User talk:Fluffernutter/Archive 19

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Tech News: 2014-20

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis.
  • Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly.

Future software changes

  • It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently.
  • You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API.
  • You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with Special:Flow.
  • The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work.
  • The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded.
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).
  • Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.

Problems

  • There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error.

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

06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 May 2014

  • WikiProject report: Relaxing in Puerto Rico
    This week, the Signpost jumped over the ocean to chat with the Puerto Rico WikiProject.
  • News and notes: 'Ask a librarian'—connecting Wikimedians with the National Library of Australia
    Editors of Australian-related topics on the English Wikipedia may have noticed an odd addition if they viewed the article's talk pages. For example, on Talk:Darwin, Northern Territory, they might be drawn in by the question mark, nested within what is often a sea of WikiProject templates: "Need help improving this article? Ask a librarian at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library." Just what is this?
  • Featured content: On the rocks
    Six articles, seven lists, and four pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

Tech News: 2014-21

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

Tech News updates

  • Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
  • The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work.
  • MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome.
  • VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences.
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys.
  • VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}.
  • VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it.
  • VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit.
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor.

Future software changes

  • User ID number will no longer be visible in preferences.

Problems

  • For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem.

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

07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 May 2014

  • News and notes: "Crisis" over Wikimedia Germany's palace revolution
    Last Sunday the board of Wikimedia Germany passed 9–1 a vote of no confidence in the chapter's executive director, Pavel Richter, who has held the position since 2009. With more than 50 employees, an annual budget approaching $10 million, and the right to conduct its own fundraising through the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) site banners, Wikimedia Germany is the second-largest organisation in the movement after the WMF itself. The decision was announced on the Wikimedia mailing list by the chapter chair, Nikolas Becker.
  • Traffic report: Doodles' dawn
    It's a relief to see Google Doodles having an impact again; their wide coverage means that they inspire curiosity on many subjects which, for reasons of nationality, ethnicity or gender, might not be known in the English-speaking world. It's a shame then, that Wikipedia so often fails to keep up; articles on Google Doodles are almost invariably C-class, and seldom do justice to their subjects. Still, interest in Google Doodles has been waning in recent months—Audrey Hepburn last week was the first to top the list since December—so any rise in popularity is worth celebrating.

Tech News: 2014-22

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
  • MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them.
  • A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week.
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled.
  • It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed.
  • VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names.

Future software changes

  • Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade.
  • It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool.
  • Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax [[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]] will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear.
  • You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki.

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

08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 May 2014

  • News and notes: The English Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion; wiki inventor interviewed on video
    With the promotion to featured article of Grus (constellation) on 17 May, Casliber became Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion, following Wehwalt's groundbreaking achievement last December. Cas's first FA, Banksia integrifolia, a group effort, was promoted on 16 November 2006. His first solo project, Diplodocus, followed in January 2007; he has rarely been off the FAC since. In a second story, Ward Cunningham, an American computer programmer who invented the wiki, was interviewed by the WMF.
  • Featured content: Zombie fight in the saloon
    Wikipedia editor Sven Manguard's work is quite underappreciated a lot of the time, most likely because people haven't heard of it yet: He's developed good relationships with game companies, and is thus able to get full-resolution screenshots released under a Creative Commons license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. This week's trove of new featured items on the English Wikipedia comprises seven articles, three lists, and four pictures.
  • Traffic report: Get fitted for flipflops and floppy hats
    In the US, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and summer is definitely on people's minds this week, with summer films Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past, the apparently designated summer song "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea, and summer TV show, Game of Thrones.
  • Recent research: Predicting which article you will edit next
    Wikipedia in the eyes of its beholders; "Chinese-language time zones" favor Asian pop and IT topics on Wikipedia; and bipartite editing prediction in Wikipedia.

Tech News: 2014-23

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30.

VisualEditor news

  • Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target.
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor.
  • VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons.
  • There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format.

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
  • You will soon see a warning if you visit a contributions page for a user that does not exist.
  • The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on Special:Search.
  • You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin (screenshot).

Problems

  • For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error.

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

08:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyedit Request

It must be summer because I wrote an article in a single night. Would you please look over The Scoutmaster. merci. --Guerillero | My Talk 03:29, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

GOCE June 2014 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors May 2014 backlog elimination drive wrap-up

Participation: Thanks to all who participated! Out of 51 people who signed up this drive, 33 copy edited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: We reduced our article backlog from 2,987 articles to 2,236 articles in May, the lowest backlog total since we began keeping records in 2009! Since at least 300 new articles were tagged during May, that means we copy edited over 1,000 articles in a single month. Amazing work, everyone!

Blitz: The June blitz will run from June 15–21. This blitz's theme is Politics. Sign up here.

Election: You can nominate yourself or others for the role of Coordinator for the second half of 2014 here. Nominations will be accepted until June 14. Voting will begin on June 15 and will conclude on June 28.

Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, and Miniapolis.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:27, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you and a sigh!

Hi Fluffernutter. I just wanted to thank you personally for removing this editor from AfC reviewing. The behaviour has been simply appalling and bordering on trolling. I have rescued the following three articles which he declined for spurious reasons, at a rate of 2 minutes per article: Washington State Auditor, Standard Theatre (Philadelphia), and Rainer Schmidt (landscape architect). This does so much damage to the effort to recruit and keep new editors, overcome systemic bias, and expand the encyclopedia. All of his AfC reviews will have to be redone. His block should never have been overturned. Can anything be done about it? No sooner is he stopped from wreaking havoc in one area of Wikipedia, and he heads off to another. He's also trolling the Teahouse (, ) In the latter, his reply to the new user was completely off the wall. He clearly hadn't even read their sandbox or the article they wished to improve. {{{SIGH}}}. Voceditenore (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

@Voceditenore: Yeah, that whole situation is a mess. I'm honestly not sure if it's that he's just unaware that he's doing things wrong, that he doesn't care that he's doing things wrong, or that he's deliberately doing things wrong. Since he's been community-sanctioned before, the way to go if you feel his editing needs to be stopped entirely would probably be to post a request on AN or ANI asking for his block to be reinstated and/or for a community ban to be imposed (though they amount to largely the same thing at this point). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:12, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
The editor has now been re-blocked with a block time of "indefinite". That said, I've commented in detail on two of the declines mentioned above here at WT:AFC. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 June 2014

  • Special report: IEG funding for women's stories: a new approach to the gender gap
    Individual engagement grants (IEGs) are announced twice yearly by a volunteer WMF committee, the most recent of which we covered last December. The scheme, launched at the start of last year, awards funds to individuals or teams of up to four to produce high-impact outcomes for the WMF's online projects. It favours innovative approaches to solving critical issues in the movement.
  • News and notes: Two new affiliate-selected trustees
    New trustee Frieda Briosch from Italy: we face "a couple of headaches", she says: "how to boost editors, which includes the development of the next strategic plan, and how to keep our project always 'glamorous'."
  • Op-ed: "Hospitality, jerks, and what I learned"—the amazing keynote at WikiConference USA
    I never feel quite adequate trying to paraphrase Sumana's words: she is so articulate. I highly encourage every person who reads this article to directly watch her keynote—it directly speaks to a lot of Wikimedia's most significant issues, made with great eloquence. We have a serious issue with retaining editors, and parts of her speech could serve as a pretty good partial blueprint towards how we could begin to fix that problem.
  • Featured content: Ye stately homes of England
    David Iliff, or Diliff, as he is known on here outside of the file pages for his many, many, excellent photographs, is one of Wikipedia's longest-standing professional-standard photographers. This week, the Signpost salutes him.
  • Traffic report: Autumn in summer
    The northern summer is a time when one is meant to celebrate the exuberance of life; instead, commemoration of the dead was a significant theme this week.

Tech News: 2014-24

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
  • You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla.

VisualEditor news

  • You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor.
  • The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content.
  • You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor.

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome.
  • You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10.
  • On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system.
  • You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly.
  • Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching.
  • You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it.
  • Hovercards will no longer flicker.

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

07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 June 2014

  • News and notes: PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
    Eleven public relations agencies have declared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects.
  • Traffic report: The week the wired went weird
    It seems that, more than commemorating the great moments in our history, more than even anticipating great sporting events, what our audience wants is the weird.
  • Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
    William Beutler (WWB), author of the blog The Wikipedian, is a long-time editor and community-watcher. He is also a paid editor (WWB Too). Well—not anymore—because he gave up direct editing of articles in 2011. Instead, for the past three years he has followed Jimmy Wales' Bright Line rule in acting as a researcher and consultant for companies and clients that want to suggest changes to Wikipedia articles and engage on the Talk page.
  • Special report: Questions raised over secret voting for WMF trustees
    Last week we reported the announcement of two new affiliate-selected WMF trustees. The board of trustees is the most powerful and influential body in the movement, and chapters have been permitted to select two of the 10 seats since 2008, for two-year terms that start in even-numbered years.
  • Featured content: Politics, ships, art, and cyclones
    Five articles, one list, twelve pictures, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.

Tech News: 2014-25

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

Reminder

  • You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 (calendar).
  • You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.

VisualEditor news

  • You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu.
  • When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference.
  • You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the page settings menu.
  • The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct.

Future software changes

  • Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome.
  • You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time.
  • You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis.
  • It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users.
  • Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17.
  • The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages.
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
  • You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department.

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

07:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 June 2014

  • Featured content: Worming our way to featured picture
    Five articles, five lists, 22 pictures, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • Special report: Wikimedia Bangladesh: a chapter's five-year journey
    The Bangladesh chapter of the Wikimedia movement was formed in 2009. They received official local registration from the national authorities on 10 June 2014. The long road in between was subject to much persistence, patience, and luck—along with a good deal of worry.
  • Traffic report: You can't dethrone Thrones
    To the surprise of absolutely no one, the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the main draw this week, taking four slots. People appeared desperate to bone up on their trivia; checking not only this year's World Cup, but the last one. Even so, they still couldn't push Game of Thrones from the top ten. It will be interesting to see what happens come next week's season finale.
  • WikiProject report: Visiting the city
    This week, the Signpost came in from the hinterland to interview members of the Cities WikiProject.

Tech News: 2014-26

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates.
  • When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it.
  • You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it.
  • You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references.

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags.
  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week.
  • CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis.
  • You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator.
  • An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).

Problems

  • On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
  • Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error.

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

07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunate

I'm sorry you're feeling exhausted by the fighting that comes with the territory of editing (or administrating) Wikipedia. It's unfortunate if you're feeling burned out. I actually came here looking for help with another user. You were the admin who made it clear to me that I don't have the right to speak abusively to other users, not even on my own User Talk page. I'm having problems with a guy called Parrot of Doom. As you can see from the top of his User Talk page, he says:

"Some basic rules. One, anyone coming here accusing me of WP:OWN will be told in no uncertain terms where to shove it. Two, anyone whinging about WP:CIVIL will be referred to the previous answer."

I think that's a pretty destructive attitude. The fact is, those are the very articles he needs to review and take seriously (along with WP:ONLYREVERT). The fact that he felt compelled to make these "rules" is pretty good evidence that he's had an ongoing problem with abusing other Users. So I looked through some archives and yes, yes he is routinely abusive to other users. He's actually been comparitively more civil to me. Our problems with each other stemmed from the article The Final Cut (album), with him reverting my good-faith, source-citing edits without explanation, and not really participating in any discussion on the article's Talk page, as I asked him to. He did accuse me of acting "childish" and throwing a "tantrum", which wasn't true. But I got off easy compared to how he speaks to others.

For details, you could read my comment on his User:Talk page, which lists some examples of him being personally insulting in his Edit Summaries and article Talk pages. You might even notice the comment above mine, where he is quoted as saying "oh fuckoff" and "get fucked" to another user (just as I was calling another user "fuckface" on my Talk page before you stepped in). I was wrong then, and now I'm trying to do the right thing, so I thought I'd refer you to him. But if you're not up for it, I totally understand. Myself, I've mostly not been participating on Wikipedia lately, due to things exactly like this. I wish you the best either way.

--Ben Culture (talk) 06:33, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Sunday July 6: WikNYC Picnic

More information Sunday July 6: WikNYC Picnic ...
Sunday July 6: WikNYC Picnic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" in Central Park, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck.

1pm–8pm at southwest section of the Great Lawn, north of the Delacorte Theater.

Also, before the picnic, you can join in the Wikimedia NYC chapter's annual meeting.

11:30am-12:30pm at Yeoryia Studios, 2067 Broadway.

We hope to see you there!--Pharos (talk) 16:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Close

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 25 June 2014

  • News and notes: US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan
    The US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) have committed to engaging with Wikimedia projects in their newest Open Government Plan. The biannual effort is a roadmap for how the agency will accomplish its goals in the digital age.
  • Traffic report: Fake war, or real sport?
    Despite the interest generated by its season finale, Game of Thrones still couldn't top the World Cup, which still dominated interest, as evidenced by the fact that this top 10 is virtually identical to last week's, just with a different dead celebrity.
  • Featured content: Showing our Wörth
    Ten articles and eleven pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • WikiProject report: The world where dreams come true
    This week, the Signpost visited the land of Disney, blockbusters, explosions, dream sequences, and cultural masterpieces: film.
  • Recent research: Power users and diversity in WikiProjects
    In a recent paper, Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash investigate the question of sustainability in online communities by analysing trends in the growth of WikiProjects.

GOCE July 2014 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors July 2014 newsletter is now ready for review. Highlights:

– Your project coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978 and Miniapolis.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:27, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-27

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc.
  • A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week.
  • VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page.
  • Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly.

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags.
  • Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
  • CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias.
  • All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it.
  • Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users.
  • You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block.
  • You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables.

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

06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias

Hello! Could you also protect Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias talk page? That user is now vandalizing it. --Lecen (talk) 19:00, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

@Lecen: It only seems to have happened once so far; we generally try not to protect talk pages if we can avoid it (not least because that's where this dispute ought to be being hashed out). I'm keeping an eye on things and will consider protecting the talk if there's a lot more, but for the moment I don't think protection is warranted. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:03, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 July 2014

  • In the media: Wiki Education; medical content; PR firms
    The Los Angeles Times highlighted a recent Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) course at Pomona College in their article "Wikipedia pops up in bibliographies, and even college curricula". We interviewed Char Booth, the campus ambassador for the course, for additional details.
  • Traffic report: The Cup runneth over... and over.
    With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.
  • News and notes: Wikimedia Israel receives Roaring Lion award
    Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) has won a Roaring Lion in the category of Internet and cellular for its public outreach during the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia in July 2013.
  • Featured content: Ship-shape
    Six articles, five lists, seventeen pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: In memoriam: the Toolserver (2005–14)
    In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Wikimedia Deutschland's Toolserver project was switched off, marking the end of one of the Wikimedia movement's longest running Chapter-led projects. The Toolserver, which was in fact a collection of servers, first came online in 2005, hosting hundreds of webpages and scripts ("tools") made available for use by Wikimedia readers, editors and administrators.

Tech News: 2014-28

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

Tech News updates

  • We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias.
  • It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis.
  • You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias.

VisualEditor news

  • Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster.
  • You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption.
  • When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus.
  • The reference tool that adds empty <ref></ref> tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like {{Cite web}}.
  • Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ.

Future software changes

  • Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
  • A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared.
  • If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the <references /> tag (or a template).
  • Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly.
  • Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions (example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions.

Problems

  • Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue.
  • For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error.

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

07:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 July 2014

  • Special report: Wikimania 2014—what will it cost?
    Last May, James Forrester announced to the world that London had been awarded the 2014 Wikimania conference. Functioning as the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, it is separate from the chapter-focused Wikimedia Conference. The first, located in Frankfurt, took place in 2005 and had 380 attendees. London, the tenth, is now expected to attract 1500. With Wikimania ambition, attention, and attendance rising significantly over the last nine years, how have this year's monetary costs come to be?
  • Wikimedia in education: Exploring the United States and Canada with LiAnna Davis
    The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world; students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. The Education program Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014.
  • Traffic report: World Cup, Tim Howard rule the week
    Unsurprisingly, the World Cup continued to dominate the English Wikipedia's viewing statistics. In particular, the record-breaking performance of US goalkeeper Tim Howard and the tournament-ending injury to Brazil's Neymar drove large amount of views to their articles.

Tech News: 2014-29

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 (calendar).
  • It is now possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis.
  • You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
  • You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news

  • The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles.
  • The button to make images full size should now work correctly.
  • References will now be shown in the default font size again.

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16.
  • The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example).
  • It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files.
  • Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it.
  • Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis.
  • Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory.
  • Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles.

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

07:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 July 2014

  • Special report: $10 million lawsuit against Wikipedia editors withdrawn, but plaintiff intends to refile
    On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been withdrawn without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team—but this action is being described as "strategic" so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."
  • Featured content: The Island with the Golden Gun
    Eight articles, three lists, and 28 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • News and notes: Bot-created Wikipedia articles covered in the Wall Street Journal, push Cebuano over one million articles
    The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week. The newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias, where Lsjbot is also active, and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.

Tech News: 2014-30

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date.
  • The tool that stores information about languages (CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places.
  • Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions.
  • A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on Tool Labs.

VisualEditor news

  • Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome.
  • All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons.
  • You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target.
  • Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week.

Future software changes

  • It will soon be possible to watch individual discussions in the Topic namespace rather than whole pages for talk pages using Flow.
  • You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
  • An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode.
  • A request for comments on how to improve MediaWiki API was re-started on MediaWiki.org. Your feedback is welcome.

Problems

  • Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem.

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

07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

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