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. [134]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [135]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [136]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [137]

Problems

There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [138]

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. [139] [140] [141]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [142]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [143]

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

You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [144] [145]

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

Special report: Sony emails reveal corporate practices and undisclosed advocacy editing

In the media: UK political editing; hoaxes; net neutrality

News and notes: Call for candidates as the movement approaches the Wikimedia Board elections

In focus: 2015 Wikimedia Foundation election preparations underway

Featured content: Vanguard on guard

Traffic report: A harvest of couch potatoes

Gallery: The bitter end

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	I would like to dedicate this Barnstar for your "Wikipedia Adventure Project". Dineshkumar Ponnusamy (talk) 14:26, 27 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. [146] [147]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [148]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [149]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [150]

Problems

Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [151]

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. [152]
You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [153]
You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [154]
You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [155]

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)

Help to create Wiki Adventure in Tamil

Hi, I really loved the concept of The Wikipedia Adventure project, I would like to create the translated version in Tamil Wikipedia too. Need your source code and assistance for the same. Thanks. --Dineshkumar Ponnusamy (talk) 14:25, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dineshkumar Ponnusamy! Of course, all of the source code and Wikipedia page designs are free and open to use. You can find them all listed and documented here: WP:TWA/Index. I am excited about your idea to adapt this to Tamil Wikipedia. I have to say that it is probably a 3 month project for a single person to do, since it involves translation, page creation, code modifying, and bugtesting. I think it's worth it, especially if you have a team, but it does take a big effort! Please let me know if you need guidance, which I'm happy to provide within my challenging time-constraints working on The Wikipedia Library. You might learn a lot from other communities that have adapted TWA, such as Catalan WP. Cheers! Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 14:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing the code and your valuable suggestions Ocaasi! Hopefully will form the team. I guess I'll manage it to complete by this June. Definitely will reach out to you if got stuck or have some suggestions. Cheers! --Dineshkumar Ponnusamy (talk) 08:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2015

Wikimania: Choice of small village for Wikimania 2016 ruffles feathers

News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments evaluation sees diminishing returns and increasing cost

In the media: Scottish MEP blocked for edit warring; ranking articles by importance

Featured content: Another day, another dollar

Traffic report: Bruce, Nessie, and genocide

Recent research: Military history, cricket, and Australia targeted in Wikipedia articles' popularity vs. quality; how copyright damages economy

Technology report: VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates

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. [156]
There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [157] [158]

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. [159]

Meetings

You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [160]
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. [161]

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

15:16, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 11

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 11, March-April 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)

New donations - MIT Press Journals, Sage Stats, Hein Online and more
New TWL coordinators, conference news, and new reference projects
Spotlight: Two metadata librarians talk about how library professionals can work with Wikipedia

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:29, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2015

News and notes: "Inspire" grant-making campaign concludes, grantees announced

Featured content: The amorous android and the horsebreeder; WikiCup round two concludes

In the media: Guggenheim image donation; Wiki campaign gets advertising award

Special report: FDC candidates respond to key issues

Traffic report: The grim ship reality

This Month in GLAM: April 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue IV, April 2015
Headlines
Africa report: GLAM activities in Africa Catalan areas report: First Ever edit-a-thon in Andorra; Libraries project shared in L'Alguero; Archives time! France report: No spring break for Wikimédia France! Germany report: Fresh and GLAMmy datasets for Wikimedia projects to harvest Italy report: Wikimedia Italia Training Day and another one Bibliohackathon! Macedonia report: Collaboration with Holocaust Memorial Center Netherlands report: GLAM-WIKI; a new brochure; Wikipedia in the Museum Poland report: Modern art onto Wikimedia Commons Spain report: Women in Science edit-a-thon and other stories Sweden report: Conferences and edit-a-thons Taiwan report: Hackathon for Mandarin-Taiwanese Dictionary UK report: Around the world, in peace and war USA report: GLAM-Wiki US Consortium moving forward Special story: GLAM-WIKI 2015 in The Hague; Muse Awards for three GLAM-WIKI projects ! Wikipedia Library report: Wikipedia Library report Wikidata report: New feature: GLAM activities in Wikidata Open Access report: Wikiproject Open Access on Wikidata; Wikimedia Sverige at Meeting Place Open Access in Malmö; JATS-Con GLAM Survey report: Preliminary Results from Poland and Finland Calendar: May'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 22:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

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. [162] [163] [164]
You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [165]
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. [166] [167]

Problems

There was a problem that caused slow editing. [168]
Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [169]

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. [170] [171]
You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [172]
When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [173]
When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [174]

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.

15:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 May 2015

Foundation elections: Board candidates share their views with the Signpost

News and notes: Swedish Wikimedia chapter organizes simultaneous Wikidata contests

Traffic report: Round Two

In the media: Grant Shapps story continues

Op-ed: What made Wikipedia lose its reputation?

Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way

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

You can watch a video about the new graph tool.

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. [175]
You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [176]
The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [177]
You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [178] [179]
UploadWizard now shows better matches when you add a category to your file. [180]
A test about VisualEditor will start on the English Wikipedia on Thursday. [181]

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.

15:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Taylor and Francis online

Jake, is there any progress on the front of getting Taylor & Francis Online for WP editors through the Wikipedia Library program. They've got the journal Labor History, which would be a massive help to me. Thanks. —Tim //// Carrite (talk) 15:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@Carrite: We are finalizing an agreement with them! We hope to announce that signup in June. Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 17:04, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for inviting me to the adventure! I will be there! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bsliangel (talk • contribs) 16:52, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 May 2015

From the editor: Your voice is needed: strategic voting in the WMF election

In focus: The awful truth about Wikimedia's article counts

Traffic report: Inner Core

News and notes: A dark side of comedy: the Wikipedia volunteers cleaning up behind John Oliver's fowl jokes

Featured content: Puppets, fungi, and waterfalls

In the media: Jimmy Wales accepts Dan David Prize

WikiProject report: Cell-ebrating Molecular Biology

Arbitration report: Editor conduct the subject of multiple cases

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. [182]
Some Labs tools had issues last week. [183] [184]

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

You can add your ideas of new tools to help active users like you. [185]

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

16:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure

Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure (2nd nomination) and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:49, 29 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. [186]
Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [187]
Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [188] [189]

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. [190]

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.

16:43, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for inviting me to the Wikipedia Adventure -- Currently underway! Sketches0993 (talk) 11:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

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

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out

Blog: How Wikipedia covered Caitlyn Jenner’s transition

Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia

Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings

Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier

Special report: Towards "Health Information for All": Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013

In the media: Anonymous Australian editing targets football player, shooting victim

Traffic report: A rather ordinary week

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). [191] [192]
If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [193]
When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [194]
The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [195]

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 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on June 10 at 14:30 (UTC). [196]

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. [197]

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

17:03, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: May 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue V, May 2015
Headlines
Arabic region report: World Digital Library, Arab Peninsula Regional Group meeting Argentina report: Wikimedia Argentina Catalan areas report: ORCID France report: GLAM, all over the place! Germany report: Make a (GLAM) change! Italy report: Wikimedia Italia still works with BEIC Library and bibliographic data Macedonia report: Wikiexpedition on bicycles and visiting one of the most remote areas in Macedonia Netherlands report: Birds and Expeditions Poland report: The Józef Burszta Digital Archives donation Spain report: Edit-a-thons about Contemporary artists and St. James's Way Sweden report: Slow GLAM-month in Sweden UK report: Progress on an image release from the Bodleian; National Library of Scotland residency comes to an end; and Glasgow Museums develop a Wiki Working Group USA report: Wikipedian at the Centers for Disease Control - NIOSH Open Access report: New Topic Page; Open Access and the humanities; Wikimania & Wikidata Wikidata report: SPARQL and arbitrary access are coming Calendar: June'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 03:00, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library needs you!

The Wikipedia Library

Call for Volunteers

The Wikipedia Library is expanding, and we need your help! With only a couple of hours per week, you can make a big difference in helping editors get access to reliable sources and other resources. Sign up for one of the following roles:

Account coordinators help distribute research accounts to editors.
Partner coordinators seek donations from new partners.
Outreach coordinators reach out to the community through blog posts, social media, and newsletters or notifications.
Technical coordinators advise on building tools to support the library's work.

Delivered on behalf of The Wikipedia Library by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 June 2015

News and notes: Chapter financial trends analyzed, news in brief

Traffic report: Two households, both alike in dignity

In the media: Arbitration case attracts media coverage; Wikipedia in Israel

Featured content: Just the bear facts, ma'am

Technology report: Wikimedia sites are going HTTPS only

Blog: Making Wikipedia’s medical articles accessible in Chinese

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. [198]
Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [199]

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

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 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on June 19 at 16:00 (UTC). [200]

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. [201]
If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [202] [203] [204]

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)

those training badges, just asking why...

hello, I'm just bothering you because i saw your username in the hist of one of those student training badges. I was just wondering, when the badges are awarded automatically, why are they placed on user pages instead of appended to user talk pages? It sorta doesn't make sense to me. Cheers. • Arch♦Reader 05:41, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi Arch! A talk page is for messages and awards given from one user to another. A userpage is to show off those awards and other marks of achievement. We placed the badges on the userpage because they show off the achievement of meaningful learning through The Wikipedia Adventure, because those are real 'skills' of the user, in real Wikipedia and not just in the game. It's also ok to move them wherever you want them to go, but that's why we wanted them on the userpage. Otherwise, how'd you like the game (if you played it?) Cheers, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 05:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
I've been editing for 8 years, so I didn't play the game. ;-) But your answer seems reasonable. I hope the game includes one question that explains the difference between user page & user talk, because I saw one neophyte (forgot who) putting userpage-type info on their talk page. Good luck in all things. • Arch♦Reader

The Signpost: 17 June 2015

In the media: Wikipedia wins Asturias Prize; printing out Wikipedia; HTTPS switch

Arbitration report: An election has consequences

In focus: Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe

Op-ed: Making a difference in Wikipedia, one GA at a time

Technology report: HTTPS-only rollout completed; proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts

Interview: A veteran’s Wikipedia edits help him understand the brutality behind Yugoslavia’s wars

News and notes: Labs outage kills tools, self; news in brief

Featured content: Great Dane hits 150

Discussion report: A quick way of becoming an admin

WikiProject report: Western Australia speaks – we are back

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. [205] [206]
You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [207]

Problems

On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [208] [209] [210]
On June 16, images were broken for several hours on wikis that use InstantCommons. [211] [212] [213]
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. [214] [215] [216]

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)

Your thoughts?

Timeline of Philadelphia has a discussion about selection and inclusion criteria. Two editors are discussing it, but we have divergent views. More opinions would be helpful. - SummerPhD^v2.0 13:19, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 June 2015

From the editor: The Signpost tagging initiative

Op-ed: Content Translation beta is coming to the English Wikipedia

Special report: Small impact of the large Google Translation Project on Telugu Wikipedia

Featured content: One eye when begun, two when it's done

Recent research: How Wikipedia built governance capability; readability of plastic surgery articles

Technology report: 2015 MediaWiki architecture focus and Multimedia roadmap announced

News and notes: Board of Trustees propose bylaw amendments

In the media: Turkish Wikipedia censorship; "Can Wikipedia survive?"; PR editing

Blog: 7,473 volumes at 700 pages each: meet Print Wikipedia

Arbitration report: Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration

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. [217]
You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [218]
When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [219]
The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [220] [221] [222]
You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [223]

Problems

JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [224]

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. [225]
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. [226]
If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [227]
Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [228]

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. [229]

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

News and notes: Training the Trainers; VP of Engineering leaves WMF

In the media: EU freedom of panorama; Nehru outrage; BBC apology

WikiProject report: Able to make a stand

Featured content: Viva V.E.R.D.I.

Traffic report: We're Baaaaack

Technology report: Technical updates and improvements

Blog: These Texans are on a quest to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their state’s revolution

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. [230]

Problems

The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [231]

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. [232] [233]
You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [234]

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

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue VI, June 2015
Headlines
Argentina report: Wikimedia Argentina Czech Republic report: Memorandum of Cooperation between the National Heritage Institute and the Wikimedia Czech Republic Finland report: Capturing public art with drones France report: Surfing on GLAMs' agenda Germany report: Open GLAM - How to create true participation Italy report: From Italian Parliament to libraries and Company Museums. And a Training Day too! Macedonia report: Wikipedian in residence Netherlands report: Historical images of Dutch water works Sweden report: Maritime Sweden UK report: Royal Society of Chemistry; Thinktank; Oxford USA report: Wikidata for Mappers Special story: Europeana 1914-1918 Open Access report: Wikipedia is an amplifier of open access; 20,000 media files uploaded from PubMed Central Wikidata report: Wikidata this month Wikimania report: GLAM presentations at Wikimania Calendar: July'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 00:27, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Watchlist-details

Hi and sorry, but I reverted your addition to the watchlist notifications. Editors normally have to propose these messages on the talk page and get consensus before posting. I don't think it is appropriate for this step to be skipped just because you have the technical ability to edit this page. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:42, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi MSGJ and thanks for your note. I was pretty surprised when I saw that you had removed it, particularly because it's never happened before despite using watchlist notices semi-regularly in the past 3 years. I'm not sure I agree with the principle that admins should have to get full approval every time, as part of their position indicates trust in judgement. Is this documented anywhere? I'm open to discussing further and won't take it personally if we find ourselves doing so at another time, which unfortunately won't be now as I'm slammed with Wikimania preparations.

In any case, we retargeted our strategy with a geonotice which is more appropriate given the U.S.-centric nature of position. Best, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 16:32, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

JC's Girls

Hi Jake,

Might you have time to review an article I currently have up for featured status? It's called JC's Girls. The reviewers who have contributed to the FAC so far seem sharply divided, and I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

Neelix (talk) 20:11, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 July 2015

Editorial: So you want to get your message out. Where do you turn?

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation annual plan released, news in brief

In the media: Wikimania warning; Wikipedia "mystery" easily solved

Traffic report: The Empire lobs back

Featured content: Pyrénées, Playmates, parliament and a prison...

Technology report: Tech news in brief

NPYS4

	NPYS4
	The NPYS4 for helping the world NPYS4 (talk) 20:23, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

NPYS4 (talk)

Thanks so much, that means a lot to me! Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 10:41, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

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

You can now see a list of pages with errors in code coloring. [235]

Problems

There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [236]
There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [237]

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. [238]

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)

You've got mail!

Hello, Ocaasi. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 17:40, 13 July 2015 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Newyorkadam (talk) 17:40, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

First ever volunteer at DRN

I was doing some wandering down memory lane today, and noticed that you were the first ever DRN volunteer :) Steven Zhang ^{Help resolve disputes!} 11:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 12

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 12, May-June 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)

New donations - Taylor & Francis, Science, and three new French-language resources
Expansion into new languages, including French, Finnish, Turkish, and Farsi
Spotlight: New partners for the Visiting Scholar program
American Library Association Annual meeting in San Francisco

Read the full newsletter

The Interior 15:23, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 July 2015

Op-ed: On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it

Traffic report: Belles of the ball

WikiProject report: What happens when a country is no longer a country?

In the media: Shapps requests WMUK data; professor's plagiarism demotion

Blog: Wikimedia Foundation releases third transparency report

News and notes: The Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania

Featured content: When angels and daemons interrupt the vicious and intemperate

Technology report: Tech news in brief

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. [239]

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. [240]

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

03:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Library edit

You're welcome. It was the least I could do. I ALWAYS like to do the least I can do.

Seriously, I had to leave you a note. Not only do I enjoy your music, but your user page looks to be the most useful, and most user-friendly, that I have found throughout Wikipedia. THANK YOU. I will be bookmarking it and revisiting it. Thank you. Rags (talk) 14:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2015

From the editor: Change the world

News and notes: Wikimanía 2016; Lightbreather ArbCom case

Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015 report, part 1, the plenaries

In the media: Novelists annotate Wikipedia; Wales promotes TPO; Working for free

Traffic report: The Nerds, They Are A-Changin'

WikiProject report: Some more politics

Featured content: The sleep of reason produces monsters

Gallery: "One small step..."

Technology report: Tech news in brief

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

You can now use redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [241]
You cannot use the compact user bar any more. [242]
You can change your options to see bigger images. [243]
You can watch short videos about how to use VisualEditor. [244]
You can now edit pages linked in "what links here" more easily. [245]

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. [246]

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. [247]

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)

WikiProject Women

Hi, I see you recently joined Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red. I've made a proposal to merge this project into Wikipedia:WikiProject Women at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red, so we can not only cover missing articles but focus on general quality of women's biographies. If interested please put your name down on the WP:Women page at the bottom.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:07, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Medicine.wiki

Hey, thought you might be interested to know that Medicine.wiki is now active, in case you and/or other Wiki Project Med participants want to contribute in some way. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 July 2015

News and notes: BARC de-adminship proposal; Wikimania recordings debate

Op-ed: My life as an autistic Wikipedian

Recent research: Wikipedia and collective intelligence; how Wikipedia is tweeted

In the media: Is Wikipedia a battleground in the culture wars?

Featured content: Even mammoths get the Blues

Traffic report: Namaste again, Reddit

Very Nice

Very Nice Awesome Work Dear :) Thanks --Hazrat Waqar (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

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. [248]
- Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [249] [250] [251] [252]
The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [253]
MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [254]
Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [255]

Problems

There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [256]
We can't search by file type on Wikimedia wikis now. [257]

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

Editorial: Wikipedia better equipped to deal with systemic bias than traditional publishers

Op-ed: Je ne suis pas Google

News and notes: VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief

WikiProject report: Meet the boilerplate makers

In the media: Probe into Nehru edits launched; dangers of the right to be forgotten

Traffic report: Mrityorma amritam gamaya...

Featured content: Maya, Michigan, Medici, Médée, and Moul n'ga

Blog: Get help editing Wikipedia with the new “Co-op” mentorship program

VisualEditor News #4—2015

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

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.

Wikimania

The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.

Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.

For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).

For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).

We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.

In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.

Future changes

The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.

On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.

Let's work together

Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-33

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

Recent changes

MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [258]
The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [259]
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. [260]
You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [261]
It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [262]
JavaScript authors:
- You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [263] [264]
- You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [265] [266]
The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [267]

Problems

More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [268]
Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [269]
Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [270]

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. [271]
You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [272]

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. [273]

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

14:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: July 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue VII, July 2015
Headlines
Argentina report: Wikimedia Argentina France report: A GLAMourous summer Germany report: Fancy new apps based on GLAMorous data Italy report: Wiki Loves Monuments at Toscana Foto Festival and two new GLAM projects Netherlands report: Radio broadcasts; historic atlases; GLAMetrics Spain report: Wiki Loves Earth, municipalities and concerts Sweden report: Hedemora; Mapillary UK report: Royal Society of Chemistry; Thinktank; Oxford USA report: GLAM in Philadelphia Special story: Share what you know about Photo Events Open Access report: Wikimania: Citations and video Wikipedia Library report: Books & Bytes Wikidata report: Wikidata this month Wiki Loves Monuments report: Wiki Loves Monuments Calendar: August'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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 00:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Women in Red

	Formal merge proposal
	There is currently a merge discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Formal merge proposal. As you are a member of WiR, this is a courtesy notification in case you want to join in the discussion. Thank you. Rosiestep (talk) 02:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 August 2015

News and notes: Superprotect, one year later; a contentious RfA

In the media: Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj

Forum: Community voices on paid editing

Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015, part 2, a community event

Traffic report: Fighting from top to bottom

Featured content: Fused lizards, giant mice, and Scottish demons

Technology report: Tech news in brief

Blog: The Hunt for Tirpitz

The Wikipedia Adventure

@Ocaasi:, remember me? Just wanted to congratulate you with the start of this. It really looks great and I do think there should be a userbox template. I'll try to make one, see if it works. Lotje (talk) 15:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC).

@Ocaasi: Just found what I was looking for, the {{Wikipedia:TWA/Userbox}} right on your userpage! Thnks. Lotje (talk) 05:04, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for sending me the Wikipedia Adventure!

Dear Ocaasi,

Thank you so much for sending me the link to The Wikipedia Adventure tutorial. It was very, very helpful. Your past work in Wikipedia is most impressive, and I am have also been involved in alternative (non-pharmaceutical natural medicine) for many years. As Hippocrates observed, let food me your medicine and let you medicine be your food, except most of the junk food in the supermarkets is not fit to eat. Thank you again for the help. Harry W Braun III Harry W Braun III (talk) 17:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

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. [274] [275] [276]
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. [277]

Problems

Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [278] [279]
On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [280]

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. [281]

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

Op-ed: WP:THREATENING2MEN: The English Wikipedia's misogynist infopolitics and the hegemony of the asshole consensus

In the media: Politically controversial science; "Wikipedia hates women"

Featured content: Dead parrots, live frogs, a symbolic kiss and what do we get? Enrique Iglesias!

Travelogue: Seeing is believing

Traffic report: Straight Outta Connecticut

Technology report: Tech news in brief

Blog: How Wikipedia responds to breaking news

Thank you for taking part in the Community Health learning campaign!

Hi Ocaasi,
I wanted to share back with you the drawing you contributed to the community health mural we hosted in Mexico City. Thanks for taking part! The campaign is going on until Sunday this weekend, and users are still very active answering some questions related to community health. We would love to see your views there, as well!
Happy editing! María (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-35

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

Recent changes

Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [282]

Problems

There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [283]

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)

Is TWA too encouraging?

Hello Ocaasi, and thank-you for the Bach Cello Suite! The reason for my attention-grabbing headline is this: Over at the GA Help Desk we encountered an enthusiastic young person who finished The Wikipedia Adventure, then immediately embarked on a flurry of activity outlined here: Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Bulk reviews and nominations by new editor

It was rather unfortunate: It is causing one of us a bit of work to back out their changes, and I'm sure the poor young editor feels badly now after such initial enthusiasm. I hope you agree that what we have to do is necessary, but more than that, I came here to ask: Does TWA encourage new editors to achieve so much so quickly? I'm sure it urges them to be bold of course, but hopefully it also includes a small caution as well? I have not checked to read it for myself, as I am afraid the portal will write to my user space without my permission. I truly respect you for your efforts at TWA as I have heard good things about it. Thank-you for your time. Prhartcom (talk) 21:17, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Prhartcom! Thanks for your friendly heads up. I have a few thoughts. The first, and least helpful, is that over-eager contributors often turn into prolific contributors once they settle down and learn the ropes. That doesn't help you, of course. Second, this contributor appears to have a history of editing and doesn't fit the typical newbie profile that TWA aims for; in other words, this isn't typical behavior. Last, and most importantly, as you would glean from a 1-hour romp through TWA (which does edit your userpages, but quite trivially and clean-up-ably), TWA really doesn't encourage editors to do anything but go exploring. TWA doesn't mention GA in any form, so discovering it would be a feat of sheer determination and unbridled initiative. It's the kind of action that I don't think any warning could stop, nor a situation uniquely caused by TWA's positive tone. I can't quite bring myself to add 'cautions' about editing Wikipedia into a game about it's openness and potential for mastery over time--because WP:Be Bold is how newbies learn. That's not saying going to nominate 18 articles at GAN was sane or reasonable in any way, but I think it's just the kind of thing that happens some time around here, and we have to accept it as part of the process of being open and teaching newcomers. Happy to discuss further. Check out the game, please, if you have a specific suggestion about how/where such a warning would be appropriate. I think you'll see TWA is likely not the active reagent here. Best, Jake Ocaasi^{t | c} 22:54, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 August 2015

In focus: An increase in active Wikipedia editors

In the media: Russia temporarily blocks Wikipedia

Op-ed: Wikimania—can volunteers organize conferences?

News and notes: Re-imagining grants

Featured content: Out to stud, please call later

Arbitration report: Reinforcing Arbitration

Recent research: OpenSym 2015 report

WikiProject Unreferenced articles

It's been years since I last checked Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles, but thanks for your suggestion! I've added the Wikipedia Library banner to the project page. Hope everything is going well. By the way, please feel free to join the WikiProject you wish. The hallways around there have gotten quieter and the dust keeps settling on our slowly shrinking piles of unreferenced articles, but some of us are still active. Altamel (talk) 16:48, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

You're invited! Women in Red World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership

You are invited! → World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership ← Come and join us remotely!
	World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership Dates: 7 to 20 September 2015 The Virtual Edit-a-thon, hosted by Women in Red, will allow all those keen to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Women in Leadership to participate. As it is a two-week event, inexperienced participants will be able to draw on the assistance of more experienced editors while creating, translating or improving articles on women who are (or have been) prominent in leadership. All levels of Wikipedia editing experience are welcome. RSVP and find more details →here← --Ipigott (talk) 09:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

You are invited! → World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership ← Come and join us remotely!

World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership
Dates: 7 to 20 September 2015

The Virtual Edit-a-thon, hosted by Women in Red, will allow all those keen to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Women in Leadership to participate. As it is a two-week event, inexperienced participants will be able to draw on the assistance of more experienced editors while creating, translating or improving articles on women who are (or have been) prominent in leadership. All levels of Wikipedia editing experience are welcome. RSVP and find more details →here← --Ipigott (talk) 09:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

JSTOR

Hi Ocaasi, I left a proposal at Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/JSTOR/Archive1#Export Citations to have an option for Wikipedia's citation style in "Export Citations" but it didn't got any further responses except Johnbod's comment. So I am assuming it can't be done or is technically unfeasible. Is it so?

The reason I am badgering for this is I am seeking more co-operation between Wikisource and Wikipedia and have "identified"/started transcription projects of several public domain "book series" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and others are on the line...). It is true as Johnbod said that cut&paste works well if you are dealing with a single or a couple of articles but certainly doesn't in the scale I am doing things. Two other people I know (Billinghurst and John Carter) probably also can attest to this.

In light of this I wonder if you (or someone else) can take this matter with JSTOR. Best regards. Solomon 7968 21:31, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm actually attempting to get together a few "library" pages right now, like those at Category:WikiProject libraries, for currenly well-regarded works still included in recent bibliographies that are in the public domain. And my wikisource:User:John Carter lists a few reference books in the PD as well. Having said all that, I am not myself necessarily sure that JSTOR is necessarily the way to go. Internet Archive, at least so far as I have seen, includes access to most of those I've found, although, I have to admit, it would be great to have the others as well. I would myself love to see wikisource do a bit more specifically regarding PD encyclopedic or overview articles which are still considered good enough for inclusion in bibliographies of modern reference works. And, believe it or not, there actually are quite a few of them. John Carter (talk) 21:48, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

John Carter, this sounds like a cool project, can you explain more? We're working on a bibliography of free resources as part of our Library, so there might be some opportunity for collaboration there.

Solomon, it probably could be done, but might not be easy to do well. For example, the Wikipedia citations from Trove (National Library of Australia) are fairly widely used, but have also been problematic in terms of formatting (for example, linking the publication The Chronicle to the general Wikipedia article chronicle). The Interior might know who at JSTOR to talk to, but he's on vacation at the moment. In the interim though, since JSTOR support BibTex export, you can try using a tool like BibTex2Wiki to convert. For some reason this version of that tool has fewer options than the older, so there might be a better option. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:44, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

You can of course use Zotero plugin to do the conversion to Wiki citation format. I just retested RIS export from JSTOR to Zotero followed by export from Zotero to Wikipedia citation template and the only extra step is that you have to saves it to a file and then open in it a text editor rather than show on screen. It might work more efficiently for bulk cases since you can export a large set of references from Zotero to Wiki citation format. (PS - see steps here) Shyamal (talk) 06:28, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Awesome Shyamal! I just tested Zotero with this and it took me less than a minute to do the whole thing. Almost certainly it would have taken me some 10 mins otherwise. This process really needs more advertising. Solomon 7968 07:08, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I always thought this was obvious and well-known! I run Wikipedia workshops for researchers and for many, bibliographic tools are second nature. Obviously assumptions are a problem. Shyamal (talk) 07:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

In lieu of JSTOR doing something, why don't we have a tool at ToolLabs that can take the other formats, and convert into a WP citation format. Alternatively and maybe better look to a means to have a tool that takes these references and plugs them into Wikidata, then have a citation type template here that takes the Wikidata using the arbitrary data linking and spits out something neat. I think pinging Lydia or Magnus to see what could be scoped would be truly more useful to get those refs into WD, and therefore permanently available, and more readily updateable. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:46, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: There unfortunately really isn't that much more to say other than I have gotten a few pages together to date, and have quite a few more in longhand waiting to be transferred based on other similar topical reference works. Ideally, for the OCD type among us, which probably includes me to some extent, I think, some years ago now, and it certainly feels like years ago at this point, I added to the Bibliography of encyclopedias pages all the PD reference works included in the old 1986 Sheehy Guide to Reference. I have since, off and on, more off than on recently, downloaded the current Guide to Reference from the ALA site and been adding the encyclopedic type sources it contains to the bibliography lists. And, on the talk pages of the library pages, I am also trying to add a version of the list ranking works by the number of bibliographies from that list they are included in. The ones most commonly cited might be among the more valuable sources for wikisource to have available in proofread versions which could serve of at least partial basis for all the still-missing articles we have compared to other encyclopedic sources. Ideally, I guess, my goal might be to have pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Encyclopedic articles, which probably should be renamed Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Prospectus and Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Library included in the average project banner, where such pages exist. But, having been going through the ranking list for the Religion Library page for about a week now, believe me when I say that such efforts take a lot of time. John Carter (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

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. [284][285]
The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [286]
VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Use ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init instead. [287]
Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [288]

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

The Wikidata API will be updated with breaking changes. This will probably happen on September 9. [289]

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

21:37, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

You're invited! Smithsonian APA Center & Women in Red virtual edit-a-thon on APA women

Asian Pacific American Women World Virtual Edit-a-thon
	Dates: Friday-Sunday, 4 to 6 September 2015 Location: Worldwide/virtual Sponsor: Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center "The Smithsonian APA Center invites you to attend the 2nd annual Wikipedia APA an editathon for cultural presence, which will be held during the month of September 2015. We are thrilled to invite you to Wikipedia APA, an editing event for improving and increasing the presence of cultural, historic, and artistic information on Wikipedia pertaining to Asian Pacific American ("APA") experiences. The second Wikipedia editathon dedicated to APA content, this project will occur as physical events during September 2015... as well as remotely, with participants taking part from all throughout the world." Facilitator: Women in Red (WiR) Did you Know that 15% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women? Not impressed? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you! WiR will be hosting one of this world virtual edit-a-thon. The 3-day event will focus on improving Wikipedia's coverage of Asian Pacific American women and their works (books, paintings, and so on). For more information and to RSVP: → click here← --Rosiestep (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Asian Pacific American Women World Virtual Edit-a-thon

Dates: Friday-Sunday, 4 to 6 September 2015
Location: Worldwide/virtual
Sponsor: Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

"The Smithsonian APA Center invites you to attend the 2nd annual Wikipedia APA an editathon for cultural presence, which will be held during the month of September 2015. We are thrilled to invite you to Wikipedia APA, an editing event for improving and increasing the presence of cultural, historic, and artistic information on Wikipedia pertaining to Asian Pacific American ("APA") experiences. The second Wikipedia editathon dedicated to APA content, this project will occur as physical events during September 2015... as well as remotely, with participants taking part from all throughout the world."

Facilitator: Women in Red (WiR)

Did you Know that 15% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women? Not impressed? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you! WiR will be hosting one of this world virtual edit-a-thon. The 3-day event will focus on improving Wikipedia's coverage of Asian Pacific American women and their works (books, paintings, and so on).

For more information and to RSVP: → click here←

--Rosiestep (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Five minutes to help make WikiProjects better

Hello!

First, on behalf of WikiProject X, thank you for trying out the WikiProject X pilot projects. I would like to get some anonymous feedback from you on your experience using the new WikiProject layout and tools. This way, we will know what we did right, and if we did something horribly wrong, we can try to fix it. This feedback won't be associated with your username, so please be completely honest. We are determined to improve the experience of Wikipedians, and your feedback helps us with that. (You are also welcome to leave non-anonymous feedback at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X.)

Please complete the survey here. The survey has two parts: the first part asks for your username, while the second part contains the survey questions. These two parts are stored separately, so your username will not be associated with your feedback. There are only nine questions and it should not take very long to complete. Once you complete the survey I will leave a handwritten note on your talk page as a token of my appreciation.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Harej (talk) 17:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 September 2015

Special report: Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia

News and notes: Flow placed on ice

Discussion report: WMF's sudden reversal on Wiki Loves Monuments

Featured content: Brawny

In the media: Orangemoody sockpuppet case sparks widespread coverage

Traffic report: You didn't miss much

Technology report: Tech news in brief

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. [290]
A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [291]
You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [292]

Problems

There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [293]
The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [294][295]

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. [296]
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. [297][298]

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. [299]
Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [300][301]

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

Gallery: Being Welsh

Featured content: Killed by flying debris

Op-ed: DYK, or proudly displaying incorrect information on the Main Page with alarming regularity

News and notes: The Swedish Wikipedia's controversial two-millionth article

Traffic report: Mass media production traffic

Technology report: Tech news in brief

In the media: Calling all scientists!; More Wikipedia editors in the Netherlands than all of Africa combined

This Month in GLAM: August 2015

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue VIII, August 2015
Headlines
Argentina report: Two edit-a-thons France report: August in Brittany Germany report: Sharing is Caring Mexico report: Pilot program to make freely licensed animation clips Spain report: Museum of African Art "Jiménez-Arellano Alonso"; Wiki Loves Monuments in Spain Sweden report: Odd submarines, new strategy and an old contest 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.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 15:14, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of The Beijing Axis for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The Beijing Axis is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Beijing Axis until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Primefac (talk) 23:10, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

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. [302]
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. [303]
Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [304][305]

Problems

There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed. [306]
The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [307]

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. [308]
The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [309]

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

16:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2015

Editorial: No access is no answer to closed access

News and notes: Byrd and notifications leave, but page views stay; was a terror suspect editing Wikipedia?

In the media: Is there life on Mars?

Featured content: Why did the emu cross the road?

Traffic report: Another week

Technology report: Tech news in brief

Ocaasi: Thank you. I am getting a bit of confrontation by some user who keep "Undoing" systematically my edits. My edits are truthful and yet , because I am new am I supposed to defer to them although some of the information they put while not totally false is still less precise that the one I am giving.

I supposed this was a collaborative effort and yet I am simple being"UNDOED" for no good reason.

Please illustrate me how this is supposed to work?

I am only trying to do the best for the community but it feels like I'm stepping on someones toes.

Read the History , and the Talk page of Proteus and see for yourself.

Thanks Rudy235 (talk) 22:48, 20 September 2015 (UTC)