User talk:Pine/Archive 15
Talk to us about talking
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
- First, sign up your group here.
- Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
- Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.
Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.
Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [1]
Changes later this week
- When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [2]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).
Meetings
-
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 32
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- New and expanded partners
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
This Month in Education: February 2019
WikiCup 2019 March newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.
Our top scorers in Round 1 were:
L293D, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with ten good articles on submarines for a total of 357 points.
Adam Cuerden, a WikiCup veteran, came next with 274 points, mostly from eight featured pictures, restorations of artwork.
MPJ-DK, a wrestling enthusiast, was in third place with 263 points, garnered from a featured list, five good articles, two DYKs and four GARs.- Usernameunique came next at 243, with a featured article and a good article, both on ancient helmets.
Squeamish Ossifrage was in joint fifth place with 224 points, mostly garnered from bringing the 1937 Fox vault fire to featured article status.
Ed! was also on 224, with an amazing number of good article reviews (56 actually).
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
- The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [3][4]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Women’s History Wikithon, Washington State History Museum, Saturday 3/9
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Women’s History Wikithon
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| FREE. Please register in advance. Includes museum admission and snacks; please bring a sack lunch plus a laptop. Scholars and interested citizens are invited to come together for an afternoon of collaboration to create or improve Wikipedia pages related to Washington State’s suffrage history. Learn from seasoned “Wikipedians” how to edit wiki pages, and work in small groups with women’s history experts. Honor Women’s History Month by updating our reference materials to reflect the dedicated work of Washington’s women suffragists. Bring a brown bag lunch, we’ll provide snacks. Hosted by Washington State Historical Society. Women's Suffrage Centennial Program, Washington State Historical Society -> Events & Programs | |||
- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:14, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 1
Good news: the (lengthy!) script draft 1 is complete!
Hello, I am happy to share that script draft 1 is complete and ready for public comment.
The script (link to the Google doc) is much longer than I anticipated, at almost 21 pages!
Although I think that the 21 page script would be a very good introduction to referencing policies and workflows, I am considering dividing it into two or more smaller scripts that would be produced as separate videos. For example, one script could focus on policies and a different script could focus on how to use the citation tool. I am considering this for three reasons:
- People may be more willing to watch shorter videos that have more specific focus.
- Shorter videos may be easier to search for an answer for a single specific question.
- There is a possibility that if I attempt to produce a single video from almost 21 pages of script that I might exceed the budget for this mini-project. I would like for both WMF and the community to be satisfied with the results from this mini-project, and I think that dividing the script into smaller scripts which could be produced separately would be a good way to ensure that the budget for the current grant is not exceeded. While there is a reasonable possibility that I could finish production of the entire 21 pages of script within the current grant, I think that dividing the script would be prudent. After one of the smaller scripts is fully produced within the currently available funding, remaining script could be considered for production within the current grant if there seems to be adequate remaining funds, or could be saved for possible production with a future grant.
Request for constructive criticism and comments
I would very much appreciate constructive criticism and comments regarding the script, preferably by March 10 at 11:59 PM UTC. This is a shorter time window than I would like to provide, but the planned end date for this project is March 14 and I would like to finish video production by the end of March 13 so that I have 24 hours for communications before the grant period ends. If you would like to review the script or make other comments but the end of March 10 is too soon for you, please let me know that you need more time, and I will take that into consideration as I plan for final production and consider whether to request a date extension from WMF. (Extending the finish date for the project would not involve requesting additional funding for the current grant.) I would prefer that the video be done perfectly a few days late than that the video be done on March 14 but have an important error that was not caught during a rush to the finish.
I have three specific requests for feedback:
1. Please find errors in the script. This is a great time to find problems with my work, before the script goes into production and problems become more expensive to fix. Please go to this link in Google Docs and use the Comment feature in the Google Doc.
2. Do you have comments regarding whether the script should be divided, and if so, how it should be divided? Please let me know on the project talk page.
3. How do you feel about the name for the video? Do you prefer "Referencing with VisualEditor" or "Citing sources with VisualEditor", or a third option? Again, please comment on the project talk page. However, if I divide the script then I will create new names for the smaller videos.
Closing comments
Thank you for your interest in this mini-project. I am grateful to be working on a project which I hope will help Wikipedia contributors to be more efficient and effective, and indirectly help to improve Wikipedia's quality by teaching contributors how to identify and to cite reliable sources. I believe that the finished video will be good, and I hope that the community and novice contributors will find the video to be very useful.
Yours in service,
This Month in GLAM: February 2019
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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
- Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the
mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatementsLua function or the#statementsparser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer<maplink>if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator. - There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.
Problems
- Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
- Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [5]
- Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [6][7]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #6
Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Plans for the next three months
The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:
- Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
- Continued iteration on help panel
- Make the help panel available to more wikis
- Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
- Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
- Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers
Newcomer homepage
We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
- Shown in the User space
- Desktop only (mobile comes next)
- Four modules
- Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
- Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
- Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
- Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
- Layout not yet personalized for each user
We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.
Help panel
During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
- 2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
- 422 of them have opened it
- 175 have clicked links
- 27 have run searches
- 40 have asked questions
We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.
Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.
- We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
- The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.
We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [8][9]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [10]
- Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
March GOCE newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors March 2019 Newsletter
  Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2018. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2019, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from all of the articles tagged in our original target months of June, July and August 2018, and by 24 January we ran out of articles. After adding September, we finished the month with 8 target articles remaining and 842 left in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 48 requests for copyedit in January. Of the 31 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 32 copyedits, including 15 requests. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: As of 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 108 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 851 articles. March Drive: The month-long March drive is now underway; the target months are October and November 2018. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here! Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 2 short version
Hi! The full version of this newsletter issue has a lot of information. I am sending a short version to talk pages.
The most important information to know is that draft 2 is finished, that the single long script has been divided into many smaller scripts, and that portions of the script have been prioritized for production.
Due to budget constraints, not all scripts can be produced within the scope of the current pilot grant, but the other scripts will remain available for potential future production. (This project feels somewhat like doing a vehicle repair when the mechanic starts to work on the engine, and once the mechanic gets under the engine and starts to work, they discover that accomplishing their objective requires twice as much time as they first had estimated.) However, nothing is lost, so do not fear. Overall, my assessment (me being User:Pine) is that this project is producing a lot of good output and is generally a valuable pilot project.
For more information, including my requests for your feedback, please see the full version of the newsletter.
- Here is some feedback on Scene 3, sources. I'm preferring to answer here vice at Google Docs with my other online identity.
- Why say "generally" at the first bullet (reliable, verifiable, independent)? The exceptions are so fleeting (e.g. a company naming a new CEO or a BLP referring to subject's preferred gender or religious identification) that I don't think we need to confuse new editors with this. In other words, the 'should' in "sources should..." gives us enough wiggle room.
- "Academic textbooks" might be better phrased "Recognized standard textbooks" (following WP:MEDRS) so as not to suggest only academic topics are worthwhile. E.g. a textbook for chefs would be just fine to cite information on kitchen work.
- Might want to call out (briefly) especially high requirements for BLPs and MEDRS.
- The grouping of poor secondary sources could be better. I'd create one subgroup for all the self-published sources, to include self-published books, social media, business' own websites and press releases, blogs, and blog-like online media (forbes.com/sites for example), and unreferreed/unreviewed research. The common element here is no editorial review by another party. Again we have an exception that probably would just be confusing to mention to beginners: blogs by recognized experts.
- You didn't mention that sources need not be online. This is a common misconception and I'd be super happy to have more editors going out to physical books and archives to retrieve stuff that routine Google-fu doesn't find.
- Good work so far. This is a tricky subject to cover succinctly because there are so many legalistic exceptions-to-exceptions and so forth. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:20, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for the comments, Bri. I copied them into a new section on the project talk page on Meta. --Pine(✉) 05:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [11]
Problems
- There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [12]
- The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [13]
- Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [14]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
This Month in Education: March 2019
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [15]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
Art+Feminism, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Saturday, April 6th, 1-5 PM
 | |
| Wikipedia’s gender trouble is well-documented. In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10% of its contributors were women. While the reasons for the gender gap are up for debate, the practical effect of this disparity is not: content is skewed by the lack of representation from women.
Let’s change that. To help change this, the Jacob Lawrence Gallery is continuing a series of Edit-a-thons to improve Wikipedia's coverage of womxn and gender non-binary artists of color. Childcare, snacks from local businesses, and editing tutorials will be provided. All you need to bring is your laptop, power cord, and ideas. No previous Wikipedia experience required! Everyone is welcome. Access to UW wifi will be provided for non-UW affiliated participants. Please create a Wikipedia account before the event. RSVP through this Facebook event link. When: Saturday, Apr. 6, 2019, 1–5 PM | |
Bring your idea for Wikimedia in Education to life! Launch of the Wikimedia Education Greenhouse
|
Apply for Education Greenhouse  Are you passionate about open education? Do you have an idea to apply Wikimedia projects to an education initiative but don’t know where to start? Join the the Wikimedia & Education Greenhouse! It is an immersive co-learning experience that lasts 9 months and will equip you with the skills, knowledge and support you need to bring your ideas to life. You can apply as a team or as an individual, by May 12th. Find out more Education Greenhouse. For more information reachout to mguadalupe |
—MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
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
- More wikis are now testing visual editor section editing for mobile users. You can read more.
- Admins on French and Polish Wikipedia can block someone from editing a page or a namespace. If your wiki wants to get these blocks before they are available to all wikis, you can tell the developers. [16][17]
Problems
- You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [18]
- A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [19]
- Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [20]
Changes later this week
- When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [21]
- The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [22]
- The
{{REVISIONID}}magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return""(empty string). When you read a page it will return"-"(dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [23] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [24][25]
- The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: March 2019
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- All wikis now have the TemplateWizard for the wikitext editor.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will get a new constraint status called
suggestion. This will change how theWikibaseQualityConstraintsconstraint checking API works. [26][27] - You can test the
depictsproperty for structured data on Commons.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [28][29][30]
- The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [31]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikipedia articles will have the
sameAsmeta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [32][33]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
This Month in Education: April 2019
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This Month in Education Volume 8 • Issue 4 • April 2019 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue |
Growth team updates #7
Welcome to the seventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Newcomer homepage release this week
Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.
Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:
- Additional questions will come to the help desk from the "help module" on the homepage.
- Mentors who have signed up for the "mentorship module" will start to receive questions on their user talk pages.
- More users may create and edit user pages through the "start module".
Recent and future homepage development
The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:
- Mobile design: to work well in mobile browsers, the homepage needs a separate design and engineering. See the accompanying mockups for potential mobile designs.
- Features for discovery: only about 15% - 30% of newcomers will discover their homepage by clicking their username at the top of their browser. We are going to be designing additional ways for newcomers to find out about it.
- Additional modules: the initial version contains some of the simpler modules. Potential upcoming modules include task recommendations and a feed of activity on the wiki.
Other updates
- Help panel leading indicators: our team published data on the help panel's initial performance. The evaluation exposes some areas for improvement, but we think the help panel's behavior so far is healthy and that it is not having a negative impact on the wikis. We will be publishing additional data, making plans, and asking for community thoughts around the future of the help panel over the course of the next two weeks. If you are interested in trying out the help panel on your wiki, please let us know on our team's talk page.
- Long term plans: the team had a week of planning meetings, in which we talked about some longer-term ideas for Growth work. Some of the top ideas are: to extend the newcomer homepage to help user's build their identity through a user profile, and to revisit the "engagement emails" project that the team put on hold. Over the next month, we will be asking for community conversation around how the team can spend our time in the next fiscal year, that starts in July.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [34][35]
Problems
- Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [36]
Changes later this week
- You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [37]
- When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in
local storageinstead ofsession storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [38] - You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [39]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikidata
wb_termstable will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it. - Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [40]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
WikiCup 2019 May newsletter
The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:
Cas Liber (1210), our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three DYKs. He also made good use of the bonus points available, more than doubling his score by choosing appropriate articles to work on.
Kosack (750), last year's runner up, with an FA, a GA, two FLs, and five DYKs.- Adam Cuerden (480), a WikiCup veteran, with 16 featured pictures, mostly restorations.
Zwerg Nase (461), a seasoned competitor, with a FA, a GA and an ITN item.
Other notable performances were put in by 
Barkeep49 with six GAs, 
Ceranthor, 
Lee Vilenski, and 
Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and 
MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.
So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
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
- Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [41]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
Proposed Articles
Sir I have a proposed article on space colonization. I hope you will agree to check it out.
Thank you.
LOBOSKYJOJO (talk) 04:13, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hello LOBOSKYJOJO, unfortunately I am busy with other activities. Good luck with your article. --Pine (✉) 04:17, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: April 2019
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019
Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.
Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.
---
Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.
Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.
In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:
- What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
- How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
- How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?
Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.
Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.
Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!
More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.
Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.
If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.
On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.
Problems
- File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [42][43]
- Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [44][45]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [46]
- The Wikidata
wbeditentityAPI endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [47]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 33
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 33, March – April 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:41, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [48][49]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
This Month in Education: May 2019
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [50]
- There is now a field called
depictson Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [51] - Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [52][53]
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [54]
Changes later this week
- Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [55]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: May 2019
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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
- When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [56][57]
- The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [58]
- Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [59]
Problems
- Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [60]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
GOCE June newsletter
| Guild of Copy Editors June 2019 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2019. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 16 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. June Blitz: Our June blitz will soon be upon us; it will begin at 00:01 on 16 June (UTC) and will close at 23:59 on 22 June (UTC). The themes are "nature and the environment" and all requests. March Drive: Thanks to everyone for their work in March's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from 182 of the articles tagged in our original target months October and November 2018, and the month finished with 64 target articles remaining from November and 811 in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 22 requests for copyedit in March; the month ended with 34 requests pending. Of the 32 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the April Blitz; the blitz ran from 14 to 20 April (UTC) inclusive and the themes were Sports and Entertainment. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: As of 04:36, 3 June 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 267 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 605 articles. May Drive: During the May Backlog Elimination Drive, Guild copy-editors removed copyedit tags from 191 of the 192 articles tagged in our original target months of November and December 2018, and January 2019 was added on 22 May. We finished the month with 81 target articles remaining and a record low of 598 articles in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 24 requests for copyedit during the May drive, and the month ended with 35 requests pending. Of the 26 people who signed up for this drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
|
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #8
Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.
General news
- The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
- Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
- Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.
Early results from newcomer homepage release
- The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
- After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
- About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
- About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
- Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
- Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.
Next steps for homepage
- Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
- Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
- Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
- User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.
Future of team in the next year
- The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
- Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
- Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
- Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
- Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
- Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
- Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
- We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
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
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [61]
Changes later this week
- MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with
[[File:Filename.midi]]. Lateroverride_midiandoverride_audiowill stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [62] - A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [63]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old
wgEnableAPIandwgEnableWriteAPIvalues. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [64]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
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
- The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [65]
- Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [66]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Latin translation
Are you sure about "sabbati"? A couple of online dictionaries suggest "hebdomas" or "septimana" might be better. - Bri.public (talk) 22:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Bri.public: Thank you for the suggestion. I know very little Latin. I'll change the word to "hebdomas". --Pine (✉) 23:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [67]
Problems
- Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [68]
- Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [69]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [70]
- There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
WikiCup 2019 July newsletter
The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with 500 points derived mainly from a featured article and two GAs on natural history topics
Adam Cuerden, with 480 points, a tally built on 16 featured pictures, the result of meticulous restoration work
SounderBruce, a finalist in the last two years, with 306 points from a variety of submissions, mostly related to sport or the State of Washington- Usernameunique, with 305 points derived from a featured article and two GAs on archaeology and related topics
Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
About your last project
Hi Pine! I was looking through your project here and this looks a lot like a similar idea I had for Portuguese Wikipedia. Looking at it, your work is definitely more professional than anything I had ever imagined! That said, I'm sad to hear you won't be able to follow-up with the project. Do you think it is possible to share the rest of your work to the community, or send it in private? Thanks! User:Tetizeraz. Send me a ✉️ ! 01:44, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Tetizeraz, I have been doing a lot of thinking about that project in the past few days. I'll post a comment on the project talk page with some updates. Please discuss the project with me there so that the discussion stays in one place. Thank you for your comments, --Pine (✉) 21:04, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
- Hi @Tetizeraz: I thought you might like to know that now that I am under a bit less strain between the conflicts here on ENWP between the community and WMF, and now that my off-wiki obligations are a bit more under control, I am feeling more optimistic about my ability to continue with the project. Definitely I want the first two videos to be produced; with all the work that has already gone into them I want the community to benefit from them. After that I will take a pause to see what the community thinks of the finished videos before deciding on next steps. --Pine (✉) 18:30, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
This Month in Education: June 2019
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
- For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [71]
- Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [72]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
- The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [73]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [74]
- There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [75]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: June 2019
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Books & Bytes Issue 34, May – June 2019
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 34, May – June 2019
- Partnerships
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
About Ontario Highway 801 Comment
On the IRC, we talked about the length of Ontario Highway 801. I've found a government file which confirms that the highway is infact 14 kilometers. Should I remove the template? Neverbuffed (talk) 22:06, 12 July 2019 (UTC)User:Neverbuffed
- Hi Neverbuffed, I would leave that template there. Even if the length of the road is correctly stated, the article appears to be out of date. --Pine (✉) 00:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [76]
Changes later this week
- The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called
Edit filterand has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [77]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm back
Hello Pine. I'm here to inform you that I'm officially back. I've been editing more recently, and today I had the realization that I should declare my official return. I have accepted that my changed mindset after the indef is the 'new normal' for me now, and perhaps, my editing habits may have changed, but that may be the 'new normal' too. starship.paint (talk) 14:57, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
- Welcome back, Starship.paint. I hope that you are feeling relaxed and that you can enjoy editing in a sustainable way. --Pine (✉) 22:16, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
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
- Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
- The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [78]
Problems
- The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [79]
Changes later this week
- Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [80]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [81][82]
- With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [83][84]
- Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
- The variable
user_wpzerowill be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #9
Welcome to the ninth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Opening Growth features to more wikis
The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.
Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:
- Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
- Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
- EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.
General news
- A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
- Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
- Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
- Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
- Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
- We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language. This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.
Mobile homepage and early analysis
- The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
- We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
- Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
- As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)