Wikipedia:Community Portal/2015

[Global proposal] m.Wikipedia.org: (all) Edit pages[edit source]

Hi, this message is to let you know that, on domains like ve.m.wikipedia.org, unregistered users cannot edit. At the Wikimedia Forum, where global configuration changes are normally discussed, a few dozens users propose to restore normal editing permissions on all mobile sites. Please read and comment!

Thanks and sorry for writing in English, Nemo 22:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2015)[edit source]

Apologies for writing in English, please help translate this into your local language. 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 new accounts and research materials from:

Project MUSE — humanities and social science books and journals
DynaMed — clinical reference tool for medical topics
Royal Pharmaceutical Society — pharmaceutical information and practice resources
Women Writers Online — a digital humanities database focused on women's literature
Newspapers.com — American newspapers database w/ Open Access opportunities (expansion of accounts)

Many 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 21:14, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator page.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Inspire Campaign: Improving diversity, improving content[edit source]

This March, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas for improving gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women, and many important topics are still missing in our content. We invite all Wikimedians to participate. If you have an idea that could help address this problem, please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 31.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help this project better represent the world’s knowledge!

Inspire Campaign main page

(Sorry for the English - please translate this message!) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: VisualEditor's special character inserter[edit source]

I apologize for writing in English. Please translate this message so that all of your editors can read it. Thank you!

Hi everybody, my name is Erica, and I am a Community Liaison at the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm writing to you because the Editing team at WMF wants to know what you think about VisualEditor and its new ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ tool. This change will affect all users on about 50 Wikipedias, including your Wikipedia. Many editors at these Wikipedias need a special character tool to be able to write articles correctly, which is why we are asking you now.

The new special character inserter tool is available in VisualEditor now. Admins at your wiki can change the contents by following the directions at mediawiki.org.

To test the ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ tool, please:

Opt-in to VisualEditor by going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and choosing "VisualEditor". Save your preferences.
Edit any article or your user page in VisualEditor by clicking on the new "Edit" tab at the top of the page. See the mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide for information on how to use VisualEditor.
Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on Mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know what you think about this new design. It is important that they hear from as many editors as possible. You may leave your comments in any language.

When the special character tool has been refined a little more based on your thoughts, we will offer VisualEditor by default to all editors at this wiki. If you want to help prepare, please read the advice on mediawiki.org.

Thank you, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

SUL finalization update[edit source]

Hi all,apologies for writing in English, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor coming to this wiki[edit source]

Hello again. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you can translate this message!

VisualEditor is coming to all editors at this Wikipedia on Monday, March 30th. VisualEditor is software that allows people to edit articles without needing to learn wikitext code (like typing [[ to start a link). You don't have to wait until the deployment to test it; you can test VisualEditor right now. To turn it on, select "Beta" in your preferences. Choose "VisualEditor" and click save.

Now, when you press the "Edit" button to edit an article, you will get the new VisualEditor software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press "Edit source". (After the deployment, everyone will automatically have the option to use either VisualEditor or the current wikitext editor.) For more information about how to use VisualEditor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

More information about preparing for VisualEditor is posted here.

It's easier to add templates if you've added TemplateData instructions to them.
Please help translate the pages about VisualEditor here and on MediaWiki.org, and its user interface. See VisualEditor TranslationCentral for general information. To translate the user guide, go to the MediaWiki.org page, and select "Translate this page". Your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. Once you've done this, you'll see the document in English side by side with any translation work already done in your language. You can add new translations or change old translations. To translate the user interface, you need to create an account at translatewiki.net. Contact me personally if you need help with that.
We need your help to improve the software! Please let us know if you find any problems. You can report issues in Phabricator, the new bug tracking system or on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org. If you notice major issues affecting your project, please leave a note on my talk page. If it's an emergency (like an unexpected bug causing widespread problems), reach out to James Forrester, the Product Manager, at jforrester@wikimedia.org or on IRC in the #mediawiki-visualeditor channel.

Wrong target page? Fix it here • Sign up for VisualEditor's multilingual newsletter

Thank you, and happy editing! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor now active here[edit source]

Hello again (and again, apologies for using English on this page. Please do translate my message, if you can!).

As some of you have noticed, this Wikipedia now has VisualEditor (VisualEditor or "VE") enabled for all users. There are now two tabs for editing: "Edit" and "Edit source". Click "Edit" to use VisualEditor. Click "Edit source" to edit using wikitext markup.

All edits using VisualEditor will be tagged with "Tag:VisualEditor" in recent changes, watchlists, and page histories. To access the User Guide for VisualEditor, click on the "(?)" icon in VisualEditor's toolbar. If you wish to disable VisualEditor, this can be done under "Editing" in your preferences.

Please report any software "bugs" or errors you find at MediaWiki’s VisualEditor Feedback page. Translations for the user interface and its help guide are still needed: you can learn how to support your community with this and other tasks at this instructions page. Please contact me if you need further help though. Happy editing, User:Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Stewards confirmation rules[edit source]

Hello, I made a proposal on Meta to change the rules for the steward confirmations. Currently consensus to remove is required for a steward to lose his status, however I think it's fairer to the community if every steward needed the consensus to keep. As this is an issue that affects all WMF wikis, I'm sending this notification to let people know & be able to participate. Best regards, --MF-W 16:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #2—2015[edit source]

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements[edit source]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead[edit source]

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

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users at the English Wikipedia, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon. (T90666)

Let's work together[edit source]

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

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

— Elitre (WMF)

19:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Content Translation now available as a beta feature on this Wikipedia[edit source]

Hello, we enabled Content Translation today as a beta feature on this Wikipedia. Content Translation is a tool that will help editors quickly create new articles by translating from a Wikipedia page in another language. The tool is currently in use in over 40 Wikipedias as a beta feature. To start translating, you will have to enable the beta feature and go to Special:ContentTranslation or to your contributions page and create a new translation by selecting the source language, the article name you wish to translate and target language i.e. the language of the new article you are creating. If the article already exists then a warning will be displayed. After you translate the article, you can publish it directly as a new page on the Wikipedia. In case the article gets created by another user while you were translating, you will see an option to save the newly published translation under your user namespace. The number of published pages can be seen on the Content Translation stats page.

Since, this is the first time we have installed the tool on this Wikipedia, there are chances that there may be some problems or service disruptions which we are not yet aware of. We will be monitoring the usage to check for any failures or issues, but please do let us know on the Content Translation talk page or through Phabricator if you spot any problems that prevent you from using the tool. For more information, please read about how to use the tool. You can also view a short screencast on how to use Content Translation. My apologies for writing this announcement only in English. Please feel free to translate this message. Thank you. Runa Bhattacharjee 15:49, 30 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Message sent using m:Global_message_delivery

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2015)[edit source]

Apologies for writing in English, please help translate this into your local language. Hello Wikimedians!

Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

MIT Press Journals — scholarly journals in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences (200 accounts)
Loeb Classical Library — Harvard University Press versions of Classical Greek and Latin literature with commentary and annotation (25 accounts)
RIPM — music periodicals published between 1760 and 1966 (20 accounts)
Sage Stats — social science data for geographies within the United States (10 accounts)
HeinOnline — an extensive legal research database, including 2000 law-related journals as well as international legal history materials (25 accounts)

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:12, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at Global our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List

Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core[edit source]

Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.

There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.

Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015[edit source]

Did you know?

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

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages. The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

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

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

Recent improvements[edit source]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's work together[edit source]

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the VisualEditor Q4 blocker project with the bug.
If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The team is planning the second VisualEditor-related "translathon" for July. Please follow this task on Phabricator for details and updates! Announcements will follow in due course.

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

— Elitre (WMF)

10:44, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015[edit source]

Did you know?

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

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages. The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

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

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

Recent improvements[edit source]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's work together[edit source]

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the VisualEditor Q4 blocker project with the bug.
If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The team is planning the second VisualEditor-related "translathon" for July. Please follow this task on Phabricator for details and updates! Announcements will follow in due course.

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

— Elitre (WMF)

12:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (June 2015)[edit source]

Hello Wikimedians!

Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

Taylor & Francis — academic publisher of journals. The pilot includes two subject collections: Arts & Humanities and Biological, Environment & Earth Sciences. (30 accounts)
World Bank eLibrary — digital platform containing all books, working papers, and journal articles published by the World Bank from the 1990s to the present. (100 accounts)
AAAS — general interest science publisher, who publishes the journal Science among other sources (50 accounts)

New French-Language Branch!

Érudit (en Francais) — Érudit is a French-Canadian scholarly aggregator primarily, humanities and social sciences, and contains sources in both English and French. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (50 accounts).
Cairn.info (en Francais) — Cairn.info is a Switzerland based online web portal of scholarly materials in the humanities and social sciences. Most sources are in French, but some also in English. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (100 accounts).
L'Harmattan — French language publisher across a wide range of non-fiction and fiction, with a strong selection of francophone African materials (1000 accounts).

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including an expansion of accounts for Royal Society journals and remaining accounts on Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Highbeam Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. If you have suggestions for journals or databases we should seek access to make a request! Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List

HTTPS[edit source]

Apologies for writing in English.

Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

22:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

HTTPS[edit source]

Apologies for writing in English.

Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

23:25, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Please join the 2nd edition of the VisualEditor Translathon[edit source]

Hello!

I'm pleased to announce the 2nd edition of the VisualEditor Translathon.

It is a translation rally, focused on interface messages and help pages related to VisualEditor. In order to participate, you need to sign up on the Translathon page on TranslateWiki.

The top 3 contributors will each win a Wikipedia t-shirt of their choice from the Wikipedia store^[1]. Translations made between July 15th and July 19th (CDT time zone) qualify^[2].

If you are at Wikimania Mexico this year, you are also welcome to join a related sprint during the hackathon in Workplace 1 - Don Américo, Thursday 16 July at 4pm (CDT) at the conference venue, so you can meet other fellow translators and get support if you need some.

Interface messages have the priority. You will need to create an account at translatewiki.net in order to work on them, if you don't have one. It is recommended to create the account ASAP, so that it can be confirmed in time.

You can also help translate documentation pages about VisualEditor on mediawiki.org. You can use your Wikipedia account to work there.

You will find instructions, links and other details on the Translathon page.

Thanks for your attention, and happy translating!
Elitre (WMF) 20:56, 13 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

↑ You can choose between any short-sleeve shirt, or other items for the same value.
↑ This means both new translations, and updates for messages in the "Outdated" tab of the translation interface.

Proposal to create PNG thumbnails of static GIF images[edit source]

The thumbnail of this gif is of really bad quality.

How a PNG thumb of this GIF would look like

There is a proposal at the Commons Village Pump requesting feedback about the thumbnails of static GIF images: It states that static GIF files should have their thumbnails created in PNG. The advantages of PNG over GIF would be visible especially with GIF images using an alpha channel. (compare the thumbnails on the side)

This change would affect all wikis, so if you support/oppose or want to give general feedback/concerns, please post them to the proposal page. Thank you. --McZusatz (talk) & MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What does a Healthy Community look like to you?[edit source]

Hi,
The Community Engagement department at the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a new learning campaign. The WMF wants to record community impressions about what makes a healthy online community. Share your views and/or create a drawing and take a chance to win a Wikimania 2016 scholarship! Join the WMF as we begin a conversation about Community Health. Contribute a drawing or answer the questions on the campaign's page.

Why get involved?[edit source]

The world is changing. The way we relate to knowledge is transforming. As the next billion people come online, the Wikimedia movement is working to bring more users on the wiki projects. The way we interact and collaborate online are key to building sustainable projects. How accessible are Wikimedia projects to newcomers today? Are we helping each other learn?
Share your views on this matter that affects us all!
We invite everyone to take part in this learning campaign. Wikimedia Foundation will distribute one Wikimania Scholarship 2016 among those participants who are eligible.

More information[edit source]

All participants must have a registered user of at least one month antiquity on any Wikimedia project before the starting date of the campaign.
All eligible contributions must be done until August 23, 2015 at 23:59 UTC
Wiki link: Community Health learning campaign
URL https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Community_Health_learning_campaign
Contact: María Cruz / Twitter: Template:@WikiEval #CommunityHealth / email: evalTemplate:@wikimedia Template:Dotorg

Happy editing!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:43, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata: Access to data from arbitrary items is coming[edit source]

(Sorry for writing in English)

When using data from Wikidata on Wikipedia and other sister projects, there is currently a limitation in place that hinders some use cases: data can only be accessed from the corresponding item. So, for example, the Wikipedia article about Berlin can only get data from the Wikidata item about Berlin but not from the item about Germany. This had technical reasons. We are now removing this limitation. It is already done for many projects. Your project is one of the next ones. We will roll out this feature here on August 12.

We invite you to play around with this new feature if you are one of the people who have been waiting for this for a long time. If you have technical issues/questions with this you can come to d:Wikidata:Contact the development team.

A note of caution: Please be careful with how many items you use for a single page. If it is too many pages, loading might get slow. We will have to see how the feature behaves in production to see where we need to tweak and how.

How to use it, once it is enabled:

Parser function: {{#property:P36|from=Q183}} to get the capital from the item about Germany
Lua: see mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua

Cheers Lydia Pintscher MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata: Access to data from arbitrary items is here[edit source]

(Sorry for writing in English)

Hi everyone,

As I have previously announced here we have now enabled the arbitrary access feature here. This means from now on you can make use of data from any Wikidata item in any article here. Before you could for example only access data about Berlin in the article about Berlin. If you want to find out more or have questions please come to d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access. I hope this will open up great possibilities for you and make your work easier. Cheers Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 13:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #4—2015[edit source]

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

Wikimania[edit source]

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements[edit source]

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

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.

Future changes[edit source]

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

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

Let's work together[edit source]

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

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

—Elitre (WMF), 22:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How can we improve Wikimedia grants to support you better?[edit source]

My apologies for posting this message in English. Please help translate it if you can.

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation would like your feedback about how we can reimagine Wikimedia Foundation grants, to better support people and ideas in your Wikimedia project. Ways to participate:

Respond to questions on the discussion page of the idea.
Join a small group conversation.
Learn more about this consultation.

Feedback is welcome in any language.

With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was sent by I JethroBT (WMF) through MediaWiki message delivery. 00:22, 19 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Introducing the Wikimedia public policy site[edit source]

Hi all,

We are excited to introduce a new Wikimedia Public Policy site. The site includes resources and position statements on access, copyright, censorship, intermediary liability, and privacy. The site explains how good public policy supports the Wikimedia projects, editors, and mission.

Visit the public policy portal: https://policy.wikimedia.org/

Please help translate the statements on Meta Wiki. You can read more on the Wikimedia blog.

Thanks,

Yana and Stephen (Talk) 18:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(Sent with the Global message delivery system)

Open call for Individual Engagement Grants[edit source]

My apologies for posting this message in English. Please help translate it if you can.

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals until September 29th to fund new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental ideas that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), Individual Engagement Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

Thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 20:52, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was sent by I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) through MediaWiki message delivery.

New Wikipedia Library Database Access (September 2015)[edit source]

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 new accounts and research materials from:

EBSCOHost - this is one of our largest access donations so far: access to a wide variety of academic, newspaper and magazine sources through their Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete and MasterFILE Complete
Newspaperarchive.com - historical newspapers from the United States, Canada, UK and 20 other countries, and includes an Open Access "clipping" feature (1000 accounts)
IMF Elibary- a digital collection of the IMF's reports, studies and research on global economics and development (50 accounts)
Sabinet - one of the largest African digital publishers, based in South Africa, with a wide range of content in English and other European and African languages (10 accounts)
Numérique Premium - a French language social science and humanities ebook database, with topical collections on a wide range of topics (100)
Al Manhal - an Arabic and English database with a wide range of sources, largely focused on or published in the Middle East (60 accounts)
Jamalon - an Arabic book distributor, who is providing targeted book delivery to volunteers (50 editors)

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including expanded accounts for Elsevier ScienceDirect, British Medical Journal and Dynamed and additional accounts for Project MUSE, DeGruyter, Newspapers.com, Highbeam and HeinOnline. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 19:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

We need help! Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Only one week left for Individual Engagement Grant proposals![edit source]

(Apologies for using English below, please help translate if you are able.)

There is still one week left to submit Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) proposals before the September 29th deadline. If you have ideas for new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request.

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources 21:01, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reimagining WMF grants report[edit source]

(My apologies for using English here, please help translate if you are able.)

Last month, we asked for community feedback on a proposal to change the structure of WMF grant programs. Thanks to the 200+ people who participated! A report on what we learned and changed based on this consultation is now available.

Come read about the findings and next steps as WMF’s Community Resources team begins to implement changes based on your feedback. Your questions and comments are welcome on the outcomes discussion page.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 16:56, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #5—2015[edit source]

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.

Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.

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

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements[edit source]

Educational features: The first time ever you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.

Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.

Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use it on all devices regardless of size if they wish. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.

Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227, T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes[edit source]

You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together[edit source]

Share your ideas and ask questions at VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

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

—Elitre (WMF), 18:19, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Community Wishlist Survey[edit source]

Hi everyone! Apologies for posting in English. Translations are very welcome.

The Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is focused on building improved curation and moderation tools for experienced Wikimedia contributors. We're now starting a Community Wishlist Survey to find the most useful projects that we can work on.

For phase 1 of the survey, we're inviting all active contributors to submit brief proposals, explaining the project that you'd like us to work on, and why it's important. Phase 1 will last for 2 weeks. In phase 2, we'll ask you to vote on the proposals. Afterwards, we'll analyze the top 10 proposals and create a prioritized wishlist.

While most of this process will be conducted in English, we're inviting people from any Wikimedia wiki to submit proposals. We'll also invite volunteer translators to help translate proposals into English.

Your proposal should include: the problem that you want to solve, who would benefit, and a proposed solution, if you have one. You can submit your proposal on the Community Wishlist Survey page, using the entry field and the big blue button. We will be accepting proposals for 2 weeks, ending on November 23.

We're looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Community Tech Team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimania 2016 scholarships ambassadors needed[edit source]

Hello! Wikimania 2016 scholarships will soon be open; by the end of the week we'll form the committee and we need your help, see Scholarship committee for details.

If you want to carefully review nearly a thousand applications in January, you might be a perfect committee member. Otherwise, you can volunteer as "ambassador": you will observe all the committee activities, ensure that people from your language or project manage to apply for a scholarship, translate scholarship applications written in your language to English and so on. Ambassadors are allowed to ask for a scholarship, unlike committee members.

Wikimania 2016 scholarships subteam 10:47, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey[edit source]

Hi everyone! Apologies for posting this in English. Translations are very welcome.

We're beginning the second part of the Community Tech team's Community Wishlist Survey, and we're inviting all active contributors to vote on the proposals that have been submitted.

Thanks to you and other Wikimedia contributors, 111 proposals were submitted to the team. We've split the proposals into categories, and now it's time to vote! You can vote for any proposal listed on the pages, using the {{Support}} tag. Feel free to add comments pro or con, but only support votes will be counted. The voting period will be 2 weeks, ending on December 14.

The proposals with the most support votes will be the team's top priority backlog to investigate and address. Thank you for participating, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

Community Tech via

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (December 2015)[edit source]

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 new accounts and research materials from:

Gale - multidisciplinary periodicals, newspapers, and reference sources - 10 accounts
Brill - academic e-books and journals in English, Dutch, and other languages - 25 accounts
Finnish Literature Society (in Finnish)
Magiran (in Farsi) - scientific journal articles - 100 articles
Civilica (in Farsi) - Iranian journal articles, seminars, and conferences - 50 accounts

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including EBSCO, DeGruyter, and Newspaperarchive.com. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 01:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Help us a start Wikipedia Library in your language! Email us at wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

VisualEditor News #6—2015[edit source]

Did you know?

A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.

If you prefer having separate edit buttons, then you can set that option in your preferences, either in a pop-up dialog the next time you open the visual editor, or by going to Special:Preferences and choosing the setting that you want:

The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.

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

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Since the last newsletter, the visual editor team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements[edit source]

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.

Future changes[edit source]

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398, T58337) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.

In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)

Testing opportunities[edit source]

Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people already using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).

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

Elitre (WMF), 00:06, 25 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

[Global proposal] m.Wikipedia.org: (all) Edit pages[edit source]

Hi, this message is to let you know that, on domains like ve.m.wikipedia.org, unregistered users cannot edit. At the Wikimedia Forum, where global configuration changes are normally discussed, a few dozens users propose to restore normal editing permissions on all mobile sites. Please read and comment!

Thanks and sorry for writing in English, Nemo 22:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2015)[edit source]

Apologies for writing in English, please help translate this into your local language. 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 new accounts and research materials from:

Project MUSE — humanities and social science books and journals
DynaMed — clinical reference tool for medical topics
Royal Pharmaceutical Society — pharmaceutical information and practice resources
Women Writers Online — a digital humanities database focused on women's literature
Newspapers.com — American newspapers database w/ Open Access opportunities (expansion of accounts)

Many 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 21:14, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator page.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Inspire Campaign: Improving diversity, improving content[edit source]

This March, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas for improving gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women, and many important topics are still missing in our content. We invite all Wikimedians to participate. If you have an idea that could help address this problem, please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 31.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help this project better represent the world’s knowledge!

Inspire Campaign main page

(Sorry for the English - please translate this message!) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: VisualEditor's special character inserter[edit source]

I apologize for writing in English. Please translate this message so that all of your editors can read it. Thank you!

Hi everybody, my name is Erica, and I am a Community Liaison at the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm writing to you because the Editing team at WMF wants to know what you think about VisualEditor and its new ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ tool. This change will affect all users on about 50 Wikipedias, including your Wikipedia. Many editors at these Wikipedias need a special character tool to be able to write articles correctly, which is why we are asking you now.

The new special character inserter tool is available in VisualEditor now. Admins at your wiki can change the contents by following the directions at mediawiki.org.

To test the ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ tool, please:

Opt-in to VisualEditor by going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and choosing "VisualEditor". Save your preferences.
Edit any article or your user page in VisualEditor by clicking on the new "Edit" tab at the top of the page. See the mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide for information on how to use VisualEditor.
Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on Mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know what you think about this new design. It is important that they hear from as many editors as possible. You may leave your comments in any language.

When the special character tool has been refined a little more based on your thoughts, we will offer VisualEditor by default to all editors at this wiki. If you want to help prepare, please read the advice on mediawiki.org.

Thank you, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

SUL finalization update[edit source]

Hi all,apologies for writing in English, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor coming to this wiki[edit source]

Hello again. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you can translate this message!

VisualEditor is coming to all editors at this Wikipedia on Monday, March 30th. VisualEditor is software that allows people to edit articles without needing to learn wikitext code (like typing [[ to start a link). You don't have to wait until the deployment to test it; you can test VisualEditor right now. To turn it on, select "Beta" in your preferences. Choose "VisualEditor" and click save.

Now, when you press the "Edit" button to edit an article, you will get the new VisualEditor software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press "Edit source". (After the deployment, everyone will automatically have the option to use either VisualEditor or the current wikitext editor.) For more information about how to use VisualEditor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

More information about preparing for VisualEditor is posted here.

It's easier to add templates if you've added TemplateData instructions to them.
Please help translate the pages about VisualEditor here and on MediaWiki.org, and its user interface. See VisualEditor TranslationCentral for general information. To translate the user guide, go to the MediaWiki.org page, and select "Translate this page". Your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. Once you've done this, you'll see the document in English side by side with any translation work already done in your language. You can add new translations or change old translations. To translate the user interface, you need to create an account at translatewiki.net. Contact me personally if you need help with that.
We need your help to improve the software! Please let us know if you find any problems. You can report issues in Phabricator, the new bug tracking system or on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org. If you notice major issues affecting your project, please leave a note on my talk page. If it's an emergency (like an unexpected bug causing widespread problems), reach out to James Forrester, the Product Manager, at jforrester@wikimedia.org or on IRC in the #mediawiki-visualeditor channel.