User talk:Ocaasi/Archive 7
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| This is an archive of past discussions with User:Ocaasi. 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. |
| Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
Wikipedia:Extant Organizations/Noticeboard
Someone suggested at the Village Pump that I boldly create Wikipedia:Extant Organizations/Noticeboard, a noticeboard to discuss articles about organizations that may be subject to non-neutral editing. Basically it's the corporate version of BLPN, where both adverts and attack pages can be brought to the community for broader scrutiny. Except this board does not currently relate to a specific policy like BLPN does, except NPOV, V, etc. (though it could refer to this essay I wrote or something). You participated in the prior village pump discussion that led to consensus for Template:COI editnotice, which is now widely used. Although this noticeboard is not COI-related, I thought you might have an interest in this as well, in whether the noticeboard should be kept and/or in participating in it generally. CorporateM (Talk) 18:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
- @CorporateM and CorporateM: For starters I'd just call it Wikipedia:Oranizations/Noticeboard as 'Extant' seem like a pretty empty and confusing word out of context. I'll drop by to check on the discussion. Thanks! Ocaasi t | c 23:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
- @CorporateM: fixing typo John Carter (talk) 15:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
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.
- Exclusive: "We need to be true to who we are": Foundation's new executive director speaks to the Signpost
In her first interview since taking office, Lila Tretikov, the Wikimedia Foundation's new executive director, speaks about grantmaking, the global south, and the gender gap.
- Discussion report: Media Viewer, old HTML tags
Discussions on the English Wikipedia this week include...
- 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.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:51, 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)
The Wikipedia Library: New Account Coordinators Needed
Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.
It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz
gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
- I'd be willing to help as an account coordinator. What do you need from me? Chris Troutman (talk) 00:21, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- @Chris troutman: awesome. For the next week, nothing to do yet, as we are just letting signups roll in. I'll actually be in Las Vegas for the annual American Library Association meeting until July 1st. When I get back that week of July I can walk you through the basics of coordinating an account and then we can process a few existing signups. It's pretty simple. I will send you a ping to set up some time for a quick walkthrough. Thanks very much, Jake Ocaasi t | c 00:30, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- @Chris troutman: could you shoot me a quick email at jorlowitz
gmail.com. (There are just a few small, offline setup pieces: online spreadsheet, privacy agreement, calendar invite, mailing list).
- If you still need people I'd be glad to help. I'm a recently retired academic librarian and have time. HazelAB (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- I would also be willing to help if you still need someone.Richardjames444 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:39, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for coming!
| Thank you, partner! | |
| Thank you for helping out and participating at the RBMS edit-a-thon this weekend. Myself, and Las Vegas' own Vegas Vic hope you come back real soon! Merrilee (talk) 19:55, 1 July 2014 (UTC) |
ALA Annual At Las Vegas
I was sorry to miss your talk. Will you be posting any slides to slideshare.com or elsewhere? TeriEmbrey (talk) 14:44, 2 July 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.
- WikiProject report: Indigenous Peoples of North America
This week, the Signpost visited the Indigenous peoples of North America WikiProject.
- 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.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:23, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
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)
This Month in GLAM: June 2014
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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?
- Wikicup: Wikicup's third round sees money, space, battleships and more
After an extremely close race, round three is over. 244 points secured a place in Round 4, which is comparable to previous years—321 was required in 2013, and 243 points in 2012.
- 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.
- Featured content: Three cheers for featured pictures!
Five articles, six lists, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.
- News and notes: Echoes of the past haunt new conflict over tech initiative
As with the troubled release of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) flagship VisualEditor project, the release of the new Media Viewer has also been met with opposition from the English Wikipedia community.
- 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.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:54, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
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.
07:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Medical Translation Newsletter


This is the first of a series of newsletters for Wikiproject Medicine's Translation Task Force. Our goal is to make all the medical knowledge on Wikipedia available to the world, in the language of your choice.
note: you will not receive future editions of this newsletter unless you *sign up*; you received this version because you identify as a member of WikiProject MedicineSpotlight - Simplified article translation
Wikiproject Medicine started translating simplified articles in February 2014. We now have 45 simplified articles ready for translation, of which the first on African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness has been translated into 46 out of ~100 languages. This list does not include the 33 additional articles that are available in both full and simple versions.
Our goal is to eventually translate 1,000 simplified articles. This includes:
- WHO's list of Essential Medicines
- Neglected tropical diseases
- Key diseases for medical subspecialties like: oncology, emergency medicine (list), anatomy, internal medicine, surgery, etc.
We are looking for subject area leads to both create articles and recruit further editors. We need people with basic medical knowledge who are willing to help out. This includes to write, translate and especially integrate medical articles.
What's happening?
- IEG grant

I've (CFCF) taken on the role of community organizer for this project, and will be working with this until December. The goals and timeline can be found here, and are focused on getting the project on a firm footing and to enable me to work near full-time over the summer, and part-time during the rest of the year. This means I will be available for questions and ideas, and you can best reach me by mail or on my talk page.
- Wikimania 2014
For those going to London in a month's time (or those already nearby) there will be at least one event for all medical editors, on Thursday August 7th. See the event page, which also summarizes medicine-related presentations in the main conference. Please pass the word on to your local medical editors.
- Integration progress
There has previously been some resistance against translation into certain languages with strong Wikipedia presence, such as Dutch, Polish, and Swedish.
What was found is that thre is hardly any negative opinion about the the project itself; and any such critique has focused on the ways that articles have being integrated. For an article to be usefully translated into a target-Wiki it needs to be properly Wiki-linked, carry proper citations and use the formatting of the chosen target language as well as being properly proof-read. Certain large Wikis such as the Polish and Dutch Wikis have strong traditions of medical content, with their own editorial system, own templates and different ideas about what constitutes a good medical article. For example, there are not MEDRS (Polish,German,Romanian,Persian) guidelines present on other Wikis, and some Wikis have a stronger background of country-specific content.
- Swedish
Translation into Swedish has been difficult in part because of the amount of free, high quality sources out there already: patient info, for professionals. The same can be said for English, but has really given us all the more reason to try and create an unbiased and free encyclopedia of medical content. We want Wikipedia to act as an alternative to commercial sources, and preferably a really good one at that.
Through extensive collaborative work and by respecting links and Sweden specific content the last unintegrated Swedish translation went live in May. - Dutch
Dutch translation carries with it special difficulties, in part due to the premises in which the Dutch Wikipedia is built upon. There is great respect for what previous editors have created, and deleting or replacing old content can be frowned upon. In spite of this there are success stories: Anafylaxie. - Polish
Translation and integration into Polish also comes with its own unique set of challenges. The Polish Wikipedia has long been independent and works very hard to create high quality contentfor Polish audience. Previous translation trouble has lead to use of unique templates with unique formatting, not least among citations. Add to this that the Polish Wikipedia does not allow template redirects and a large body of work is required for each article.
(This is somewhat alleviated by a commissioned Template bot - to be released). - List of articles for integration - Arabic
The Arabic Wikipedia community has been informed of the efforts to integrate content through both the general talk-page as well as through one of the major Arabic Wikipedia facebook-groups: مجتمع ويكيبيديا العربي, something that has been heralded with great enthusiasm.
- Integration guides
Integration is the next step after any translation. Despite this it is by no means trivial, and it comes with its own hardships and challenges. Previously each new integrator has needed to dive into the fray with little help from previous integrations. Therefore we are creating guides for specific Wikis that make integration simple and straightforward, with guides for specific languages, and for integrating on small Wikis.
Instructions on how to integrate an article may be found here
News in short
- To come
- Medical editor census - Medical editors on different Wikis have been without proper means of communication. A preliminary list of projects is available here.
- Proofreading drives
- Further reading
- Translators Without Borders
- Healthcare information for all by 2015, a global campaign
Thanks for reading! To receive a monthly talk page update about new issues of the Medical Translation Newsletter, please add your name to the subscriber's list. To suggest items for the next issue, please contact the editor, CFCF (talk · contribs) at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Medicine/Translation Taskforce/Newsletter/Suggestions.
Want to help out manage the newsletter? Get in touch with me CFCF (talk · contribs)
For the newsletter from Wikiproject Medicine, see The Pulse
If you are receiving this newsletter without having signed up, it is because you have signed up as a member of the Translation Taskforce, or Wiki Project Med on meta. 22:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:OUP/Approved User Jyoti.mickey has undergone SUL rename to AmritasyaPutra
Hi Ocaasi, I have undergone SUL rename to AmritasyaPutra since I applied to WP:OUP. Now, In the email signup I gave my new username only. The email address remains the same. Is this okay? Regards. The earlier username (Jyoti.mickey) is also (re)registered to me but I do not use it. --AmritasyaPutra✍ 02:55, 18 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."
- Traffic report: World Cup dominates for another week
This week it's still more and more World Cup, with five entries out of the top ten (and 14 out of the Top 25).
- Wikimedia in education: Serbia takes the stage with Filip Maljkovic
It all started in late 2005, when we first held lectures about Wikipedia in two educational institutions (universities) ...
- 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.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:26, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
Resource request.
- Ezra Schabas, September 1994 Sir Ernest MacMillan: The Importance of Being Canadian ,University of Toronto Press, Chapter: A Matter of Morality (pages=225-242). ISBN 978-1-4426-7996-2 . Available at JSTOR.
I want the above chapter (pages- 227, 230, 232, 235, 237, 241-242) for symphony six. These pages are not shown in the Google book preview of the book. I have tried WP:RX.--Skr15081997 (talk) 16:00, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
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)
Barnstar
Coordinators still needed?
Hi,
Per the message on my talk page, if you're still needing an account coordinator for the library, I would be happy to help out.--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:20, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
JSTOR access
You replied to a note I left on User: SlimVirgin's talk about my loss of JSTOR access, and told me to expect an email whereby I could be reconnected. That email has arrived, requesting details of my username and email address – the latter surely redundant since they are emailing me? Anyhow, I have attempted to submit these details three times, each time receiving back the message "Resend details". I'm not given any indication as to why what I send is not acceptable. I badly need this access, as its lack is impeding work on several articles. Any advice? Thanks, Brianboulton (talk) 14:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Brianboulton, we actually do not have your email because we used the Special:EmailUser feature. Please just email me at jorlowitz
gmail.com and I'll add you to the list manually. We're turning this around as fast as we can. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 19:15, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Sent the email but with difficulty, after a couple of failed attempts. Ye gods! In case you don't receive it, my email address is bb@bboulton.fsnet.co.uk – thanks for your trouble, I realise you're trying flat out. Brianboulton (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Mailed you. Didn't get the JSTOR mail. --Redtigerxyz Talk 19:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Sent you an e-mail, thanks. Kanatonian (talk) 20:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Mailed you. Didn't get the JSTOR mail. --Redtigerxyz Talk 19:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Sent the email but with difficulty, after a couple of failed attempts. Ye gods! In case you don't receive it, my email address is bb@bboulton.fsnet.co.uk – thanks for your trouble, I realise you're trying flat out. Brianboulton (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
- Hi, is there any way I can do this onwiki rather than through email. I don't have the login information for the email account linked with my Wikipedia username. Thanks Dlv999 (talk) 09:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
- @Dlv999: Hi, you can email me directly from whatever email account you do have at jorlowitz
gmail.com. You can also change the email linked to your Wikipedia account in Special:Preferences. Last, you could leave your email address public on my talk page and then I could revision/delete it afterwards. Your call! Ocaasi t | c 12:04, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
- @Dlv999: Hi, you can email me directly from whatever email account you do have at jorlowitz
The Signpost: 23 July 2014
- Wikimedia in education: Education program gaining momentum in Israel
"Great success" in Israel universities is leading to collaboration and editing in high schools.
- Traffic report: The World Cup hangs on, though tragedies seek to replace it
Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.
- News and notes: Institutional media uploads to Commons get a bit easier
Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) today are facing fewer barriers to uploading their content onto Wikimedia projects now that the new GLAM-Wiki Toolset Project has been launched. The tool, which is the fruit of a collaboration between Europeana and several Wikimedia chapters, relieves GLAMs from having to write their own automated scripts and gives them a standardized method of uploading large amounts of their digitized holdings.
- Forum: Did you know?—good idea, needs reform
The English Wikipedia's did you know (DYK) section has been a feature of the site's main page since February 2004. From the beginning, the section has served as a place to highlight Wikipedia's newest articles. But over the last few years, the did you know section has gotten steadily larger and more complex, and non-notable or plagiarized articles have occasionally slipped through the reviewing process, leading numerous editors to call for reforms to the system. We asked two editors to share their views.
- Featured content: Why, they're plum identical!
Ten articles, five lists, and 25 pictures were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-31
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
- You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.
VisualEditor news
- You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor.
- The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit.
- If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters.
- You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation.
Future software changes
- You will soon be able to filter Meta-Wiki's user rights log by wiki and user.
- Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list.
- It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
Similar to CongressEdits. -- 94.201.57.87 (talk) 16:29, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Re: Wikipedia Visiting Scholar - MSU
Jake, FYI - I've been accepted at the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at Montana State University Library and have been working with Brian Rossman and others there on potential projects. I was granted complete access to online library resources a couple of weeks ago. I will be maintaining an accounting of contributions that benefited from access to library resources here: User:Mike Cline/Wikipedia visiting scholar/contributions. Additionally, just for fun, I mocked up a userbox:
Feel free to improve and expropriate for the Wikipedia Library if desired. Thanks for the opportunities. You all are doing great work. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:51, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- That's great Mike Cline! I'm happy for you and excited to see what you do with all of that access to MSU's neat resources. I'll be in touch to check in and see how it's going later in the fall. Best of luck, and nice userbox! Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 15:23, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 7
Books & Bytes
Issue 7, June-July 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- Seven new donations, two expanded partnerships
- TWL's Final Report up, read the summary
- Adventures in Las Vegas, WikiConference USA, and updates from TWL coordinators
- Spotlight: Blog post on BNA's impact on one editor's research
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
newspapers.com subscription
My Wikipedia Library sub to newspapers.com doesn't seem to actually get me anything. When I click on an article, it urges me to get a paid subscription, but doesn't allow me to access the article. What might I be doing wrong? --Orange Mike | Talk 23:16, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- @Sadads:, can you please take a look at this (Sadads is coordinating this subscription). Thanks and let me know what's up. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 23:19, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- Hey Ocaasi, and @Orangemike:: as I responded at The Wikipedia Library's talk, the accounts haven't been processed yet :P Sadads (talk) 15:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 July 2014
- Book review: Knowledge or unreality?
In Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak discusses Wikipedia from the standpoint of an experienced editor and administrator who is also a university professor specializing in management and organizations. In Virtual Reality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Charles Seife presents a more broadly themed work reminding us to question the reliability of information found throughout the Internet.
- Recent research: Shifting values in the paid content debate
Kim Osman has performed a fascinating study on the three 2013 failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, Osman analyzed 573 posts from the three main votes on paid editing conducted in the community in November 2013.
- News and notes: How many more hoaxes will Wikipedia find?
Another hoax on the English Wikipedia was uncovered this week—not by any thorough investigation, but through the self-disclosure of an anonymous change made when the editors were in their sophomore year of college. The deliberate misinformation had been in the article for over five years with plenty of individuals noticing, but not one suspected its authenticity. This leads to one obvious question: how many more are there?
- Wikimedia in education: Success in Egypt and the Arab World
A "program of heroes" is leading the charge in Egypt.
- Traffic report: Doom and gloom vs. the power of Reddit
We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the top 10, with Gaza Strip, Israel, and Hamas. The top 25 also includes Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner, the American actor who died on July 19th, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and deaths in 2014.
- Featured content: Skeletons and Skeltons
Two articles, four lists, and seven pictures attained featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:07, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-32
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 will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
- You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files.
- You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files.
- New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file.
VisualEditor news
- You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor.
- VisualEditor will no longer change underscores to spaces in category sort keys.
- Many bugs that resulted in inserting the pawn and snowman symbols were fixed last week.
- Several bugs related to the use of references were also fixed.
Future software changes
- You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits.
- All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, contact Toolserver administrators before August 31.
- Pages in the
Translations:namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines.
Problems
- Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem.
- Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Regarding localizing TWA for Telugu
Dear Ocaasi, me and my friend are trying to translate and bring in TWA game to Telugu. Please help us.--Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
TWA Localization
Hi Ocaasi, I am localizing the TWA into Telugu. I just got struck at the first page of the journey. Unable to get the pop-up. Could you please help in this task.
Praveen Grao (talk) 07:46, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- Hi రహ్మానుద్దీన్ and Praveen Grao. I'd love to help. If your code is not loading then you have an error in it. Even just 1 error makes the entire tour not load.
My biggest tip is to be very careful with your code. Every character matters. The most common errors are:
- Including an apostrophe ( ' ) in a word such as it's without backslashing the ( ' ). You have to write words with apostrophes like this: it\'s.
- The next most common error is forgetting to close your brackets { }. For every open { bracket you need a close bracket }. The same goes for quote marks. If an instruction 'begins with a quote then it needs to end with a quote'.
- Third tip, most of the lines in the code have a comma between them. So an instruction will 'end with a comma', and then the next instruction 'will end with a comma',
- My fourt tip is mainly about how you test for bugs to find mistakes in your code. If your mission have 23 steps, and it's not loading, that means you have an error somewhere in there. So remove all of the steps but the first one, and then see if it works. If that loads, you know the error is not in step 1. Then try adding back all of the steps up to 5. If there's an error still (not loading), then you know the mistake is between steps 2-5. Then load until step 10, step 15, step 20....etc. Note that you still need to include the beginning and end of the code, even if you just have 1 step in it. So again, if you want to test up to step 5, you would include: Beginning - Step 1 - Step 2 - Step 3 - Step 4 - Step 5 - End.
- Can you link me to your mediawiki code page. I can take a look! Also, will either of you be at Wikimania, or at the London Hackathon August 7th?? Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 12:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
- Dear Ocaasi, None of us both got scholarship for Wikimania, and we wont be there. Please let us know what all scripts and pages we need to have to have TWA level 1 working. With regard to code, we did copied all of the js files. you could find them at js file and similar locations. I planned of localising once it loads properly, But the initial popup itself is not working! --Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 12:44, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Update: Extension:GuidedTour is not enabled on Te wiki. Could you help us in enabling the same? Should we be raising a bug about it? Or does it require us to request some WMF staff member to help? --Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 13:12, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
- Hi రహ్మానుద్దీన్, you definitely need to have GuidedTour enabled. Pinging Superm401. I'd also try irc in #wikimedia-tech and #wikimedia-growth, and #mediawiki
- All TWA pages are listed here: WP:TWA/Index. Jake Ocaasi t | c 13:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
- రహ్మానుద్దీన్, thanks for filing bugzilla:69103. Superm401 - Talk 19:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
About Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure
sir, I have watched it for a long time, and I think that this is a right time to make it into other wikis. I may help you to move it to zh.wikipedia/zh.wikivoyage etc. How do you think? --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 14:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
- Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
- You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
- All references and footnotes (
<ref>tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu. - When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
- All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
- The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
- The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).
If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 August 2014
- Technology report: A technologist's Wikimania preview
As the start of Wikimania proper on 8 August approaches, the Signpost looks ahead to what its dozens of presentations might offer the technologically-inclined, whether attending in person or taking advantage of what promises to be a strong digital offering.
- Traffic report: Ebola
Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with the Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19.
- Featured content: Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them
Eight articles, fifteen pictures, and two topics were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Wikimedia in education: Leading universities educate with Wikipedia in Mexico
"Major growth" expected in Mexican university after a Wikipedia program is formally accepted by the school's administration.
- News and notes: "History is a human right"—first-ever transparency report released as Europe begins hiding Wikipedia in search results
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its first transparency report, covering from July 2012 to June 2014. The move comes on the same day the organization announced that Google, in order to comply with a recent court order upholding the "right to be forgotten", has removed a number of Wikipedia articles from their European search results.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia Library user of Questia now unable to use same email for HighBeam
I am, of course, very grateful for being granted both Questia and HighBeam Research accounts, and for all the hard work required of yourself and other Wikipedia Library project managers, as well as the support people on the partner side, for making this possible. Alas, your work is not done ;)
I use ONE carefully maintained email account for all Wikipedia and academic purposes and can't be bothered with using a separate email address just to access ONE service. When the email address is the only allowed login name, as for both Questia and Highbeam, I would be always confused if it weren't the one email I use for all research by default. It might not be a big deal if the login name were not the email address, but it is. I can't remember trivia like a one-off address I must use for a Web service that isn't very serviceable.
If they can't figure it out, I'll not be able to use their service. I'm not opening another vector of spam because they can't get it together several years after Cenage merger. Thousands of users of Questia must also have HighBeam accounts. Please make the following clear to Highbeam Wikipedia customer support liaison. I'll be happy to help them troubleshoot and post results for the benefit of many others in the same situation.
Ideally:
- My1email@example.com
- QuestiaPa$$w0rd
- My1email@example.com
- HighBeamPa$$w0rd
Acceptable:
- My1email@example.com
- Questia-HighBeamPa$$w0rd
Not Worth the Bother:
- My1email@example.com
- QuestiaPa$$w0rd
- MyHighBeamSNAFUaccount@example.com
- HighBeamPa$$w0rd
See (and please revise, if/when solution found): Wikipedia:HighBeam/Support
Paulscrawl (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
- Per that page, if you'll email me HighBeam's dedicated Wikipedia customer support #, I'll take it on Monday. Thanks -- Paulscrawl (talk) 20:23, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
- High Paulscrawl. I completely understand your frustration, and yet I can do nothing about this and nor do I expect HighBeam or Questia will be able to on any reasonable timeframe. They have given us 3000 completely free one-year accounts and are willing to keep doing this apparently indefinitely. The only caveat is that repeat users must use a unique email address. I see how that might not be worth the tradeoff to you to set up a throwaway or tertiary email account and that is fairly your call. I will happily pass on a feature request to HighBeam. It is unlikely, however, to result in a quick technical solution, so you might have to walk away from the opportunity, which would be unfortunate, but again is your call. Best, Ocaasi t | c 14:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
- Asking for basic Web site functionality is not a "feature request" - we are talking about a bug report. It is not my problem, it is theirs. I've never encountered this problem in 20 years heavy internet use. It is a bug, pure and simple, and I mean to help get it thoroughly diagnosed, documented, and prioritized. Don't forget how much Cenage gains from this partnership of Questia and HighBeam Research with active Wikipedia editors. I've already made about a dozen Questia links. You can't buy advertising like that, and they know it.
- Cenage can gain even more from a professionally written, courteous, and solution-oriented email from a professional dotcom veteran willing to troubleshoot with them over the phone after receipt. That would be me, Monday, making clear I speak only for myself, not the Wikipedia Library, though I address a Cenage problem potentially affecting all their users having accounts serviced by the Questia technology stackand the HighBeam technology stack. I've already joined the Cenage/Questia/HighBeam Customer Advisory Team to lend a bit of credibility and help ensure oversight above and beyond customer service, if need be. I'm dedicated to helping them recognize the severity of this 2010-era bug (Questia merger) and finally fix their problem, for free on my part.
- Now, again, please email me the dedicated customer support phone number you advertised on the page linked above. I won't embarrass you or Wikipedia - I have a long track record of helping websites get things done that need doing.
- Thanks again. Paulscrawl (talk) 19:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-33
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
- Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
- Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one.
VisualEditor news
- Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14.
Future software changes
- Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser!
- If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning.
- You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension.
- An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: July 2014
| ||||||
The Signpost: 13 August 2014
- Special report: Twitter bots catalogue government edits to Wikipedia
Slate reports that Tom Scott, co-creator of the emoji social network Emojli, created a Twitter bot called Parliament WikiEdits to automatically tweet a link to any Wikipedia edits made from an IP address belonging to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scott's bot initially did not tweet any links to edits made from Parliament and, according to Scott, an "insider" reports that their IP addresses changed. Despite this, Scott's Twitter bot has inspired similar creations in numerous other countries.
- Traffic report: Disease, decimation and distraction
It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
- Wikimedia in education: Global Education: WMF's Perspective
"Education is at the core of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission."
- Wikimania: Promised the moon, settled for the stars
Wikimania 2014 was held last week in the Barbican Centre in London. Below, the Signpost's former "Technology report" writer Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) shares his thoughts on a bustling conference.
- News and notes: Media Viewer controversy spreads to German Wikipedia
Wikimedia Foundation staff members have now been granted superpowers that would allow them to override community consensus. The new protection level came as a response to attempts of German Wikipedia administrators to implement a community consensus on the new Media Viewer. "Superprotect" is a level above full protection, and prevents edits by administrators.
- Op-ed: Red links, blue links, and erythrophobia
Erythrophobia is the fear of, or sensitivity to, the colour red. Recently, I have seen more and more erythrophobic Wikipedians; specifically, Wikipedians who are scared of red links. In Wikipedia's early days, red links were encouraged and well-loved, and when I started editing in 2006, this was still mostly the case. Jump forward to 2014, and many editors now have an aversion to red links.
- In the media: Monkey selfie, net neutrality, and hoaxes
The Observer reported (August 2) that Google would "restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new 'right to be forgotten' legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."
- Featured content: Cambridge got a lot of attention this week
Eight article, six lists, and two topics were promoted to featured status last week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:56, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-34
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
- There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages.
- You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
- You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools.
- You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.
Wikidata
- After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews.
- After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote.
Problems
Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 August 2014
- Interview: Improving the visibility of digital archival assets using Wikipedia
Dorothy Howard interviews Michael Szajewski, archivist for digital development and university records at Ball State University.
- Traffic report: Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
Comedian Robin Williams' untimely death takes the top spot.
- WikiProject report: Bats and gloves
At the plate with WikiProject Baseball!
- Op-ed: A new metric for Wikimedia
Denny Vrandečić argues that "We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors."
- Featured content: English Wikipedia departs for Japan
Ten articles and three pictures were promoted to featured status last week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:10, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-35
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
- There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed.
- You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages.
- If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor.
Future software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
- After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Library assistance
Your draft article, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DJ Many

Hello Ocaasi. It has been over six months since you last edited your WP:AFC draft article submission, entitled "DJ Many".
The page will shortly be deleted. If you plan on editing the page to address the issues raised when it was declined and resubmit it, simply and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code. Please note that Articles for Creation is not for indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace.
If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you want to retrieve it, copy this code: {{subst:Refund/G13|Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DJ Many}}, paste it in the edit box at this link, click "Save page", and an administrator will in most cases undelete the submission.
Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. JMHamo (talk) 13:25, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
WVS Signup
This ought to be updated. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
- I've been the visiting scholar at UCR since May and I assume there are Wikipedians at the other schools. Are we that far beneath your notice? Chris Troutman (talk) 01:09, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 August 2014
- In the media: Plagiarism and vandalism dominate Wikipedia news
Journalistic integrity, Congressional edits, and other news.
- News and notes: Media Viewer—Wikimedia's emotional roller-coaster
More discussions about Media Viewer, Superprotect, and software development
- Traffic report: Viral
"This was a week when an actual virus, Ebola, competed for attention with several viral social phenomena; most notably the Ice Bucket Challenge..."
- Featured content: Cheats at Featured Pictures!
Sixteen articles, five lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:37, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-36
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata.
- You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the
linksto:keyword in your search. - A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog".
- If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages".
VisualEditor news
- You can no longer delete required fields in templates.
- We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
- VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook.
- We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X).
- You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category.
Future software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
- There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in
#wikimedia-officeat freenode. - You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too.
- You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
- You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 September 2014
- Arbitration report: Media viewer case is suspended
"On 1 September, the Arbitrators voted to suspend the Media Viewer case for 60 days. After the suspension period is up, the case is to be closed unless the committee votes otherwise. The case suspension comes in response to several new initiatives and policies announced by the Wikimedia Foundation that may make the case moot. In the same motion, the committee declared that Eloquence's resignation of the administrator right was "under the cloud" and that he can only regain the right through another RfA."
- Featured content: 1882 × 5 in gold, and thruppence more
Two articles, one list, and ten pictures were promoted
- Op-ed: Automated copy-and-paste detection under trial
Doc James and some collaborators are working on quick detection of copyright violations
- Traffic report: Holding Pattern
"This week we saw three of the top ten articles remain in place, with the Ice Bucket Challenge at #1, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at #2, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at #5, all for a second straight week..."
- WikiProject report: Gray's Anatomy (v. 2)
"This week, the Signpost went out to meet WikiProject Anatomy, dedicated to improving the articles about all our bones, brains, bladders and biceps, and getting them to the high standard expected of a comprehensive encyclopaedia."
- Recent research: A Wikipedia-based Pantheon; new Wikipedia analysis tool suite; how AfC hamstrings newbies
The latest roundup of research about Wikimedia
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:03, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-37
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
- From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
Future software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (calendar).
- You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog.
- You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs.
Problems
- There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
TWA
Just a note from someone with an issue..
Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge#Wikipedia_adventure_.27game.27_or_tutorial.3F
Thanks! heather walls (talk) 23:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: August 2014
| ||||||
The Signpost: 10 September 2014
- Op-ed: Media Viewer software is not ready
Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.
- Traffic report: Refuge in celebrity
Even though it's not quite 3/4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity.
- Featured content: The louse and the fish's tongue
The amazing and strange tongue-eating louse replacing a fish's tongue! Because isopods, the subject of a new featured article, are both awesome and really damn weird!
- WikiProject report: Checking that everything's all right
This week, the Signpost decided to have a look around with WikiProject Check Wikipedia a maintenance project not concerned so much with articles' content, but in all the tiny errors that are to be found scattered within them. Their front page gives a list of things they mainly focus on ...
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:56, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-38
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the
mw-disambigCSS class. - There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names.
- New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited.
Problems
VisualEditor news
- If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number.
- The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet.
- You can now use help buttons in the "Page settings" menu to see what the options are for.
Future software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf21) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (calendar).
- These changes are coming with the new version:
- If you use Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 September 2014
- In the media: Turkish Twitter outrage, medical translation, audience metrics
The Hürriyet Daily News reports on a series of posts on Twitter from Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ömer Çelik.
- WikiProject report: A trip up north to Scotland
As Scotland is deciding its future this week, we thought it might be a good idea to get to know the editors of WikiProject Scotland and talk to them about the project.
- News and notes: Wikipedia's traffic statistics are off by nearly one-third
A prominent Wikipedia researcher has discovered that the encyclopedia's widely used article traffic statistics are missing out on approximately one-third of total views.
- Traffic report: Tolstoy leads a varied pack
There is no unifying theme we can slap on top article popularity this week.
- Featured content: Which is not like the others?
Four articles, two lists, and 51 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:37, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-39
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You can test a new Beta Feature called HHVM. It should make editing faster. Please report bugs if you see them.
Problems
- There was a problem on the English Wikipedia on September 19. It was due to edits on a template used on many pages.
- Sites were down for users in the Pacific area around 7:00 UTC on September 20. It was due to a problem in the San Francisco data center.
- There were two bad bugs messing up articles in some browsers in VisualEditor. We fixed the bugs and updated the sites.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf22) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 23, and on all Wikipedias on September 25 (calendar).
- If you have more than 2000 notifications, the oldest ones will be removed.
- In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender.
- The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing.
- The "Cancel" button of the VisualEditor save window is now called "Resume editing". This shows that you can still edit and you won't lose your changes.
- There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for
codeand Ctrl+Shift+5 forstrikethrough. - In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening.
Future site changes
- You can see a plan for the move to Phabricator. It's the new tool to track bugs. A guided tour will be done via video on September 24.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
Medical Translation Newsletter Aug./Sept. 2014


Medical Translation Newsletter
Issue 2, Aug./Sept. 2014
by CFCF


Feature – Ebola articles

During August we have translated Disease and it is now live in more than 60 different languages! To help us focus on African languages Rubric has donated a large number of articles in languages we haven't previously reached–so a shout out them, and Ian Henderson from Rubric who's joined us here at Wikipedia. We're very happy for our continued collaboration with both Rubric and Translators without Borders!
- Just some of our over 60 translations:
- New roles and guides!
At Wikimania there were so many enthusiastic people jumping at the chance to help out the Medical Translation Project, but unfortunately not all of them knew how to get started. That is why we've been spending considerable time writing and improving guides! They are finally live, and you can find them at our home-page!
- New sign up page!
We're proud to announce a new sign up page at WP:MTSIGNUP! The old page was getting cluttered and didn't allow you to speficy a role. The new page should be easier to sign up to, and easier to navigate so that we can reach you when you're needed!
- Style guides for translations
Translations are of both full articles and shorter articles continues. The process where short articles are chosen for translation hasn't been fully transparent. In the coming months we hope to have a first guide, so that anyone who writes medical or health articles knows how to get their articles to a standard where they can be translated! That's why we're currently working on medical good lede criteria! The idea is to have a similar peer review process to good article nominations, but only for ledes.
- Some more stats
- In July, 18 full article translations went live (WP:RTT), and an additional 6 simplified versions went live (WP:RTTS)!
- We have a number of new lead integrators into Dutch, Polish, Arabic and Bulgarian, with more to come in smaller languages! (Find them here old sign up page)
- We were mentioned in a Global Voices Online report by Subhashish Panigrahi at Doctors and translators are working together to bridge Wikipedia's medical language gap
- New medical professionals have started, dedicated to working in Odiya and Kinyarwanda!
- Further reading
- Translators Without Borders
- Healthcare information for all by 2015, a global campaign
The Signpost: 24 September 2014
- Featured content: Oil paintings galore
Six articles, four lists, one topic, and 17 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
- In the media: Indian political editing, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Congressional chelonii
The Hindustan Times speculates (September 18) that politicians and their supporters are "sanitizing" their articles in advance of the 2014 Maharashtra State Assembly election. The Times notes the absence of significant controversies in the articles of particular politicians and the presence of heavily promotional language.
- Recent research: 99.25% of Wikipedia birthdates accurate; focused Wikipedians live longer; merging WordNet, Wikipedia and Wiktionary
0.75% of Wikipedia birthdates are inaccurate, reported Robert Viseur at WikiSym 2014. Those inaccuracies are "low, although higher than the 0.21% observed for the baseline reference sources". Given that biographies represent 15% of English Wikipedia, the third largest category after "arts" and "culture", their accuracy is important.
- Traffic report: Wikipedia watches the referendum in Scotland
This could be the beginning of a new era for this list. Until now, decisions to remove suspicious content have been largely educated guesswork. This week though, we have a new collaborator who can shine a light on the origins and patterns, sorting once and for all the webwheat from the cyberchaff.
- WikiProject report: GAN reviewers take note: competition time
A year and a week later, we're with some of the members of WikiProject Good Articles, who wanted to share the news of their upcoming contest within the project, the GA Cup. The aim of this friendly competition, which is held in the same light friendly manner of the WikiCup and the Core Contest, is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed articles at Good article nominations which has been a constant problem for quite a few years for those running the GA process.
- Arbitration report: Banning Policy, Gender Gap, and Waldorf education
Banning Policy finishes the workshop phase on 23 September. Parties have proposed findings of fact on the topics of the 3RR, the role of Jimbo Wales, and proxying for banned users. A request for arbitration was posted on 20 September about Landmark Worldwide.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:50, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-40
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- On Commons, you can now see what files are most used across all wikis. You can also see the same list for deleted or uncreated files.
- There are now many more translations for language names.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf1) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 30, and on all Wikipedias on October 2 (calendar).
- Errors from Scribunto (Lua) are now shown on the page. Before, you had to click on "Script error" to see them.
- You can add an "autovalue" for a field in TemplateData. When users add the template to a page, the value will be added automatically. An example is when a clean-up template shows the date it was added.
- If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it.
- The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats.
Future changes
- You can watch a video showing Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. You can also read more about the move from Bugzilla.
- JavaScript authors: Many old methods will be removed soon. Please check your scripts and gadgets and replace the old methods by the new ones if needed.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 01 October 2014
- From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
Contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do.
- Dispatches: Let's get serious about plagiarism
This article was first published in the Signpost in 2009. Written by several long-standing editors, including the late Adrianne Wadewitz, the article was subjected to extensive commentary and ultimately influenced the English Wikipedia's plagiarism guideline. With recent debates about close paraphrasing vis-à-vis plagiarism, we feel that this dispatch retains its relevance and deserves a second airing.
- News and notes: Wikipedia article published in peer-reviewed journal; Wikipedia in education
The argument on Wikipedia over the benefits of crowdsourcing versus the primacy of "expert" contributors stretches back to co-founder Larry Sanger's break with the project to start the alternative Citizendium.
- WikiProject report: Animals, farms, forests, USDA? It must be WikiProject Agriculture
This week, the Signpost went down to the farm to have a look at the work of WikiProject Agriculture, which has been in existence since 2007 and has a scope covering crop production, livestock management, aquaculture, dairy farming and forest management.
- Traffic report: Shanah Tovah
Jews wished each other Shanah Tovah ("Good year") this week as Rosh Hashanah was our most popular article. It was also a week not dominated by heavy news and tragedies, so aside from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (#2, sixth week in the Top 10), our popular article list runs the gamut of current events including new television series Gotham (#3), the 2014 Asian Games (#4), and Reddit-fueled popularity for German director Uwe Boll (#7).
- Featured content: Brothers at War
As the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Civil War draws to a close, the race to improve content continues. The Battle of Franklin, fought on November 30, 1864, will, quite appropriately, be Picture of the Day for November 30, 2014, its 150th anniversary. If you want to help commemorate the American Civil War, why not help out at the Military History WikiProject's Operation Brothers at War. Or help out with the World War I centennial, just starting up, Operation Great War Centennial.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:26, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-41
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use the
phab:andphabricator:interwikis to link to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org. - Some wikis have a template to track bugs in Bugzilla. You should update it to work with Phabricator. You can look at the one on mediawiki.org to see how.
- You can look at Special:MediaStatistics to see what kind of files are on your wiki.
- A new tool can now create thumbnails of large TIFF images. This concerns files larger than 50 megapixels. These thumbnails are also sharpened. You can comment on Commons.
- The Media Viewer tool has a clearer link to the file page. It also has buttons to download, share and embed the file. You can enlarge images by clicking on them.
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf2) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 7 October, and on all Wikipedias from 9 October (calendar).
- If you make a code mistake when editing a Lua script, you won't be able to save your edit.
- We fixed some more Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 10, you will be able to use VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
- On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis.
- You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8.
- 1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster.
Future changes
- You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work.
- More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
06:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Some stroopwafels for you!
Books and Bytes - Issue 8
Books & Bytes
Issue 8, August-September2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- TWL now a Wikimedia Foundation program, moves on from grant status
- Four new donations, including large DeGruyter parntership, pilot with Elsevier
- New TWL coordinators, Wikimania news, new library platform discussions, Wiki Loves Libraries update, and more
- Spotlight: "Traveling Through History" - an editor talks about his experiences with a TWL newspaper archive, Newspapers.com
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
Congratulations!
Wow, I just read about TWL's WMF contract funding… Congratulations! Amazing, amazing work. It has been so great watching the project develop and grow. Proud of you, and happy for you. :) ---Another Believer (Talk) 05:04, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014


TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.
Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. To help with translations, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre at Meta. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 08 October 2014
- In the media: Opposition research firm blocked; Australian bushfires
Also, Wikimedia Norge and Nobel Peace Center edit-a-thon
- Featured content: From a wordless novel to a coat of arms via New York City
2 Featured articles, 4 Featured lists, 62 Featured pictures, and 2 Featured portals were promoted.
- Traffic report: Panic and denial
The first case of the Ebola virus on US shores sent people into a tizzy, rushing to their keyboards to try and learn what they could.
- Technology report: HHVM is the greatest thing since sliced bread
No seriously, it is.
- Read this Signpost in full
- Single-page
- Unsubscribe
- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:42, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: September 2014
| ||||||
Tech News: 2014-42
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You can now log into Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. Create your account and add your Bugzilla email address. We are copying the bugs from Bugzilla. Bugzilla is still open.
- You will now get the VisualEditor newsletter in your language if someone has translated it. You can add translations. You can know about the next translations by joining the translators list or asking Elitre (WMF).
Problems
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf3) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 9 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 14 October, and on all Wikipedias from 16 October (calendar).
- 5% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature.
Meetings
- You can join a meeting with Language developers on October 15, 2014 at 17:00 (UTC).
- There is a proposal to organize file pages better. It would use the same tools as Wikidata. You can join a meeting about it on October 16, 2014 at 18:00 (UTC).
- You can join a meeting about VisualEditor on October 18, 2014 at 18:00 (UTC).
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
Problem with The Wikipedia Adventure
There is an issue with The Wikipedia Adventure, since it is using some deprecated (then later removed) functionality. This is unrelated to the GuidedTour changes, but rather due to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118733/ . The 'ok' field no longer works with get/post/ajax calls. Instead, you have to use the returned Promise. I've tweaked the code accordingly. This replacement needs to be done for all definitions of sendMessage since currently it is not a library:
function sendMessage( targetPage, msgPage, linkTo ) {
var api = new mw.Api();
api.get( {
'action' : 'query',
'titles' : msgPage,
'prop' : 'revisions|info',
'intoken' : 'edit',
'rvprop' : 'content',
'indexpageids' : 1
} ).done( function (result) {
result = result.query;
var page = result.pages[result.pageids[0]];
var text = page.revisions[0]['*'];
api.post( {
'action' : 'edit',
'title' : targetPage,
'appendtext' : "\n" + text,
'summary' : 'New Message (simulated automatically as part of [[WP:The Wikipedia Adventure|The Wikipedia Adventure]])',
'token' : page.edittoken
} ).done( function () {
window.location.href = linkTo;
} );
} );
}
As part of this, I've also changed it to not be global (it doesn't need to be, so it's better to avoid it). That shouldn't affect anything unless you're explicitly writing window.sendMessage . If so, change it to sendMessage.
When reply to this, please ping me so I'll get a notification. After this is fixed, I'll continue testing the first level, so please let me know when it's done. You can see my status at https://trello.com/c/zX0PEzEl/407-test-backwards-compatibility-of-wikipedia-adventure-tour-with-updated-guidedtour . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Matt. Thanks for that fix! I've updated all 7 twa.js tours and the message function is working (as you can see in the section below). I see one other problem with the logged-in logic in step 7. When I'm logged in, it should auto-skip to Step 8 per
shouldSkip: function () {return mw.config.get( 'wgUserId' ) !== null;. However it is not doing that...
//7
title: 'Account Creation',
description: '<br><div align="left">[[File:TWA_guide_left_top.png|link=]]</div>Creating an account gives you lots of neat benefits. Go for it.<br><br>',
onShow: gt.parseDescription,
overlay: false,
closeOnClickOutside: false,
buttons: [ {
name: '<big>←</big>',
action: 'externalLink',
url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Wikipedia:TWA/1/Start' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=6'
} , {
name: 'Have account, need to login',
action: 'externalLink',
url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Special:UserLogin' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=7'
} , {
name: 'Register!',
action: 'externalLink',
url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Special:UserLogin/signup' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=7'
} ],
allowAutomaticOkay: false,
shouldSkip: function () {
return mw.config.get( 'wgUserId' ) !== null;
}
- Yeah, that's a separate bug, unfortunately. See bugzilla:71927 ("shouldSkip and transition do not properly execute on next/prev"). BTW, pinging doesn't work unless you sign; I only happened to come back here when I was talking to Ragesoss. Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 October 2014
- Op-ed: Ships—sexist or sexy?
Why does Wikipedia still use the gendered pronouns "she" and "her" for ships?
- In the media: College player falsely linked to sports scandal by Wikipedia; the Nobel Prizes
Ben Koo of the sports blog Awful Announcing investigated how player Joe Streater's name became involved in recent years with a historic sports scandal.
- Arbitration report: One case closed and two opened
The Banning Policy case was closed on 12 October. Arbcom affirmed that users have "considerable leeway" in terms of how their talk pages are managed.
- Featured content: Bells ring out at the Temple of the Dragon at Peace
Nine articles and twenty-six pictures were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia.
- Technology report: Attempting to parse wikitext
This week we sat down with The Earwig to learn about his wikitext parser.
- Traffic report: Now introducing ... mobile data
We are pleased to report that the WP:5000 has now been updated to include mobile views, including a column reflecting the percentage of views coming from mobile devices.
- WikiProject report: Signpost reaches the Midwest
Today, it's the turn of WikiProject Ohio to give us an interview probing deep into of how they manage to run a project covering one fiftieth of the United States, and the workings of how they manufacture their successes and other articles.
- Read this Signpost in full
- Single-page
- Unsubscribe
- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:48, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-43
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. You can read translations.
Recent changes
- You can test a new system to see math using MathML. Go to your display options and choose "⧼mw math mathml⧽".
- You can add badges in Wikidata for quality articles and featured lists.
File information cleanup
- You can join a wiki project to help tools read file information. It will help people reuse files.
- See how to fix metadata. You can fix it by adding markers to templates and adding templates to files.
- You can see a list of files missing machine-readable information on your wiki.
- The files missing readable data are also in these categories: no license, no description, no author or no source.
Problems
- Developers fixed a security problem. If you use Internet Explorer 6, you won't be able to log in any more. You should use a newer browser.
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf4) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 21, and on all Wikipedias from October 23 (calendar).
- 10% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature.
- If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 October 2014
- Featured content: Admiral on deck: a modern Ada Lovelace
Four articles, four lists, and fifty-three pictures were promoted to featured status.
- Op-ed: Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution—a wiki-protest
Our op-ed writer this week opines that the organization of Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" resembles how Wikipedia is organized.
- In the media: The story of Wikipedia; Wikipedia reanimated and republished; New UK government social media rules; death of Italian Wikipedia administrator
Among many newsworthy stories this week, the Signpost notes the passing of Italian Wikipedia administrator and former Wikimedia Italia treasurer [Cotton
- Traffic report: Death, War, Pestilence... Movies and TV
Ebola, movies and television articles appear in this week's top ten.
- WikiProject report: De-orphanning articles—a huge task but with a huge team of volunteers to help
PaintedCarpet explains that "WikiProject Orphanage aims to connect all Wikipedia pages, so that pages can be found and read more easily."
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:22, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-44
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There was an issue with files from Commons on October 21. You could only see those with names between 140 and 159 characters by visiting Commons itself.
- There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly.
- There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday.
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28, and on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
- VisualEditor now uses autovalues for templates if they are in TemplateData.
- VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them.
- VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit".
- The rules for plurals in translations changed in some languages. Interface translations are currently not being updated from translatewiki.net; this process will start again on November 6.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
05:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the Wikipedia Adventure!
The Signpost: 29 October 2014
- Featured content: Go West, young man
By the way, there is a monster at the end of this article
- In the media: Wikipedia a trusted source on Ebola; Wikipedia study labeled government waste; football biography goes viral
Noam Cohen reports in The New York Times (October 26) that Wikipedia's "Ebola Virus Disease article has had 17 million page views in the last month," an indication of the public's reliance on the online encyclopedia.
- Maps tagathon: Find 10,000 digitised maps this weekend
Rather than the usual WikiProject Report, this week our guest author Jheald is telling us about a campaign to identify thousands of old maps which have been digitised, to make them available for georeferencing and upload
- Traffic report: Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles
Ebola virus disease leads the Report for the fourth straight week. The rest of the list is primarily a mix of pop culture topics, including movie Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4) whose trailer was leaked early, and the death of Oscar de la Renta (#7). A BuzzFeed article on creepy Wikipedia articles, no doubt well-timed with Halloween (#9) around the corner, was responsible for three articles in the Top 25, including June and Jennifer Gibbons (#10), Taman Shud Case (#17), Joyce Vincent (#25). And the internet-run-amok controversy of Gamergate cracked the Top 25 for the first time at #19.
- Recent research: Informed consent and privacy; newsmaking on Wikipedia; Wikipedia and organizational theories
In new research conducted in light of proposed changes to data protection legislation in the European Union (EU), authors Bart Custers, Simone van der Hof, and Bart Schermer conducted a comparative analysis of social media and user-generated content websites’ privacy policies along with a user survey (N=8,621 in 26 countries) and interviews in 13 different EU countries on awareness, values, and attitudes toward privacy online.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
The Structured Data Bee, vol. 1, issue 1
Greetings, thank you for signing up for the Structured Data newsletter and its first edition. With this newsletter, the Structured data team plans on keeping you informed of technical progress, events, and communications to talk about the project, and continued information on how you can participate. This newsletter will be sent approximately every two weeks, and future editions will be translatable prior to publication. If you're new to Wikidata and want more information about how it works in relation to Wikimedia Commons, you can read an introduction to Wikidata for Commons being drafted.
Tech and design
- The software development for this process is still in the planning phases. The idea is to have some functional prototyping done for experimentation and feedback by the end of the year.
- The initial roadmap for development has been posted on Commons. The roadmap is a rough outline and is open to iterations as the team learns where and when to focus its energies.
- There is a page set up for design ideas about what structured data could potentially look like.
- There are forthcoming requests for comment about the particulars of technical architecture on mediawiki.org. Keep an eye on the commons:Commons:Structured data/Get involved page for notification of when the RfCs are posted.
Events and chats
- There was a week-long meeting between the Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team, the Wikidata team, and community members, held in Berlin, Germany, at the office of Wikimedia Deutchland on October 6-10. You can read an overview of the event in on this page on Commons. There are also plenty of pictures available on Wikimedia Commons.
- If you would like to read more detail about what was discussed, there are etherpads of notes taken for each day of the event.
- The next IRC office hour to discuss the structured data project will be held on November 20, from 19:30 to 20:30 UTC.
Getting involved
- You've signed up for the newsletter. That's a great first step!
- While working prototypes are being developed, there is a drive to make all files contain machine-readable data on Wikimedia projects.
- The information and sign-up page is located on Meta, at File metadata cleanup drive.
- The MrMetadata tool on labs that will identify files on your wiki(s) that need information templates added.
- A hub has been launched to facilitate communication and documentation for this work.
- There is a frequently-asked questions page that is finishing drafting and will need translated. Keep an eye out for when it is ready if you are interested in translating.
- There will be active organization of the Get involved page as community participation is further organized. There will be work groups, similar to specific Wikiprojects, dedicated to particular aspects of structured data like licensing presentation, design, API performance, and even helping out with this newsletter and other community communications.
There will be much more information and activities around the proposal to develop structured data on Wikimedia Commons. This project is a major undertaking and an important step as the chief provider, repository, and curator of media for Wikimedia projects.
Thank you for your participation in such an extensive project, let me know if you're interested in participating in this newsletter. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!
Tech News: 2014-45
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The "Special:Cite" page is now called "Special:CiteThisPage". That way, you know it's to cite the page, not to add a reference.
- You can no longer use the
insource:keyword for text searches. It caused issues with the new search tool. It will come back later.
Problems
- There was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday.
- Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed.
- HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
- Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the
<indicator>tag in these templates instead to add the icons. - VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one.
- The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes.
- After November 6, all wikis will have the tool to edit TemplateData.
Future changes
- The new search tool will come to the last wikis in the coming weeks. This includes Wikipedia in French, Chinese, German and English.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (November 2014)
Hello Wikimedians!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:
- DeGruyter: 1000 new accounts for English and German-language research. Sign up on one of two language Wikipedias:
- Fold3: 100 new accounts for American history and military archives
- Scotland's People: 100 new accounts for Scottish genealogy database
- British Newspaper Archive: expanded by 100+ accounts for British newspapers
- Highbeam: 100+ remaining accounts for newspaper and magazine archives
- Questia: 100+ remaining accounts for journal and social science articles
- JSTOR: 100+ remaining accounts for journal archives
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 23:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
- This message was delivered via the Mass Message to the Book & Bytes recipient list.
VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014


VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.
It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.
Recent improvements
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.
The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.
VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.
The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)
Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.
Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.
The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.
You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 05 November 2014
- In the media: Predicting the flu, MH17 conspiracy theories
"Rachel Feltman, in The Washington Post (November 4), examined research in which a team, mostly from Los Alamos National Laboratory, headed by Kyle Hickman developed a model that enabled them "to successfully predict the 2013-2014 flu season in real time" by employing "an algorithm to link flu-related Wikipedia searches with CDC data from the same time." Apparently when individuals search for information about the flu and its symptoms in Wikipedia when they feel ill, this generates data useful in forecasting the the flu season."
- Traffic report: Sweet dreams on Halloween
"It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break... Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August."
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:02, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-46
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata.
- The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net.
- Reminder: You can help fix file information on your wiki. It will help robots understand the information. After that, it will be easier for you to search files and re-use them.
- You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
- You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.
Problems
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
- You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions.
- The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More".
- The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: October 2014
| ||||||
The Signpost: 12 November 2014
- In the media: Amazon Echo; EU freedom of panorama; Bluebeard's Castle
"Technology media outlets are abuzz after the November 6 unveiling of the Amazon Echo, an Internet-connected voice command device"; "The EUobserver talks (November 4) with Dimitar Dimitrov (User:Dimi z) about the lack of freedom of panorama in some European Union countries and its implications for Wikimedia projects"; "Scott Cantrell, classical music critic for the Dallas Morning News, recounts efforts to verify an uncited claim in the Wikipedia article for the Béla Bartók opera Bluebeard's Castle."
- Traffic report: Holidays, anyone?
This was very much a week dominated by holidays and pop culture over current events, with new film Interstellar taking the top spot followed by holidays Day of the Dead (#2), Guy Fawkes and his Night (#4 and #5), and Halloween (#8, and its third week on the list). And a foursome of television shows, all return visitors, appear to setting up residence on the greater Top 25: The Walking Dead (#11), American Horror Story: Freak Show (#14), Gotham (#16), and The Flash (#18).
- Featured content: Wikipedia goes to church in Lithuania
Nine articles, two lists, and 55 featured pictures were promoted during the week of 26 October.
- WikiProject report: Talking hospitals
We return to our interview format this week, speaking with the participants of WikiProject Hospitals. This project, formed in 2010, has no Featured content and only three Good articles, yet aided by around 30 hard-working Wikipedians covers a topic that is essential to life.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:46, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-47
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
- The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19.
Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator
- The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
- You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
- You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
- Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
- You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Copyright checks when performing AfC reviews
Hello Ocaasi. This message is part of a mass mailing to people who appear active in reviewing articles for creation submissions. First of all, thank you for taking part in this important work! I'm sorry this message is a form letter – it really was the only way I could think of to covey the issue economically. Of course, this also means that I have not looked to see whether the matter is applicable to you in particular.
The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.
If you don't do so already, I'd like to ask for your to help with this problem by taking on the practice of performing a copyvio check as the first step in any AfC review. The most basic method is to simply copy a unique but small portion of text from the draft body and run it through a search engine in quotation marks. Trying this from two different paragraphs is recommended. (If you have any question about whether the text was copied from the draft, rather than the other way around (a "backwards copyvio"), the Wayback Machine is very useful for sussing that out.)
If you do find a copyright violation, please do not decline the draft on that basis. Copyright violations need to be dealt with immediately as they may harm those whose content is being used and expose Wikipedia to potential legal liability. If the draft is substantially a copyvio, and there's no non-infringing version to revert to, please mark the page for speedy deletion right away using {{db-g12|url=URL of source}}. If there is an assertion of permission, please replace the draft article's content with {{subst:copyvio|url=URL of source}}.
Some of the more obvious indicia of a copyvio are use of the first person ("we/our/us..."), phrases like "this site", or apparent artifacts of content written for somewhere else ("top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", use of smartquotes, etc.); inappropriate tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone or a very slanted marketing voice with weasel words; including intellectual property symbols (™,®); and blocks of text being added all at once in a finished form with no misspellings or other errors.
I hope this message finds you well and thanks again you for your efforts in this area. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC).
Sent via--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-48
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Problems
- There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the
colspanorrowspanoption. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
- You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options.
- VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved.
- You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window.
- VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 November 2014
- Featured content: Orbital Science: Now you're thinking with explosions
Four articles, four lists, eleven pictures, and one topic were promoted.
- In the media: A Russian alternative Wikipedia; Who's your grandfather?; ArtAndFeminism
Numerous media outlets are reporting on a November 14 statement on the website of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announcing the formation of a Russian "alternative" to Wikipedia, a "regional electronic encyclopedia" dedicated to "Russian regions and the life of the country".
- Recent research: Gender gap and skills gap; academic citations on the rise; European food cultures
The monthly roundup of research related to Wikimedia.
- WikiProject report: Back with the military historians
It's time for this year's edition of the Report looking at possibly our largest wikiproject: Military history. Since our last interview in June 2013, the project has had no break in its huge quest to document everything in their scope, that is, militaries and conflicts of the past. As usual, its participants were eager to answer the questions posed by The Signpost and update us on how they are doing.
- Traffic report: Big in Japan
Often times in popular culture, a subject will be quite popular among a distinct niche of people or region of the world, but little-known elsewhere -- like a musical artist that is boasted to be "big in Japan". The Traffic Report provides a bevy of examples this week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:23, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
User talk:Remember the dot#Proposal: enable "Syntax highlighter" gadget by default for all editors
You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Remember the dot#Proposal: enable "Syntax highlighter" gadget by default for all editors. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 December 2014
- In the media: Embroidery and cheese
- Featured content: ABCD: Any Body Can Dance!
- Traffic report: Turkey and a movie
- WikiProject report: Today on the island
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:31, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-50
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster.
- You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues.
Problems
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar).
- You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key.
- It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better.
- The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs.
- (Lua) You can no longer use
mw.text.unstripto get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix.
Future changes
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
Wikimedia genealogy project
Just wondering if you have any thoughts re: the idea of WMF hosting a genealogy project. If so, feel free to contribute to this discussion. And apologies if I have made this request before. ---Another Believer (Talk) 17:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 10 December 2014
- Op-ed: It's GLAM up North!
- Traffic report: Dead Black Men and Science Fiction
- Featured content: Honour him, love and obey? Good idea with military leaders.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: November 2014
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Tech News: 2014-51
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata.
- You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects.
- You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar).
- You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu,
Ctrl+ForCmd+F. - VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold.
- The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change.
Future changes
- The star image of the watchlist may change soon.
- You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC).
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Protection?
Any reason for this protection ? -DePiep (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
- Hi DePiep! All of the static pages in The Wikipedia Adventure are protected so that new editors going through that introductory tutorial have a consistent experience (as if this were a self-contained onboarding game rather than a cleverly hacked-together guided tour). We had vandalism on some of the minor background pages of the many created for the 'environment' of TWA and it was not caught in time to prevent new editors from having a broken experience. Most of the minor pages are unwatched except by me, as I'm the only person who created or ever edited them. And I simply am not thorough enough to catch all of the vandalism. These pages are also targets for vandalism because hundreds of new editors are regularly are taken to them during their introductory training, in such a way that they would naturally want to make test edits during the game to the interface itself. I am all for modded content, but not inside TWA itself when that effects other future players. I hope that helps explain why that and other similar pages are protected. Best, Jake Ocaasi t | c 23:24, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)
Hello Wikimedians!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:
- Elsevier - science and medicine journals and books
- Royal Society of Chemistry - chemistry journals
- Pelican Books - ebook monographs
- Public Catalogue Foundation- art books
Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
- This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.
The Signpost: 17 December 2014
- Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee election results
- Featured content: Tripping hither, tripping thither, Nobody knows why or whither; We must dance and we must sing, Round about our fairy ring!
- Traffic report: A December Lull
- Read this Signpost in full
- Single-page
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:08, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Seasonal Greets!
| Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!! | |
|
Hello Ocaasi, May you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New year 2015. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to user talk pages with a friendly message. |
Seasonal Greets!
| Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!! | |
|
Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014


Did you know?
Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.
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 table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).
Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.
You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.
You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".
Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1. " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.
If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.
You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.
Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.
Help
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
- Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.
Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Tech News: 2014-52
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private.
Software changes this week
- There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6.
Future changes
- The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations.
- A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Seasonal Greets!
| Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!! | |
|
Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
The Signpost: 24 December 2014
- From the editor: Looking for new editors-in-chief
- In the media: Wales on GamerGate
- Featured content: Still quoting Iolanthe, apparently.
- WikiProject report: Microsoft does The Signpost
- Traffic report: North Korea is not pleased
- Read this Signpost in full
- Single-page
- Unsubscribe
- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:26, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
Happy Holidays!
| Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!! | |
|
Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} to all registered users whom have commented on his talk page. To prevent receiving future messages, please follow the opt-out instructions on User:Technical 13/Holiday list
Wikipedia Library research co-ordinator
Tech News: 2015-01
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes
- There are no technical changes this week.
Feedback about Tech News in 2014
- The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Requesting deletion
Hello Ocaasi, I'm requesting a deletion of my user page. Thnx & Cheers! — JudeccaXIII (talk) 04:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 December 2014
- News and notes: The next big step for Wikidata—forming a hub for researchers
Wikidata, Wikimedia's free linked database that supplies Wikipedia and its sister projects, is gearing up to submit a grant application to the EU that would expand Wikidata's scope by developing it as a science hub. The proposal, supported by more than 25 volunteers and half a dozen European institutions as project partners, aims to create a virtual research environment (VRE) that will enhance the project's capacity for freely sharing scientific data.
- In the media: Study tour controversy; class tackles the gender gap
A "study tour" by the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation for the purpose of researching development projects has been the subject of much controversy and criticism in the Indian press... The Indian Express described a government report about the trip as having copied extensively from the Wikipedia articles for Port Blair and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
- Traffic report: Surfin' the Yuletide
Unlike last year, Wikipedia viewers seem to have embraced the Christmas spirit, with three topics in the top 10 (and eight in the top 25) focused on the holiday season.
- Op-ed: My issues with the Wiki Education Foundation
Chris Troutman has been a campus ambassador for six classes in the Los Angeles area over the past four consecutive semesters. He is currently a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at University of California, Riverside.
- Featured content: A bit fruity
Three articles, three lists, fifteen pictures, and one topic were promoted.
- Recent research: Wikipedia in higher education; gender-driven talk page conflicts; disease forecasting
A paper titled "Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Education" uses the technology acceptance model to shed light on faculty's (of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) views of Wikipedia as a teaching tool.
- Read this Signpost in full
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 9
Books & Bytes
Issue 9, November-December 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- New donations, including real-paper-and-everything books, e-books, science journal databases, and more
- New TWL coordinators, conference news, a new open-access journal database, summary of library-related WMF grants, and more
- Spotlight: "Global Impact: The Wikipedia Library and Persian Wikipedia" - a Persian Wikipedia editor talks about their experiences with database access in Iran, writing on the Persian project and the JSTOR partnership
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 January 2015
- In the media: ISIL propaganda video; AirAsia complaints
ISIL hostage quotes Wikipedia in propaganda video; AirAsia articles draw complaints regarding Flight 8501; Article errors reveal US political approaches to Wikipedia editing; Rhode Island Governor numbering debate
- Interview: Interview with Jakob, one of Wikipedia's more prolific waterway contributors
User:Jakec has been a Wikipedia editor for over two years and has been a writer of many recent Did you know articles on Wikipedia, including multiple articles on rivers and streams in the state of Pennsylvania.
- Featured content: Kock up
Two lists and twelve pictures were promoted.
- Traffic report: Auld Lang Syne
We end 2014 and and start 2015 with the normal array of year-end activities, including movie watching with Bollywood film PK (#1) topping the list, followed by The Interview (#2), 2014 in film (#10), and five other films in the rest of the Top 25, plus a number of articles about the subjects of these films. We celebrated the New Year by singing "Auld Lang Syne" (#11), or perhaps watching Adam Lambert (#9) perform with Queen. But we could not avoid a final tragedy with the crash of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 (#4) on December 28.
- Read this Signpost in full
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: December 2014
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Tech News: 2015-03
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files.
- You can now use the
{{!}}magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template.
Software changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
- A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a
☀(Sun) character. This is now fixed. - The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages.
- The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor.
- The
thumboption is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar.
Future changes
- You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 January 2015
- Op-ed: Articles for creation needs you
Ever since the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident in 2005 triggered the restriction against un-registered editors creating new pages, WikiProject Articles for creation (AfC) has stood in the breach. The WikiProject's purpose is to review draft submissions from IPs (and frequently new registered editors) to sort the wheat from the chaff.
- WikiProject report: Articles for creation: the inside story
This anniversary issue, the WikiProject report is returning to WikiProject Articles for creation for one of our largest interviews ever. Last looked at in 2011, AfC is the method used by unregistered or new users to create articles, and provides an effective filtering system to remove all unsuitable or unsourced submissions to save them needing to be found and deleted later.
- News and notes: Erasmus Prize recognizes the global Wikipedia community
On the fourteenth anniversary of the founding of the English Wikipedia, the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has announced that its prestigious annual Erasmus Prize will be awarded to the worldwide community that has built Wikipedia.
- In the media: Wikipedia's birthday brings tributes, app, award; Castro death rumors
Wikipedia turned 14 on January 15. A few media outlets took note of the anniversary.
- Featured content: Citations are needed
Six featured articles, five featured lists, and sixteen featured pictures were promoted this week.
- Traffic report: Wikipédia sommes Charlie
It's a grim certainty what topic most interested Wikipedia viewers this week. The horrific attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine have drawn anger and resolve from around the world, and also the attention of an English-speaking world that had previously never heard of it.
- Read this Signpost in full
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Laura
Hi, Ocaasi. It looks like Laura has been on Wikipedia since at least 2005 (=very young), see this and this. Considering Bonadea's comments in the SPI alone — "mainly edits to userspace: to prettify user pages, add nonsensical text or random userboxes, or add misleading templates", "using Wikipedia as a medium for creative self-expression, posting nonsensical/incomprehensible text and templates" — there's little real doubt that it's the same person. But do you think there's any point in indeffing the present account as a sock? I'm thinking possibly not, as there's in any case no way of preventing the individual from creating more accounts ad libitum. (Are you watching, Drmies? Any ideas?) Bishonen | talk 13:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC).
- This person is still around? o_O I'm sure it is the same user: they had a fascination for Joseph Gordon-Levitt and added various incoherent bits of text about him (and his brother? I can't quite remember) to articles and user pages. That ties in with these recent edits from LonelyLaura about a company started by Gordon-Levitt. And she's posted to the JG-L talk page as well. --bonadea contributions talk 14:22, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
- Hi, Bonadea. We have a whole system based on pretending we can do something about serial sockpuppeteers, but we really can't. It's very easy to create an account, and quite laborious to track and block them, and it's easy to post from open proxies all over the world, too. (It used to be that you needed a certain technical proficiency for the open proxy thing, but now it's dead easy; just ask google. Hell, I could probably do it myself; I can't say fairer than that.) As long as an individual wants to edit Wikipedia, they basically can. All we can do, really, is try to make it as unrewarding as possible for the worst harassers, per WP:DENY. Laura is extremely harmless compared to those characters, but she, too, can't really be kept out as long as she wants to be in. Bishonen | talk 18:56, 18 January 2015 (UTC).
Tech News: 2015-04
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.
- Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.
Problems
- All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed.
Software changes this week
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 21 January 2015
- From the editor: Introducing your new editors-in-chief
A letter from departing Signpost editor-in-chief The ed17.
- Anniversary: A decade of the Signpost
Celebrating and remembering ten years of community journalism.
- Interview: WWII veteran honors shipmates through Wikipedia editing
Over seventy years ago, the US destroyer Mahan was patrolling off Ponson Island in the Philippines when eleven Japanese kamikaze aircraft appeared over the horizon and attacked. George Pendergast, who edits Wikipedia with the username Pendright, was eighteen years old when he joined Mahan 's crew in April 1944.
- News and notes: Annual report released; Wikimania; steward elections
The municipality of Esino Lario in Italy will host Wikimania 2016.
- Op-ed: Let's make WikiProjects better
Our contributor opines that WikiProjects are failing to live up to their potential. WikiProject X is a new project funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant that focuses on figuring out what makes some WikiProjects work and not others.
- In the media: Johann Hari; bandishes and delicate flowers
Quotes from Jimbo on Wikipedia in education; net neutrality; preserving musical heritage; Wikipedia in audio; a cheerful vandal credits high school with papal visitations.
- Featured content: Yachts, marmots, boat races, and a rocket engineer who attempted to birth a goddess
Nine articles, one list, and ten pictures were promoted.
- Arbitration report: As one door closes, a (Gamer)Gate opens
ArbCom's three open cases are GamerGate, Wifione, and Christianity and sexuality.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:14, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Tech News: 2015-05
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- You can now translate articles with the new ContentTranslation tool on several wikis.
This week
Future changes
- You can join a project to improve WikiProjects.
- The Compact Personal Bar will be removed for now. It has a bug that breaks the tool to choose your language. It will come back when the bug is fixed.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 January 2015
- From the editor: An editorial board that includes you
The editorial board is not complete without you. We are looking for Wikipedians with all kinds of experience levels.
- In focus: Thirteen editors sanctioned in mammoth GamerGate arbitration case
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case, whose size—involving 27 named parties—recalls large and complex cases of the past.
- In the media: A murderous week for Wikipedia
A murder suspect edits Wikipedia, Russia is kidding when it says it wants to censor Wikipedia.
- Forum: Evaluating the Arbitration Committee's handling of GamerGate
Does the committee facilitate stability... or is it a circus. Two users, two perspectives.
- Traffic report: A sea of faces
It is pretty clear what the theme is this week: people.
- Recent research: Bot writes about theatre plays; "Renaissance editors" create better content
A paper presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition last year presents an automated method to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theatre plays.
- Special report: Traffic in the fog—most-viewed articles of 2014 include death, Facebook, and Ebola
As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe.
- Featured content: Like Jack Kerouac's On The Road, this week's issue was written on amphetamines
Ten featured articles, three featured lists, and 22 featured images were promoted this week.
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- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:15, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
RfC: AfC Helper Script access
An RfC has been opened at RfC to physically restrict access to the Helper Script. You are invited to comment. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

