User talk:Kerry Raymond/Archive 12
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Editing News #1—July 2019
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Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon 
to start editing.
Edit Cards
This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.
Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.
Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:
Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?
If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.
Follow these instructions and share your experience:
Recent releases
The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
- Section editing
- The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
- The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
- Loading overlay
- The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.
Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.
New and active projects
This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
- Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲Try Edit Cards.
- Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
- Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
- Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Looking ahead
- Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
- Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
Learning more
The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 15 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)
Springfield Lakes
Hi there. Today I ran into another Translink URL problem like I did late last year. When doing an external link search for http://jp.translink.com.au/travel-information/network-information/stops-and-stations/stop I found over 400 links that no longer work. I have fixed about 20 and will do the others as I get time. I fixed one link in Springfield Lakes, Queensland where I also fixed two dead links to archived ones but there is one link which I think you inserted in 2015 to https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset/queensland-globe which no longer works but has since been changed but still does seem to give a satisfactory reference. Do you have any idea what it should be? Fleet Lists (talk) 09:39, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists: I can (probably) fix these using AutoWikiBrowser to save you some work. Is this the replacement link https://jp.translink.com.au/plan-your-journey/stops/ ? Do you think we should be looking to use a template here as this kind of change is likely to happen again? Something like {{translink|wacol-station}} ? I will sort out the Queensland Globe URLs (I now use a template but obviously forget to clean up the old ones). Kerry (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Kerry Raymond:If you could do that, that would be great, Yes that is the replacement link. I will hold off doing anymore for the time being and can insert it later in the ones I have already done. Thanks again. Fleet Lists (talk) 10:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists: OK, but I am not sure if you want it with a template or without? Kerry (talk) 10:17, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Kerry Raymond:I would suggest with a template.Fleet Lists (talk) 11:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists: OK, but I am not sure if you want it with a template or without? Kerry (talk) 10:17, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Kerry Raymond:If you could do that, that would be great, Yes that is the replacement link. I will hold off doing anymore for the time being and can insert it later in the ones I have already done. Thanks again. Fleet Lists (talk) 10:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Kerry Raymond:I had added some test links to my sandbox User:Fleet Lists/sandbox which earlier were not working but they now seem to be working OK which looks great. Thank You. I just noticed you have just started to do a few stations which have popped in my watchlist. Fleet Lists (talk) 07:14, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists: Yes, I had a really stupid bug in my initial template that added "1.", which you probably saw. The template seems to be working now. I am now trying to setup AutoWikiBrowser to change the old URLs into the templates. That part of the process is going OK, but the problem is that some of them have {{webarchive ...}} templates for the old url that have to be removed and that is proving trickier, so I am still experimenting with getting that right. Kerry (talk) 07:19, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists:I think I have now replaced all instances of the old URLs and the new URLs that you manually updated with the template. I have cleaned up the inappropriate webarchive (some done automatically, some were just too tricky and I did them manually). If you see any other examples I have missed or got wrong, let me know. Kerry (talk) 09:06, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Kerry Raymond:Fantastic. I cant see any missing ones off the cuff. There were about about 140 links already using the new URL and I had only dome less than 40 so there were more than 100 that were already in the new format especially a lot of the ferry ones. If I do find the odd one I can fix that myself but I have got something else I have to get into for the rest of the night.Fleet Lists (talk) 09:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists:I think I have now replaced all instances of the old URLs and the new URLs that you manually updated with the template. I have cleaned up the inappropriate webarchive (some done automatically, some were just too tricky and I did them manually). If you see any other examples I have missed or got wrong, let me know. Kerry (talk) 09:06, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
- @Fleet Lists: Yes, I had a really stupid bug in my initial template that added "1.", which you probably saw. The template seems to be working now. I am now trying to setup AutoWikiBrowser to change the old URLs into the templates. That part of the process is going OK, but the problem is that some of them have {{webarchive ...}} templates for the old url that have to be removed and that is proving trickier, so I am still experimenting with getting that right. Kerry (talk) 07:19, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2019
- In the media: Politics starts getting rough
- Discussion report: New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban
- Arbitration report: A month of reintegration
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Community view: Video based summaries of Wikipedia articles. How and why?
- News from the WMF: Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way
- Recent research: Most influential medical journals; detecting pages to protect
- Special report: Administrator cadre continues to contract
- Traffic report: World cups, presidential candidates, and stranger things
Canberra demographics duplication
Do you have any opinion on my comments in Talk:Canberra#Demographics where originally there was just a separate article on demographics Demographics of Canberra which was linked to from Canberra and Australian Capital Territory but has recently been copied into the other two articles so that all information is now present in three places. I have had no luck getting the editor concerned to reverse that approach. I dont believe it should all be there three times - as time goes on they will develop differently Fleet Lists (talk) 04:12, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Sockpuppet edits
Hi Kerry, I saw that you reinstated an edit that had been reverted, here: [1]. The edit was made by Special:Contributions/202.53.36.85. Probably you weren't aware, but if you look at their edit history it's obviously the same person who has been disruptively changing "History" sections, "Heritage listings", and adding unsourced material that's often a copyright violation.
It's good that you found citations for the information. On the other hand, I would be wary of encouraging them to continue editing and adding this kind of material by helping to source it, etc. It's up to you, but I would just say to keep an eye out for similar unsourced and poorly-worded contributions in History sections. According to WP:BMB, we should weigh the value of any particular seemingly-helpful edit, versus the damage done overall to Wikipedia by allowing a blocked/banned editor to edit as a sockpuppet. In general it's expected that such an editor "may not edit at all, even if the edits seem good."
If it comes from this person, but you really want to keep it, and you will take responsibility for the content, you can. I'd suggest at least re-writing it in your own words though. For example, in the above edit, the sentence doesn't make sense grammatically. I don't want to interfere in any way with your editing, just wanted to let you know. Thanks... --IamNotU (talk) 11:47, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- @IamNotU: I didn't realise who it was. I just thought it was a good faith newbie who didn't know that they needed to cite and/or how to cite. But I agree with you, we don't want to reward sockpuppets. I'll roll it back. Kerry (talk) 12:58, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- That's what I thought, no worries... I've been rolling back a lot of their edits, and once in a while I do leave something, like today where they had corrected the alphabetical order of a list - kind of hard to argue with that, or revert it. But in general I've been undoing everything. Their patterns are pretty obvious to me now, and adding an unsourced sentence or two about the origin story of an Australian place or place-name to the "History" section is very typical, as is the use of rather bad English. Again, just wanted to let you know, thanks. --IamNotU (talk) 15:39, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you
Very much for your article tagging for the Australian project of the dmy and engvar items, it is much appreciated JarrahTree 10:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
- and to labour the point, the australian project has not had such a thorough and dedicated going through as you have done in main space, it has always been so piecemeal usually, it is something that raises the appearance of the project that is cared for, and not neglected. JarrahTree 12:10, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
- coulda shoulda put the deleted dates onto the UseAE for continuity of original dates thing Dave Rave (talk) 23:32, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
- I had wondered about that myself so I looked at the documentation. {{Use Australian English}} says "Month and year added" and lists the default as current date. {{EngvarB}} says "Month and year the template was added" and {{Use British English}} says "Month and year the article was checked for language consistency with British spelling". In an ideal world, this family of templates would all say exactly the same thing, but nonetheless they all seem to indicate it is the date someone made a determination on the appropriate kind of and English and added the corresponding template. So I used the current date as that's when I made the determination. Where I find articles which are already have Use Australian English *and* one of EngvarB or Use British English (and there's still about 300 of them to be individually checked if you want to help, I can send you a list), I simply delete the less appropriate template and leave the more appropriate template with its original date. Kerry (talk) 00:10, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
- coulda shoulda put the deleted dates onto the UseAE for continuity of original dates thing Dave Rave (talk) 23:32, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2019
- News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings
- In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff
- Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users
- Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes
- News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
OSM Maps
Thanks for the edit on Narrabri, and for the reason. (I did put in a great many OSM maps showing boundaries at one point when I was particularly enthusiastic about places.) I do hope they get working again, (preferably soon) as a place is not a point. MargaretRDonald (talk) 20:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
- @MargaretRDonald: Unfortunately these OSM maps just dont seem to display reliably. My guess is that we have so many layers of data dependency that something is timing out and the coords sent for mapping are defaulted to 0,0 which is then correctly displayed as a chunk of the Atlantic Ocean (if you zoom out the map, you see the west coast of Africa). Kerry (talk) 21:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
- Wunderbar. (Pity.) Thanks for the further explanation. MargaretRDonald (talk) 23:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
A template for galleries
The French have a nice template for galleries {{Modềle:Message gallerie}} which, when inserted at the top of a gallery of images, produces a little "i" logo, together with the message "Cliquez sur une vignette pour l'aggrandir" (click on an image to enlarge it). See fr:Scaevola_plumieri I think it would be nice to have a corresponding template in enwiki. (It was only when I started to edit wikipedia that I realised that the photos could really be looked at and were not the tiny images which appeared on the page.) It seemed to me that you would know how to do this (although you might well not think it worthwhile?) MargaretRDonald (talk) 23:48, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
- English Wikipedia doesn't really like galleries, see WP:GALLERY. I think you are right about being technically feasible but i am less sure about gaining consensus. Kerry (talk) 04:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
September 2019
Hi there, I'm User:Sparticusmaximus. I have an interest in corruption and misconduct in local government and I have the goal of more comprehensively documenting their associated criminal charges and convictions in Queensland (piecemeal at the moment, but something I would like do more of as I get the time). You recently left a message on my user page that you had removed some of my recent edits to Paul Pisasale as you claimed they "seem to be defamatory or libellous". I disagree. The facts added to the page were widely reported in the national press as evidenced by the reference included. My edits did not claim he committed these acts, only that he has been charged and committed to stand trial for them. These are facts, and describing them are neither defamatory nor libelous. I have therefore restored these facts to the article and added additional references from reliable sources in support. Sparticusmaximus (talk) 22:02, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Your draft article, Draft:Lin Li (video artist)
Hello, Kerry Raymond. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Lin Li".
In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.
If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia! UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:16, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks & question re categories
Hello Kerry, thanks for your assistance and encouragement when I was writing the Hugh Scott (architect) page which has now been published. My question relates to the inclusion of Hugh Scott in a number of categories (including Australian Architects, Belfast-born architects, etc.). These inclusions have been entered using Hugh as the surname rather than Scott (they are incorrectly filed under H). I had a look at how I might correct this but the going got tough. Is there an easy way to do this or can I call on assistance from somewhere? Thanks in anticipation. Sarimarais (talk) 03:13, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Sarimarais: I've fixed this by adding the Sort coding to the article. @Kerry Raymond: I hope you don't mind my doing this on your behalf. Oronsay (talk) 08:34, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2019
- From the editors: Where do we go from here?
- Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup
- Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads
- News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green
- Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Wikimedians in residence
I'm updating the outreach:Wikipedian_in_Residence and automating it with wikidata (in progress). Could you check that your wikidata item is up to date?
I've also created a wikidata item Craig Franklin (Q69457726). Feel free to populate it with any relevant information. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 06:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #10
Welcome to the tenth 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.
General news
- Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). 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 configuring the features.
- We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
- You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!
Growth at Wikimania
- Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
- Here are the most important links:
- These are some of our topline notes:
- Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
- Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
- Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.
Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!
- The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
- We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
- These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
- Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
- How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
- How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
- We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
- You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Heritage Stuff
Hi, I have been replacing maps, as you suggested, where I have a heritage photo to replace them with.
I have been looking at the article Coxs River track. The Heritage article is pathetic and this has, in turn, led to an inadequate Wikipedia article. Pleas take a look at the talk page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Coxs_River_track. I don't know what can be done about the article. Collywolly (talk) 02:34, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
I notice that Commons has page images of Bradley's Journal. The State Library of New South Wales, where the images came from, also has page images of the drawings in the Journal and a transcription of the Journal. Getting them into Wikicommons and Wikisource is a bit beyond me so I have provided external links on Bradley's Wikipedia page. Perhaps you, or someone you know would be interested in the job. Collywolly (talk) 03:27, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry to have sent you this. I've worked it out and I will put it all online. Collywolly (talk) 02:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Great work with Health care in Australia
Hey Kerry! I saw your add to Health care in Australia about the Royal Flying Doctors Service and Heart of Australia, as well as your move from it being under the NGO section to Issues. It's really great, but I do think that it's more appropriate under the NGO heading not "issues" (it's not an issue per se, it's more just a characteristic of health care in regional and rural Australia). I hope you don't mind, but I've moved it back to the NGO heading ItsPugle (talk) 00:05, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.
Help
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk Pages
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
Edit Cards
- On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
- There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
- Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.
Toolbar
- In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
- One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
- New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
- Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
- Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Wikimania
The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.
Looking ahead
- Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
- Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
- Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi Kerry, I just upgraded the above article to reflect that the national park had been abolished prior to 2011. I also replaced a redirect Blue Lake (Queensland) with an article made of content removed from the national park 's article. Can you please have a look at both of these articles? In particular, can you please find an official source for the abolition and can you please add the relevant categories to the Blue Lake National Park. Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 07:47, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Cowdy001: I found the official anouncement of the new national park in 2011 (which I've added as a citation) but nothing that mentioned the Blue Lake NP being included (other than the existing citation on the parks website saying it's now part of the new NP). But equally I found nobody saying it was "abolished" which is fair enough as that pretty clearly that didn't happen as The Blue Lake NP presumably remained protected throughout the whole process, just transitioning to the larger NP, so I rewrote both articles to remove the "abolish" in favour of being now part of the larger NP since we do have a source for that at least. I didn't find anything in the legislation nor in the Qld Govt Gazette about either national park in the 2011-2012 period. Not sure where else to look. Kerry (talk) 08:35, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Suburbs in Queensland
A tag has been placed on Category:Suburbs in Queensland requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 13:06, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 October 2019
- In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit
- Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse
- Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars
- Community view: Observations from the mainland
- Arbitration report: October actions
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast
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Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Gilberton, Queensland (Etheridge)
A tag has been placed on Category:Gilberton, Queensland (Etheridge) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 15:08, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Banks Creek (Brisbane City), Queensland
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Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice to inform you that a tag has been placed on Banks Creek (Brisbane City), Queensland requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, images, a rephrasing of the title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Jalen Folf (talk) 16:16, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
SOrry about that - I'd assumed wrongly that "localities" was equivalent to "places", rather than being a technical term! Should have checked. Don't know why I put it on my watchlist after stub-sorting it 7 years ago - this often happens if I create the talk page by adding project banners, but not this time. Ah well. Will un-watch now anyway. PamD 09:50, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
- @PamD: No worries. The problem is that a lot of the earlier content for Queensland geography is very sloppy using terms like locality, suburb, town almost interchangeably (despite those terms having precise meanings in our state) and often uncited too so I am trying to clean things up to use the terminology more precisely and with citations to the only authoritative source (the Qld Govt place name database). Kerry (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Woodford changes
Hi Kerry
thanks for the message - yes I do not have a clue what I am doing - total newbie on Wiki and they probably should not have let me on. I am an authority on The Woodford Academy though and I started to edit the page (with citations) until I realised the scope of the corrections was too and I was not conversant enough with Wiki protocol to continue. I am now discussing updates with the Office of Environment & Heritage as it is the primary source of the Wiki article. Once that is in place I will revisit the Wiki page and update it with appropriate and correct sources. Thank you for your information
Growth team updates #11
Welcome to the eleventh 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.
General news
- Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. 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 you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
- Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
- The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!
Help panel results
The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
- In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
- This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
- We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
- We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.
Newcomer tasks deployment
- The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
- We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
- These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
- V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
- V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
- The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Blantyre
I think you've done something strange with the school addition there (copy/paste typo?). Hard to sort out without your book source. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:45, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
- @The Drover's Wife: Thanks, I've fixed it now. As you guessed it was a copy/paste botch of some generated text that misgenerated because the school opened and closed twice (which is not the normal case). Kerry (talk) 23:12, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
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Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!
Hello,
Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.
I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!
From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.
If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.
Thank you!
--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 November 2019
- From the editor: Put on your birthday best
- News and notes: How soon for the next million articles?
- In the media: You say you want a revolution
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
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The Signpost: 27 December 2019
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- Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki
- Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee
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Belated holiday greetings
Hi, Someone has proposed merging these articles. In my opinion they are OK as they are and serve different purposes. I was tempted to remove the request for merge on both pages but didn't want to upset anybody. Could you tell me if there is a way to resolve the request? Thanks. Collywolly (talk)collywolly
- @Collywolly and The Drover's Wife: I went to see who had added the merge tags and it turns out it was me! I have removed them as both articles have been further developed since then and the different focus of the two is now much clearer. Kerry (talk) 22:13, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Of course I didn't look to see who added the merge suggestion, or I would have approached you differently. I noticed the merge suggestion when I was looking at providing a photo for Broughton Hall and realised that I was in the middle of a can of worms, as Broughton Hall was part of the Callan Park Hospital and Callan Park had become more than the hospital. I'm glad you noticed that the focus has changed because I have tried to add some information to achieve that, after I worked it all out myself. Have a new year filled with fun! Collywolly (talk)collywolly
Queensland regions
Hi Kerry
I agree with your observations. However, I think the description needs to be a bit more specific than just (eg) "Northern Queensland" (which may be construed as not including FNQ). So I have attempted to achieve the best compromise result from what is presently available on Wikipedia.
Even in a jurisdiction with clear legislated regions, such as WA, there are still issues, eg that the government regional boundaries do not coincide with the diocesan boundaries, and that North West Australia strictly includes the northern part of the Goldfields-Esperance region, but it seems that there are no Anglican parishes there. Bahnfrend (talk) 07:51, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Bahnfeld: I realise that regions are more formalised in WA which is why I wondered if you realised the Qld's were largely ad hoc. I don't have an issue with the names themselves ("North Queensland", "Far North Queensland" etc are generally understood in a vague "wave your hand around a map in a general area" sort of way) but when you started talking about the northern part of some region as if this was a well-defined thing, I became a bit nervous about that level of precision being meaningful. Kerry (talk) 08:04, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
1937 Airlines of Australia Stinson crash
Hello Kerry. Thank you for your interest in this article. Please revisit your edits made yesterday and ensure they say what you intended them to say. At one place there appears to be duplication: “he he found the body ...”. In another place there may be words missing: “Then O’Reilly found crash with the two survivors were waiting ...”. Thanks. Dolphin (t) 21:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Mer Island, Queensland
Hi Kerry, is Mer Island, Queensland the same as Murray Island, Queensland? One could be the locality and one the island I suppose—the multiple names are no help! They are both listed as localities in the Torres Strait Region template but as far as I can tell they are the same island. What do you think? --Canley (talk) 01:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Canley: Welcome to the naming of islands in the Torres Strait! Each island can be named as an island, as a locality, as a town, as an island group, and for each of these geographic types, there can potentially be a European name and an Indigenous name. And Indigenous names can have muliple alternative spellings. So Mer Island and Murray Island are both the same and different, depending on how you think about it. It is gazetted as the Murray Islands (island group), Mer/Maer/Merr Island (island), Murray Island (town), and Mer Island (locality). We write Wikipedia articles about all 4 geographic entities. As a Qld LGA template, {{Torres Strait Island Region}} contains all town, suburb and locality names (but not island and island groups and other natural features). Hence there are two entries in the navbox for Mer Island (the locality) and Murray Island (the town). That would be so whether they are the same article (i.e. one is a redirect for the other) or different articles. Generally I would expect the article to mention the other names for the other geographic features, but I see in this case the two articles don't qctually reference each other which I will fix. Kerry (talk) 04:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
regarding thanks
perhaps this thread will archived, hence please see https://leela52452.gitlab.io/16.html
Leela52452 (talk) 05:21, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for January 20
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Villeneuve, Queensland, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Mount Archer, Queensland (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 08:51, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
A tag has been placed on Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Surry Hills requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
Fire risk management in QLD
Kerry.
Sorry to bother you, but do you know any Queenslander wikipedian who might be able to help fill in a gap I have with this in regard to how Queensland does it. As far as I can tell QLD only issues fire bans. It does not have periods of low risk when no permit is required, periods declared of higher fire risk during which permits are required, independently of fire bans, as do all the other states. Or is that just how QLD does it? Regards. Aoziwe (talk) 09:25, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Aoziwe: Not a topic I know much about, but my scan of various websites suggests you are correct about fire bans being the tool of choice and that their scope is generally a local government area. I suspect due to the range of climates across Queensland, it might be difficult to define a state-wide period of low risk, etc. Qld had bushfires, flooding rain (south-east) and cyclones (far north) concurrently last week! These are the only things I could find that might be relevant: