User talk:6033CloudyRainbowTrail/Archive 2
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The Signpost: 07 January 2015
- In the media: ISIL propaganda video; AirAsia complaints
- Featured content: Kock up
- Traffic report: Auld Lang Syne
The Signpost: 14 January 2015
- WikiProject report: Articles for creation: the inside story
- News and notes: Erasmus Prize recognizes the global Wikipedia community
- Featured content: Citations are needed
- Traffic report: Wikipédia sommes Charlie
The Signpost: 21 January 2015
- From the editor: Introducing your new editors-in-chief
- Anniversary: A decade of the Signpost
- News and notes: Annual report released; Wikimania; steward elections
- In the media: Johann Hari; bandishes and delicate flowers
- Featured content: Yachts, marmots, boat races, and a rocket engineer who attempted to birth a goddess
- Arbitration report: As one door closes, a (Gamer)Gate opens
The Signpost: 28 January 2015
- From the editor: An editorial board that includes you
- In the media: A murderous week for Wikipedia
- Traffic report: A sea of faces
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
- 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
The Signpost: 11 February 2015
- From the editors: We want to know what you think!
- 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
The Signpost: 18 February 2015
- 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?
Disambiguation link notification for February 23
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The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- 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
The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- 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
The Signpost: 04 March 2015
- From the editor: A sign of the times: the Signpost revamps its internal structure to make contributing easier
- 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
- Featured content: Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Signpost: 11 March 2015
- Special report: An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey
- In the media: Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West
- 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
The Signpost: 18 March 2015
- From the editor: A salute to Pine
- Featured content: A woman who loved kings
- Traffic report: It's not cricket
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The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy
- 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
The Signpost, 1 April 2015
- 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
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
The Signpost: 01 April 2015
- 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
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
VisualEditor News #2—2015
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)
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- 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
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- 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
The Signpost: 15 April 2015
- Traffic report: Furious domination
The Signpost: 22 April 2015
- In the media: UK political editing; hoaxes; net neutrality
- Featured content: Vanguard on guard
- Traffic report: A harvest of couch potatoes
- Gallery: The bitter end
The Signpost: 29 April 2015
- 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
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
- Special report: FDC candidates respond to key issues
- Traffic report: The grim ship reality
The Signpost: 13 May 2015
- Foundation elections: Board candidates share their views with the Signpost
- Traffic report: Round Two
- In the media: Grant Shapps story continues
- Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way
The Signpost: 20 May 2015
- From the editor: Your voice is needed: strategic voting in the WMF election
- 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
The Signpost: 27 May 2015
- News and notes: WMF releases quarterly reports, annual plans
- Discussion report: A relic from the past that needs to be updated
- Featured content: When music was confined to a ribbon of rust
- Recent research: Drug articles accurate and largely complete; women "slightly overrepresented"; talking like an admin
- Traffic report: Summer, summer, summertime
- Technology report: MediaWiki blows up printers
The Signpost: 03 June 2015
- News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out
- 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
- Traffic report: A rather ordinary week
VisualEditor News #3—2015
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.
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) 17:31, 6 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
- Featured content: Just the bear facts, ma'am
- Technology report: Wikimedia sites are going HTTPS only
The Signpost: 17 June 2015
- Arbitration report: An election has consequences
- 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
The Signpost: 24 June 2015
- From the editor: The Signpost tagging initiative
- Featured content: One eye when begun, two when it's done
- Technology report: 2015 MediaWiki architecture focus and Multimedia roadmap announced
- News and notes: Board of Trustees propose bylaw amendments
- Arbitration report: Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration
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
The Signpost: 08 July 2015
- 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
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?
- 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
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
- 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
The Signpost: 29 July 2015
- News and notes: BARC de-adminship proposal; Wikimania recordings debate
- 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
The Signpost: 05 August 2015
- Op-ed: Je ne suis pas Google
- News and notes: VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief
- WikiProject report: Meet the boilerplate makers
- Traffic report: Mrityorma amritam gamaya...
- Featured content: Maya, Michigan, Medici, Médée, and Moul n'ga
VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition
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)
The Signpost: 12 August 2015
- News and notes: Superprotect, one year later; a contentious RfA
- In the media: Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj
- 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 Signpost: 19 August 2015
- Travelogue: Seeing is believing
- Traffic report: Straight Outta Connecticut
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 26 August 2015
- In focus: An increase in active Wikipedia editors
- In the media: Russia temporarily blocks Wikipedia
- News and notes: Re-imagining grants
- Featured content: Out to stud, please call later
- Arbitration report: Reinforcing Arbitration
- Recent research: OpenSym 2015 report
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
The Signpost: 09 September 2015
- Gallery: Being Welsh
- Featured content: Killed by flying debris
- News and notes: The Swedish Wikipedia's controversial two-millionth article
- Traffic report: Mass media production traffic
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
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
The Signpost: 23 September 2015
- In the media: PETA makes "monkey selfie" a three-way copyright battle; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Featured content: Inside Duke Humfrey's Library
- WikiProject report: Dancing to the beat of a... wikiproject?
- Traffic report: ¡Viva la Revolución! Kinda.
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 30 September 2015
- Recent research: Wiktionary special; newbies, conflict and tolerance; Is Wikipedia's search function inferior?
- Tech news: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor update
- This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.
The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.
This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.
We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 October 2015
- Op-ed: Walled gardens of corruption
- Traffic report: Reality is for losers
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Arbitration report: Warning: Contains GMOs
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 14 October 2015
- WikiConference report: US gathering sees speeches from Andrew Lih, AfroCrowd, and the Archivist of the United States
- News and notes: 2015–2016 Q1 fundraising update sparks mailing list debate
- Traffic report: Screens, Sport, Reddit, and Death
- Featured content: A fistful of dollars
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 21 October 2015
- Editorial: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching
- In the media: "Wikipedia's hostility to women"
- Special report: One year of GamerGate, or how I learned to stop worrying and love bare rule-level consensus
- Featured content: A more balanced week
- Arbitration report: Four ArbCom cases ongoing
- Traffic report: Hiding under the covers of the Internet
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor News #5—2015
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Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
- Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then 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 weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. 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, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you can't read this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2015
- From the editor: The Signpost's reorganization plan—we need your help
- News and notes: English Wikipedia reaches five million articles
- In the media: The world's Wikipedia gaps; Google and Wikipedia accused of tying Ben Carson to NAMBLA
- Arbitration report: A second attempt at Arbitration enforcement
- Traffic report: Canada, the most popular nation on Earth
- Recent research: Student attitudes towards Wikipedia; Jesus, Napoleon and Obama top "Wikipedia social network"; featured article editing patterns in 12 languages
- Featured content: Birds, turtles, and other things
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
- Community letter: Five million articles
The Signpost: 04 November 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation finances; Superprotect is gone
- In the media: Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov: propaganda myth or history?
- Traffic report: Death, the Dead, and Spectres are abroad
- Featured content: Christianity, music, and cricket
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 11 November 2015
- Arbitration report: Elections, redirections, and a resignation from the Committee
- Discussion report: Compromise of two administrator accounts prompts security review
- Featured content: Texas, film, and cycling
- In the media: Sanger on Wikipedia; Silver on Vox; lawyers on monkeys
- Traffic report: Doodles of popularity
- Gallery: Paris
The Signpost: 18 November 2015
- Special report: ArbCom election—candidates’ opinions analysed
- In the media: Icelandic milestone; apolitical editing
- Discussion report: BASC disbanded; other developments in the discussion world
- Arbitration report: Ban Appeals Subcommittee goes up in smoke; 21 candidates running
- Featured content: Fantasia on a Theme by Jimbo Wales
- Traffic report: Darkness and light
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 November 2015
- News and notes: Fundraising update; FDC recommendations
- Featured content: Caves and stuff
- Traffic report: J'en ai ras le bol
- Arbitration report: Third Palestine-Israel case closes; Voting begins
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 02 December 2015
- Op-ed: Whither Wikidata?
- Traffic report: Jonesing for episodes
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 09 December 2015
- News and notes: ArbCom election results announced
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 winners
- Traffic report: So do you laugh, or does it cry?
- Featured content: Sports, ships, arts... and some other things
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 16 December 2015
- In the media: Wales in China; #Edit2015
- Arbitration report: GMO case decided
- Featured content: An unusually slow week
- WikiProject report: Women in Red—using teamwork and partnerships to elevate online and offline collaborations
- Traffic report: A feast of Spam
Disambiguation link notification for December 23
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VisualEditor News #6—2015
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A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.
The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.
The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.
In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)
Testing opportunities
- Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Whatamidoing (WMF), 00:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 December 2015
- News and notes: WMF Board dismisses community-elected trustee
- Arbitration report: Second Arbitration Enforcement case concludes as another case is suspended
- Featured content: The post-Christmas edition
- Traffic report: The Force we expected
- Year in review: The top ten Wikipedia stories of 2015
- In the media: Wikipedia plagued by a "Basket of Deception"
- Gallery: It's that time of year again
The Signpost: 06 January 2016
- News and notes: The WMF's age of discontent
- In the media: Impenetrable science; Jimmy Wales back in the UAE
- Arbitration report: Catflap08 and Hijiri88 case been decided
- Featured content: Featured menagerie
- WikiProject report: Try-ing to become informed - WikiProject Rugby League
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
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- List of awards and nominations received by Brie Larson
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The Signpost: 13 January 2016
- Community view: Battle for the soul of the WMF
- Editorial: We need a culture of verification
- In focus: The Crisis at New Montgomery Street
- Op-ed: Transparency
- Traffic report: Pattern recognition: Third annual Traffic Report
- Special report: Wikipedia community celebrates Public Domain Day 2016
- News and notes: Community objections to new Board trustee
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Arbitration report: Interview: outgoing and incumbent arbitrators 2016
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 20 January 2016
- News and notes: Vote of no confidence; WMF trustee speaks out
- In the media: 15th anniversary news round-up
- Traffic report: Danse Macabre
- Featured content: This week's featured content
The Signpost: 27 January 2016
- News and notes: Geshuri steps down from the Board
- In the media: Media coverage of the Arnnon Geshuri no-confidence vote
- Recent research: Bursty edits; how politics beat religion but then lost to sports; notability as a glass ceiling
- Traffic report: Death and taxes
- Featured content: This week's featured content
The Signpost: 03 February 2016
- From the editors: Help wanted
- Special report: Board chair and new trustee speak with the Signpost
- Arbitration report: Catching up on arbitration
- Traffic report: Bowled
- Featured content: This week's featured content
The Signpost: 10 February 2016
- News and notes: Another WMF departure
- In the media: Jeb Bush swings at Wikipedia and connects
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: A river of revilement
The Signpost: 17 February 2016
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: Super Bowling
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 24 February 2016
- Special report: WMF in limbo as decision on Tretikov nears
- Op-ed: Backward the Foundation
- Traffic report: Of Dead Pools and Dead Judges
- Arbitration report: Arbitration motion regarding CheckUser & Oversight inactivity
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor News #1—2016
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Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.
Let's work together
- Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
- Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.
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. Thanks!
– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 02 March 2016
- News and notes: Tretikov resigns, WMF in transition
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: Brawling
The Signpost: 09 March 2016
- News and notes: Katherine Maher named interim head of WMF; Wales email re-sparks Heilman controversy; draft WMF strategy posted
- Technology report: Wikimedia wikis will temporarily go into read-only mode on several occasions in the coming weeks
- WikiCup report: First round of the WikiCup finishes
- Traffic report: All business like show business
The Signpost: 16 March 2016
- News and notes: Wikipedia Zero: Orange mobile partnership in Africa ends; the evolution of privacy loss in Wikipedia
- In the media: Wales at SXSW; lawsuit over Wikipedia PR editing
- Discussion report: Is an interim WMF executive director inherently notable?
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Technology report: Watchlists, watchlists, watchlists!
- Traffic report: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #119: The Foundation and the departure of Lila Tretikov
The Signpost: 23 March 2016
- News and notes: Lila Tretikov a Young Global Leader; Wikipediocracy blog post sparks indefinite blocks
- In the media: Angolan file sharers cause trouble for Wikipedia Zero; the 3D printer edit war; a culture based on change and turmoil
- Traffic report: Be weary on the Ides of March
- Editorial: "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
- Featured content: Watch out! A slave trader, a live mascot and a crested serpent awaits!
- Arbitration report: Palestine-Israel article 3 case amended
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #120: Status of Wikimania 2016
The Signpost: 1 April 2016
- News and notes: Trump/Wales 2016
- WikiProject report: Why should the Devil have all the good music? An interview with WikiProject Christian music
- Traffic report: Donald v Daredevil
- Featured content: A slow, slow week
- Technology report: Browse Wikipedia in safety? Use Telnet!
- Recent research: "Employing Wikipedia for good not evil" in education; using eyetracking to find out how readers read articles
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #121: How April Fools went down
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.
There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 April 2016
- News and notes: Denny Vrandečić resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board
- In the media: Wikimedia Sweden loses copyright case; Tex Watson; AI assistants; David Jolly biography
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: A welcome return to pop culture and death
- Arbitration report: The first case of 2016—Wikicology
- Gallery: A history lesson
The Signpost: 24 April 2016
- Special report: Update on EranBot, our new copyright violation detection bot
- Traffic report: Two for the price of one
- Featured content: The double-sized edition
- Arbitration report: Amendments made to the Race and intelligence case
The Signpost: 2 May 2016
- In the media: Wikipedia Zero piracy in Bangladesh; bureaucracy; chilling effects; too few cooks; translation gaps
- Traffic report: Purple
- Featured content: The best ... from the past two weeks
The Signpost: 17 May 2016
- Op-ed: Swiss chapter in turmoil
- In the media: Wikimedia's Dario Taraborelli quoted on Google's Knowledge Graph in The Washington Post
- Featured content: Two weeks for the prize of one
- Traffic report: Oh behave, Beyhive / Underdogs
- Arbitration report: "Wikicology" ends in site ban; evidence and workshop phases concluded for "Gamaliel and others"
- Wikicup: That's it for WikiCup Round 2!
The Signpost: 28 May 2016
- News and notes: Upcoming Wikimedia conferences in the US and India; May Metrics and Activities Meeting
- Special report: Compensation paid to Sue Gardner increased by almost 50 percent after she stepped down as executive director
- Featured content: Eight articles, three lists and five pictures
- Op-ed: Journey of a Wikipedian
- Arbitration report: Gamaliel resigns from the arbitration committee
- Recent research: English as Wikipedia's Lingua Franca; deletion rationales; schizophrenia controversies
- Traffic report: Splitting (musical) airs / Slow Ride
The Signpost: 05 June 2016
- News and notes: WMF cuts budget for 2016-17 as scope tightens
- Featured content: Overwhelmed ... by pictures
- Traffic report: Pop goes the culture, again.
- Arbitration report: ArbCom case "Gamaliel and others" concludes
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Video Games
The Signpost: 15 June 2016
- News and notes: Clarifications on status and compensation of outgoing executive directors Sue Gardner and Lila Tretikov
- Special report: Wikiversity Journal—A new user group
- Featured content: From the crème de la crème
- In the media: Biography disputes; Craig Newmark donation; PR editing
- Traffic report: Another one with sports; Knockout, brief candle
Editing News #2—2016
Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
It's quick and easy to insert a references list.
Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).
If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.
Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.
Recent changes
The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.
The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.
Future changes
The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.
The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
- Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred 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), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 July 2016
- News and notes: Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director; Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany
- Op-ed: Two policies in conflict?
- In the media: Terrorism database cites Wikipedia as a source
- Featured content: Triple fun of featured content
- Traffic report: Goalposts; Oy vexit
The Signpost: 21 July 2016
- Discussion report: Busy month for discussions
- Featured content: A wide variety from the best
- Traffic report: Sports and esports
- Arbitration report: Script writers appointed for clerks
- Recent research: Using deep learning to predict article quality
The Signpost: 04 August 2016
- News and notes: Foundation presents results of harassment research, plans for automated identification; Wikiconference submissions open
- Obituary: Kevin Gorman, who took on Wikipedia's gender gap and undisclosed paid advocacy, dies at 24
- Traffic report: Summer of Pokémon, Trump, and Hillary
- Featured content: Women and Hawaii
- Recent research: Easier navigation via better wikilinks
- Technology report: User script report (January to July 2016, part 1)
The Signpost: 18 August 2016
- News and notes: Focus on India—WikiConference produces new apps; state government adopts free licenses
- Special report: Engaging diverse communities to profile women of Antarctica
- In the media: The ugly, the bad, the playful, and the promising
- Featured content: Simply the best ... from the last two weeks
- Traffic report: Olympic views
- Technology report: User script report (January–July 2016, part 2)
- Arbitration report: The Michael Hardy case
The Signpost: 06 September 2016
- Special report: Olympics readership depended on language
- WikiProject report: Watching Wikipedia
- Featured content: Entertainment, sport, and something else in-between
- Traffic report: From Phelps to Bolt to Reddit
- Technology report: Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them
- Recent research: Ethics of machine-created articles and fighting vandalism
The Signpost: 29 September 2016
- News and notes: Wikipedia Education Program case study published; and a longtime Wikimedian has made his final edit
- In the media: Wikipedia in the news
- Featured content: Three weeks in the land of featured content
- Arbitration report: Arbcom looking for new checkusers and oversight appointees while another case opens
- Traffic report: From Gene Wilder to JonBenét
- Technology report: Category sorting and template parameters
Editing News #3—2016
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia
Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?
Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.
Recent changes
- You can now set text as small or big.[1]
- Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[2] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[3]
- Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[4]
- At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[5]
- The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[6] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
- Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[7]
Future changes
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred 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) 18:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 October 2016
- News and notes: Fundraising, flora and fauna
- Discussion report: Cultivating leadership: Wikimedia Foundation seeks input
- Technology report: Upcoming tech projects for 2017
- Featured content: Variety is the spice of life
- Traffic report: Debates and escapes
- Recent research: A 2011 study resurfaces in a media report
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- In the media: Washington Post continues in-depth Wikipedia coverage
- Wikicup: WikiCup winners
- Discussion report: What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?
- Technology report: New guideline for technical collaboration; citation templates now flag open access content
- Featured content: Cream of the crop
- Traffic report: Un-presidential politics
- Arbitration report: Recapping October's activities
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, 6033CloudyRainbowTrail. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence
- Featured content: Featured mix
- Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog
- Traffic report: President-elect Trump
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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