User talk:Mgiganteus1/Archive 5
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Nepenthes IPA
Hello Mgiganteus; apologies, those edits to the pronunciation were initiated by me, I didn't realise that I was logged out on my laptop. It has been many months since I checked the entries, but I notice that some very odd pronunciations are creeping in, whether by American or British English standards. Any objections to my running through and tweaking? Whilst I originally included the IPA as a guide - and it should only be seen as such given regional differences - some of the names have shifted to pronunciations that I've never heard used on either side of the Atlantic. I also need to add in some missing ones. Let me know, and I'll see to it. Cheers, Attenboroughii (talk) 04:18, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
- Not to worry; I'd probably have done the same had I been so attentive. Only a couple of them have been tweaked since 2007, something I didn't notice until I started working on a lightweight iPhone app that will include pronunciation guides for all the species, among other things. I'll add the missing IPA as I go. The one thing that still bugs me is that the pronunciation for Nepenthes is still given as NIH-pen-theez, rather then NUH- or NEH-; there's an old discussion further up my wall (item 3) where the resolution was for NUH- (i.e. using schwa: ə ), but I have no experience with bots and am not about to change them all manually. I wonder what your thoughts are, and perhaps Rkitko will have an opinion also. I speak with RP, do passable estuary/cockney, Aussie and Saffa, and half my family speaks with an American accent. None of them say NIH-, but personal experience of speaking aside, the poster (see last 3 posts by Kwami in item 3 on my talk page) admits that ə makes a difference to speakers of non-American English, but not American English. I'm not saying that we *should* change it, but would prefer some democratic consensus on that matter that involves those who care most. Cheers Attenboroughii (talk) 11:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Saw a note regarding this discussion on Rkitko's talk page, and will offer what I can. By way of introduction, I'm trained as a botanist and I've worked on Wiktionary a lot, spending a lot of time dealing with pronunciation of both English and Classical Latin. The problem is that the pronunciation of the initial syllable is expected to be variable. I've checked the pronunciation of "Nepal" in the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, and for both the UK and US, both /nɪ-/ and /nə-/ are given as pronunciations of the initial unstressed syllable. I would expect the same to be true of Nepenthes. So, I see three options: (1) we make an arbitary choice to use one or the other pronunciation, (2) we give both prounciations at the start of the article, or (3) we give one pronunciation at the outset of the article, with a footnote placed there describing and explaining the alternative. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:53, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for your input, EncycloPetey. Looking at your options, 2) seems less neat as the pronunciation for the genus appears on all Nepenthes pages; 1) "arbitrary" perhaps isn't quite the right word, as any action on our part can only be considered; whether we favour one or the other, we'll have done so for a variety of reasons. Anyway, taking into account your citation of Nepal as an example, perhaps the currently employed /ɨ/ is the least problematic after all? /ɪ/ would miss the mark for most RP speakers, while /ə/ would be fine for RP and make little difference to GA speakers since they don't articulate their vowels quite so markedly; though /ɨ/ is a reduced vowel, which it certainly isn't in Nepal, or indeed some pronunciations of Nepenthes, in the latter the stress is most commonly on the -PEN- and /ɨ/ offers some flexibility where /ɪ/ and /ə/ do not. RP speakers still draw a short straw in terms of accuracy, but it's closer than /ɪ/. 3) may be overkill for an audience who probably don't care too much about how it is pronounced (and it is a trivial point after all) since it's a straightforward word. So concentrating on point 1), I want to establish what the consensus would be on the use of -ɪ, -ə, or -ɨ over the alternatives. Attenboroughii (talk) 01:27, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thinking about this some more, I'm leaning towards option 3. How about this: we keep /ɨ/ as the only pronunciation in the intro to Nepenthes and throughout all the daughter articles (for the reasons stated above), but include a footnote in Nepenthes explaining the nuances. All three pronunciations can then be sourced to popular dictionaries (most of which apparently favour /ɪ/, per kwami). I don't think it would be overkill to include a sentence or two on this, hidden away as it would be at the bottom of the page. If a reader isn't interested they can skip over the footnote. mgiganteus1 (talk) 16:21, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm content with option 3 also. I can't spare the time to see to it at present (not that it's urgent), but if you do think of a suitable footnote, please feel free. And IPA is a whole series of delicious beers - alas, Greene King is hard to find outside of the UK.Attenboroughii (talk) 01:16, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thinking about this some more, I'm leaning towards option 3. How about this: we keep /ɨ/ as the only pronunciation in the intro to Nepenthes and throughout all the daughter articles (for the reasons stated above), but include a footnote in Nepenthes explaining the nuances. All three pronunciations can then be sourced to popular dictionaries (most of which apparently favour /ɪ/, per kwami). I don't think it would be overkill to include a sentence or two on this, hidden away as it would be at the bottom of the page. If a reader isn't interested they can skip over the footnote. mgiganteus1 (talk) 16:21, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for your input, EncycloPetey. Looking at your options, 2) seems less neat as the pronunciation for the genus appears on all Nepenthes pages; 1) "arbitrary" perhaps isn't quite the right word, as any action on our part can only be considered; whether we favour one or the other, we'll have done so for a variety of reasons. Anyway, taking into account your citation of Nepal as an example, perhaps the currently employed /ɨ/ is the least problematic after all? /ɪ/ would miss the mark for most RP speakers, while /ə/ would be fine for RP and make little difference to GA speakers since they don't articulate their vowels quite so markedly; though /ɨ/ is a reduced vowel, which it certainly isn't in Nepal, or indeed some pronunciations of Nepenthes, in the latter the stress is most commonly on the -PEN- and /ɨ/ offers some flexibility where /ɪ/ and /ə/ do not. RP speakers still draw a short straw in terms of accuracy, but it's closer than /ɪ/. 3) may be overkill for an audience who probably don't care too much about how it is pronounced (and it is a trivial point after all) since it's a straightforward word. So concentrating on point 1), I want to establish what the consensus would be on the use of -ɪ, -ə, or -ɨ over the alternatives. Attenboroughii (talk) 01:27, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Saw a note regarding this discussion on Rkitko's talk page, and will offer what I can. By way of introduction, I'm trained as a botanist and I've worked on Wiktionary a lot, spending a lot of time dealing with pronunciation of both English and Classical Latin. The problem is that the pronunciation of the initial syllable is expected to be variable. I've checked the pronunciation of "Nepal" in the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, and for both the UK and US, both /nɪ-/ and /nə-/ are given as pronunciations of the initial unstressed syllable. I would expect the same to be true of Nepenthes. So, I see three options: (1) we make an arbitary choice to use one or the other pronunciation, (2) we give both prounciations at the start of the article, or (3) we give one pronunciation at the outset of the article, with a footnote placed there describing and explaining the alternative. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:53, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Hi, all. Thanks for thinking of me in this discussion, but I must confess my complete ignorance of IPA (isn't that some kind of beer?). I'm also accustomed to meeting others at conferences and instantly comparing pronunciations, usually brought on by talking about our favorite organisms. Subsequently, I have a rather lax attitude toward pronunciations. I'll leave the decision in your capable hands :-) Rkitko (talk) 02:20, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
Hello, Mgiganteuus1.
I would like to contact to you for copyright issue.
Kindly let me know how I can talk with you.
Chikiemon
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- Unfortunately at this point he refuses to even engage in dialog with me, and continues his disruptive editing.--Kevmin § 00:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
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Gladius
Hello, Mgiganteus1, and thank you for welcoming me in English section! I changed the formulation in Gladius (cephalopod) because it looked like "Vampyroteuthis is the sole recent member of Octopodiformes". Yes, my formulation isn't very exact in relation to extinct species. Maybe, you could find better formulation. With best regards, Stas000D (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
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Referencing Pteriomorphia
Hi. Why are lengthy references, as you reverted back to, better than more concise references such as I changed. While the extra wording probably wouldn't matter, except for providing nothing essential, when the reference appeared only at the bottom of the page, with in-line references now popping up on pages it seems they should be as short as reasonably possible. Just my perspective.J.H.McDonnell (talk) 23:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Nice mollusk contributions
Hello Mgiganteus1, nice to see your excellent contributions to WikiProject Gastropods and WikiProject Bivalves. Any and all contributions you can make, and continue to make, keeping with the projects' style are greatly appreciated. I look forward to spending more time making contributions myself, as I have been absent a few months due to work matters. Take care and keep up the great work! Shellnut (talk) 01:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for the help adding Abductin to the template! I missed it when adding the bivalve anatomy articles I created last week. Shellnut (talk) 16:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
WikiProject Bivalves
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Fauna Barnstar
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Thank you for all of your valuable contributions on marine fauna articles! Your edits have greatly added to the wealth and integrity of the articles on Cephalopods, Gastropods, Bivalves, and other marine mollusks. Shellnut (talk) 16:20, 17 November 2012 (UTC) |
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Precious
Nepenthes
Thank you for quality scientific articles, covering Nepenthes, serving project Cephalopods, adding to dinosaurs, and for a beautiful user page, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!
A year ago, you were the 365th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Seven years ago, you were recipient no. 365 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 January 2013
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March 2013
Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. We always appreciate when users upload new images. However, it appears that one or more of the images you have recently uploaded or added to an article may fail our non-free image policy. Most often, this involves editors uploading or using a copyrighted image of a living person. For other possible reasons, please read up on our Non-free image criteria. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Werieth (talk) 11:12, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
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File:Whale shark caught off Anping in 1994.jpg listed for deletion
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Auyán-tepui
Hi there - moving the image back to the centre now means it partly sits under the stuff on the left hand side - at least on my screen! Brookie :) { - he's in the building somewhere!} (Whisper...) 08:10, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
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Pronoun reversal
You edited the part of "even we" in the Pronoun reversal article, but I had Pronoun reversal and used to refer to myself as we — Preceding unsigned comment added by Francofelix94 (talk • contribs) 00:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
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Spirulina cephalopod confusion
Do you mind elaborating on why you created the redirect page of Spirulina (suborder) to the cephalopod page? There seems to be no support for the use of that term anywhere else on Wikipedia, and Spirulina does have an actual specific meaning regarding cyanobacteria. ScottHW (talk) 21:32, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
The link you cited for the use of "spirulina" as a suborder of cephalopod actually states that spirulina was an acceptable Homonym in 1827. And that it was listed as a suborder in 1912.
The conflict comes from the fact that the word Spirulina is currently, modernly, and actively used to describe a significantly taxonomy, specifically a genus of cyanobacteria. Derived from that scientific realm, the name Spirulina is often used to refer to the nutritional supplement derived from the cyanobacteria. A very brief web search will quickly show that this is the OVERWHELMING use of the word. I'm struggling to find additional sources confirming modern use of the suborder "Spirulina".
ScottHW (talk) 22:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
I guess you're right. The Spirulina cephalopod suborder is unambiguous. I was just annoyed to find out that a hundred years ago some guys decided to use the exact same word to name such drastically different things.
I also agree that the Spriulina disambiguation should be addressed. As a scientist, I would rather that that cyanobacteria be given the default position, since that's how the nutritional supplement derives it's name. But I recognize (and in fact just pointed out above) that to a general audience, the word most often refers to the supplements.
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Author citation dates in plant taxoboxes (above genera)
I have been adding dates to taxobox authorities for plant families and orders. I had seen this done in a few taxoboxes, and I am working on citing all of the authorities for plant families and orders. A discussion had taken place about this before, here, although the focus of this discussion was on all taxa, inlcuding genera and species. As you participated in a past discussion, and are actively editing Wikipedia now, I am posting this link in case you wish to comment.
Thanks. --AfadsBad (talk) 23:51, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
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VisualEditor newsletter
Hey Mgiganteus1! We've just deployed some fixes to the VisualEditor. These include:
- "Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you're looking at (bug 49943)
- "Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you edited last time if this is your second edit (bug 50441)
- VE edit section links will load the latest, not original, version in diff view preview (bug 50925)
- <big><big>Foo</big></big> and similar repeated tags will not get corrupted any more (bug 49755)
In the meantime, testing is proceeding well, and hopefully we can get some more fixes out over the next couple of days. If you're interested in helping out, we have a set of open tasks we'd really appreciate your assistance with :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:04, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
Talkback
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VE newsletter
Hey Mgiganteus1
We just deployed another VisualEditor release; bugs fixed include:
- Firefox 13/14 has been temporarily blacklisted, to avoid the insertion of broken links [[./that look like this]] (50720)
- Changing a reference in a template should no longer produce the bright red "you don't have a references block!" error (bugzilla:50423)
- Notices are now shown if you're editing a protected or semi-protected page (bugzilla:50415)
- The template inspector will no longer invite you to insert parameters that are already being used (50715)
- Same as above, but with aliases (50717)
- Parameter names in the template dialogue now word-wrap (50800)
- The link inspector will not show in the top left if you hit the return key while opening it (49941)
- Hitting return twice in the link editor will no longer introduce a new line that overwrites the link (51075)
- Oddly-named categories no longer cause corruption (50702)
- The toolbar no longer occasionally covers the cursor (48787)
- Changing the formatting of text no longer occasionally scrolls you upwards (50792)
Not specific bugs, but other things; cacheing is now improved, so people should stop seeing temporary breaking when the VisualEditor updates, and RTL support has received some patches. I hope this newsletter is helpful to people; I'll send out another one with the next deployment :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:14, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
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VE newsletter
Hey Mgiganteus1! Another set of patches :). Today we have:
- Required template parameters are now automatically added to new templates (50747)
- Templates with piped links now display correctly when you alter them (50801)
- If your edit token expires, you're now informed of it (50424).
- You still won't be able to save - that's due to be fixed on Monday :).
More on Monday, I suspect. Hope you have a good weekend :). I should also have some news about the IP launch pretty soon. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
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VE newsletter
Hey Mgiganteus1; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:
- If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
- If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
- If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
- sub tags are no longer removed ((49873)
- If you type at the end of links, they now extend
- Templates now only take a single click to insert
- Clear annotations clears links (50461)
- The link inspector stays open when you click to another item (50895)
- Typing after multi-byte characters no longer creats pawn icons (51140)
- Resizing thumbnails that have a default size set now works (50645)
- References made by tag:ref now display properly (bugzilla:50978)
- The VE is integrated with the spam blacklist (50826)
- Feedbacl link goes to the right language (bugzilla:47730)
There are a lot more improvements coming, but that's it for Monday and Tuesday. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 July 2013
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VE newsletter
Hey Mgiganteus1. The newest updates:
- Links now don't extend over space/punctuation/workbreaks when you type (bugzilla:51463)
- Users with the "minoredit" preference set get working functionality (bugzilla:51515)
- You can tab to buttons in dialogs, including the save dialog (bugzilla:50047)
- We now show the <newarticletext> (or <newarticletextanon>) message as an edit notice (bugzilla:51459)
- You can scroll dialog panels like in transclusions' templates' parameter listings (bugzilla:51739)
- Templates that only create meta-data and no display content at all (like Template:Use dmy dates) now can't be deleted accidentally or deliberately, but still don't show up (bugzilla:51322)
- FlaggedRevisions integration (bugzilla:49699)
- Edit summary will get the section title pre-added if you launched from a section edit link (bugzilla:50872)
Along with some miscellaneous language support fixes. That's all for today; as always, let us know if you spot more bugs. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 July 2013
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I'm confused about your edit summary. The article never referred to a species. SL93 (talk) 15:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2013
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Disambiguation link notification for August 2
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August 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to List of carnivorous plant periodicals may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "()"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.
- List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
- * {{jp icon}} [http://homepage3.nifty.com/jcps_tanabe/shoseki_jouhousi_kokunai.htm 情報誌(国内)] – summary of Japanese-language periodicals <!--http://www.webcitation.org/6Ig9EqxSz-->
Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 21:29, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter for 06 August 2013
It's been almost two weeks since the last newsletter, and a lot of improvements have been made during that time. The main things that people have noticed are significant improvements to speed for typing into long pages (T54012), scrolling (T54014) and deleting (T54013) on large pages. There have also been improvements to references, with the latest being support for list-defined references, which are <ref>s defined inside a <references> block (T53741). Users of Opera 12 and higher have had their web browser removed from the browser black-list, mostly as a result of work by a volunteer developer (T38000). Opera has not been fully white-listed yet, so these users will get an additional warning and request to report problems.
Significant changes were made to the user interface to de-emphasize VisualEditor. This has cut the use of VisualEditor by approximately one-third. You can read about these at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates/August 1, 2013, but they include:
- Re-ordering links to the editors to put "Edit source" first and VisualEditor second
- Renaming the link for VisualEditor to "Editbeta"
- Disabling the animation for section editing.
- Changing all labels for the classic wikitext editor to say "Edit source", regardless of namespace.
There have also been many smaller fixes, including these:
- Horizontal alignment of images working correctly on more pages (T53995)
- Categories with ':'s in their names (like Category:Wikipedia:Privacy) now work correctly (T53902)
- Magic JavaScript gadgets and tools like sortable tables will now work once the page is saved (T53565)
- Keyboard shortcut for "clear annotations" - now Control+\ or ⌘ Command+\ (T53507)
- Fixed corruption bugs that led to duplicate categories (T54238) and improper collapsing when multiple new references were added in a row (T54228).
- Improvements to display elements: The save dialog in Monobook is restored to normal size (T52058), pop-up notices on save now look the same in VisualEditor as in wikitext editor (T41632), and the popup about using wikitext has a link to the definition of wikitext that now opens in a new window (T54093)
Most of the Wikimedia Foundation staff is traveling this week and next, so no updates are expected until at least August 15th. If you're going to be in Hong Kong for Wikimania 2013, say hello to James Forrester, Philippe Beaudette, and the other members of the VisualEditor team.
As always, if you have questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:18, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 August 2013
- Arbitration report: Fourteen editors proposed for ban in Tea Party movement case
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DWKX Reversed launched date
Hi Mgiganteus1, I've edited the date section of article DWKX because I've seen that you've reversed the date. I made the typos for you since it is stated that 103.5 Wow FM was launched on July 22, 2013 and 103.5 K-Lite 2nd Iteration was launched on August 23, 2010 which is clearly a typo. Hope you're still considered this edit, thanks and cheers . Hamham31Heke! 00:59, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
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VisualEditor newsletter for 21 August 2013
Both VisualEditor and MediaWiki were upgraded recently. For VisualEditor, this is the long-awaited post-Wikimania update with many bug fixes and enhancements. Work also continues on speed at opening and during use, as well as on the bugs reported here and at other Wikipedias. The full report is at Mediawiki.
References are displaying properly, even when nested (T52749) or in image captions (T2000. Reference lists are now always fully populated with references (bug 50094). Firefox users can insert an existing reference in the first paragraph (T54159). Opera users no longer see corruption of categories when a reference was added (bug 50385).
Stray spaces are being stripped from the start of paragraphs to end one of the common <nowiki> problems (T53462). We also fixed a round-tripping bug that caused desirable whitespace in templates (used to make templates more legible, e.g., by putting each parameter in an infobox on a separate line) to get corrupted (bug 51150).
Wikilink handling was improved. Users are not allowed to create internal links to invalid titles (titles that are actually impossible due to limits on acceptable character combinations in titles, not redlinks) (T35094). You can extend wikilinks, but it won't do so over a wordbreak (like a space) (bugs 49931 and 51463).
A handful of fixes to the user interface were made. The toolbar doesn't float over personal tools after opening a dialog or the inspector (T54441). Toolbars were also re-written to be collapsible/expandable, with room for more icons. Buttons in dialogs can now be activated using the Tab ↹ and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ key commands (bug 50047). This saves time for editors, because you don't need to take your hands off the keyboard to click a button. We fixed a handful of bugs that affected only certain articles or certain browsers, including toolbar buttons in Firefox (bug 51986) and dialog panels that didn't always scroll correctly (bug 51739). Bugs with undo/redo getting confused have been fixed (T54113).
Images, in addition to getting references displaying correctly, also saw improvements with a set-empty |link=
parameter no longer corrupted (51963). We corrected thumbnail images' display so that they look don't wrong in some contexts (bug 51995). Inserted images no longer explicitly set their alignment, but instead inherit the default position in compliance with the Manual of Style (bug 51851).
More edit notices, warnings, and metadata like information about Pending Changes on an article now appear as appropriate (bug 49699). When new articles are created, users are now shown the <newarticletext> message (bug 51459). VisualEditor now handles templates that set "meta" items (like a category) and nothing else better (bug 51322). If the database is locked when a user tries to save with VisualEditor, they now get a message telling them as such and an opportunity to try again, rather than a silent failure (bug 51636).
When you save the page, having the default preference set to "mark all my edits as minor by default" no longer overrides the setting in the save dialog (bug 51515). If you open VisualEditor from a section edit link, the section's title will be pre-filled in in the edit summary box when you go to save it (bug 50872). The size of the save dialog box in the Monobook skin has been fixed (bug 50058). Also, wikipage content handlers like sortable tables are re-run automatically after saving (T53565).
A very early version of the mathematics equation editor is now available for testing on mw:Mediawiki. If you would like to help improve the user interface for math editor, please test out the extension at mw:Mediawiki:Sandbox and leave your comments directly at the discussion page for the Math Node User Interface at Mediawiki. You should be able to use your regular username and password should to login to Mediawiki.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:34, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
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Tardigrade
Hello, it looks like you made many contributions to this page, Do you have any information on the lifespan of these little Sprogs and what kind of elements they are made up of that extends their life faculty so much and makes them as rough as a bag of nails.--Prestigiouzman (talk) 10:16, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
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Thank you and hello
Thank you for welcoming me. You're the first to talk to me. How do I find pictures I can use in an article? The picture in Cucurbita pepo is not that good. There's bound to be a better one around. Another question, I'm using a JSTOR article to update c. pepo and Cucurbita. I do I "recycle" that reference without copying all the syntax for the reference every time?
Thank you, you are very kind and helpful. HalfGig (talk) 00:15, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
Your name
Are you named after the saber tooth tiger, mushroom, or grass? HalfGig (talk) 11:37, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
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Cite jstor and species
I've noticed that when I use cite jstor and create fill in the info, it creates a file called "template cite doi....." and that the doi numbers it makes seem to be bad. I'll just keep using cite jstor as you suggested. Thank you for being so helpful and I hope I don't bug you too much. I'm also trying to figure how to combine the two species lists. I made the second one but I don't like how it came out, too much repeated info.HalfGig (talk) 12:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
- Good tips. I like using academic/university level references. And the coding/syntax/markup isn't that hard for me to learn. HalfGig (talk) 16:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
I started my first article, a little know curcubit species. If you have tips, just let me know on my talk. If you want to edit it yourself, feel free. Thanks for all you help so far. HalfGig (talk) 21:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
- I responded on my talk page. Why do the references in the article have up arrows instead of carets? HalfGig (talk) 00:00, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
- Can you keep an eye on my talk page? That way we don't keep switching between your page and mine. I have another response for you there. HalfGig (talk) 11:53, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Hi. I just made an edit here to remove erroneous info and its errant reference. I put in more accurate info with a better reference. Is this ok to do? See Cucurbita for more details on why this prior info was erroneous. Please respond here. It's that other stuff I wanted to keep in one spot. HalfGig (talk) 23:56, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
- Absolutely. Text that is at odds with reliable sources should be removed or corrected. Being bold is encouraged on the 'pedia. :-) mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:02, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Would you mind taking a look at this new one too? thank you very much. HalfGig (talk) 01:06, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
- Again, nice article! I did a light copyedit and added a few categories. mgiganteus1 (talk) 01:41, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for the help. I learned from looking at decent articles, their style, format, etc and copying how they were done and the tips you've given have really helped. HalfGig (talk) 01:57, 5 September 2013 (UTC) Oh, I've still working on Cucurbita, I'll probably spend a few more weeks on it. I have more JSTOR articles to read. If you have tips on that article, it'd be appreciated.HalfGig (talk) 01:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter for September 5
This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Wikipedia received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.
Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.
A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".
In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>
) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).
Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
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Cucurbita fraterna
I'm done with my initial work on Cucurbita fraterna. It's my biggest one yet of the new ones. I've dumped a lot of facts in it but I think it doesn't read well. Could you look at it and help make it a better read? HalfGig (talk) 01:27, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you. HalfGig (talk) 14:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
- I made a very short article on compilospecies.HalfGig (talk) 15:39, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
Cucurbita texana
On my other new articles I did not find photos of the freely licensed type you told me about. My next article will be C. texana. I found 10 images (1 USDA, 9 forestryimages.org) that i think are freely licensed. I made an account on Wikipedia Commons and instantly got a talk page message about how to do things. It had a link with a form to fill out to upload images. It was not too hard but I am sure I goofed a few things. 1) I had trouble with the texana category I made. It shows up under the cucurbita category, but should show up under the c. pepo category 2) can you kindly look over the uploads and see if I need to fix anything. The images are in two places: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HalfGig and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cucurbita_texana . If I repeated a mistake, let me know and I'll fix it. Which image do you think is best on the soon to be new article? HalfGig (talk) 21:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
- Yep, those images are all fine license-wise. You included all the necessary information in your uploads (source, author, permission, etc.) but strictly speaking all images should have a license template (which I've added). Some of these templates can be quite obscure and difficult to find, but here's a more-or-less complete list: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags.
- I think placing C. texana within C. pepo would be confusing as they are both at the same taxonomic rank (that of species). If the category was named Cucurbita pepo var. texana then it would make sense for it to be subordinate to Cucurbita pepo. I'm not sure which combination (if any) has greater currency in the literature?
- I quite like File:Cucurbita texana 2.jpg and File:Cucurbita texana 7.jpg as they nicely illustrate the fruits and leaves, even as thumbnails. You could include both if you like, as is done in the Lion article. mgiganteus1 (talk) 22:48, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you again for being so helpful. Yes, there's inconsistency in how the various species/varieties relate to one another, not uncommon in the taxa world. They're either separate and equal, subspecies, or varieties. Maybe for now I'll leave it as and think about it. There's no doubt fraterna, texana, and pepo are related. If we make the Commons category subordinate to pepo, we should probably rename the wiki articles on fraterna and texana. Note the fruit photos have melons on the right and texana on the left. HalfGig (talk) 01:29, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Read the abstract and first page of this. Also, Cucurbita texana created.HalfGig (talk) 02:42, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Great improvements on texana! Thank you. I made a stub on the right Scheele, George Heinrich Adolf Scheele, using the wrong one as a model. And this is quite interesting, but maybe a bit dated as the most recent date mentioned is 1933. HalfGig (talk) 11:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Note this part "As most recently defined (Decker-Walters, et al., 1993), free-living gourds that occur in Texas are classified as C. pepo ssp. ovifera var. texana. Similar, free-living plants that occur in the U.S. beyond Texas (Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) are placed in C. pepo ssp. ovifera var. ozarkana." There still seems to be disagreement on what to call and the relations between pepo, texana, and fraterna. That 1993 ref is 20 years. I'm looking for newer stuff. And "However, primary areas of disagreement among those working with the C. pepo 'problem' do not center on the pattern of genetic differentiation that has produced the entities defined as subspecies and varieties in Fig. 1. These have been relatively well defined by a series of comparative studies that show considerable congruence. The 'Texas Gourd' has not been treated as a distinct species by specialists since the formal name change in 1988 (Decker, 1988;Decker-Walters, 1990;Decker-Walters et al., 1990;Decker-Walters et al., 1993;Harlan, 1992;Heiser, 1989;Smith, 1992;Cowan and Smith, 1993;Wilson, 1989;1990). There are, however, several competing hypotheses regarding phylogenetic linkage between both free-living and domesticated elements of C. pepo. " HalfGig (talk) 12:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Note this photo shows fruit that doesn't look like the white ones I found yesterday. HalfGig (talk) 13:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- I found Michael Nee's email address and emailed him. Hopefully he is willing to get us up to date. HalfGig (talk) 14:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Here is the crux of the problem, with two recent refs. HalfGig (talk) 23:13, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- I found Michael Nee's email address and emailed him. Hopefully he is willing to get us up to date. HalfGig (talk) 14:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Note this photo shows fruit that doesn't look like the white ones I found yesterday. HalfGig (talk) 13:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Note this part "As most recently defined (Decker-Walters, et al., 1993), free-living gourds that occur in Texas are classified as C. pepo ssp. ovifera var. texana. Similar, free-living plants that occur in the U.S. beyond Texas (Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) are placed in C. pepo ssp. ovifera var. ozarkana." There still seems to be disagreement on what to call and the relations between pepo, texana, and fraterna. That 1993 ref is 20 years. I'm looking for newer stuff. And "However, primary areas of disagreement among those working with the C. pepo 'problem' do not center on the pattern of genetic differentiation that has produced the entities defined as subspecies and varieties in Fig. 1. These have been relatively well defined by a series of comparative studies that show considerable congruence. The 'Texas Gourd' has not been treated as a distinct species by specialists since the formal name change in 1988 (Decker, 1988;Decker-Walters, 1990;Decker-Walters et al., 1990;Decker-Walters et al., 1993;Harlan, 1992;Heiser, 1989;Smith, 1992;Cowan and Smith, 1993;Wilson, 1989;1990). There are, however, several competing hypotheses regarding phylogenetic linkage between both free-living and domesticated elements of C. pepo. " HalfGig (talk) 12:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
- Great improvements on texana! Thank you. I made a stub on the right Scheele, George Heinrich Adolf Scheele, using the wrong one as a model. And this is quite interesting, but maybe a bit dated as the most recent date mentioned is 1933. HalfGig (talk) 11:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Two new ones
Cucurbita scabridifolia and Cucurbita martinezii
- Looking good. The only thing I could find to edit was to move the stub tags below the categories. This is so the auto-generated stub category (in this case Category:Cucurbitales stubs) appears after, and not before, the more important, non-maintenance categories. Anyway, keep up the good work! mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:06, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
- Following some tips and hint to nominate for "good" status, I've nominated Cucurbita for "good" status. If you have suggestions, please make the edits or let me know and I'll make the edits. If you want to review it for "good", that's okay too. HalfGig (talk) 23:28, 10 September 2013 (UTC), and a new one: Cucurbita andreana HalfGig (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Cucurbita species count
- new-Cucurbita moorei not much on that one. Nee has it in the pedatifolia group.HalfGig (talk) 00:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- Moorei may have the same problem C. gracilior. Nee counts them as species but this Plant List site doesn't. Not unusual to have disagreement. But the issue at hand is how to deal with this in the genus level Cucurbita article. Nee counts 27 species in 13 groups. But the Plant List has 19 species. What should we do here? HalfGig (talk) 01:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- I think a peer-reviewed paper such as Nee's should take precedence over The Plant List, especially as their determinations for this genus only have a "medium confidence level" (explained here). Having said this, it would be good to mention competing taxonomic treatments, either stating that The Plant List recognises 19 species and providing a link to their page, or including their list of species in the article. mgiganteus1 (talk) 15:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- Excellent points. I'll be working on that over the next couple days. There are other taxonomy proposals too. I'lll poke around more. Thank you! I also started Cayaponia. I felt since it is the largest genus in the tribe, it should at least be a stub. HalfGig (talk) 20:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- If you don't mind looking it over, this set of edits are how I tried to deal with this. I also saw a couple boxes I put on my user main page. HalfGig (talk) 00:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
- Seems like a perfectly sensible solution! Let me know when you're done expanding Cucurbita and I'll be happy to copyedit it. mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:27, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
- I'm pretty much done. Mostly I'm waiting for the reviewer for "good" status to pick up the nomination. A copyedit would be greatly appreciated! HalfGig (talk) 02:34, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
- Seems like a perfectly sensible solution! Let me know when you're done expanding Cucurbita and I'll be happy to copyedit it. mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:27, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
- If you don't mind looking it over, this set of edits are how I tried to deal with this. I also saw a couple boxes I put on my user main page. HalfGig (talk) 00:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
- Excellent points. I'll be working on that over the next couple days. There are other taxonomy proposals too. I'lll poke around more. Thank you! I also started Cayaponia. I felt since it is the largest genus in the tribe, it should at least be a stub. HalfGig (talk) 20:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- I think a peer-reviewed paper such as Nee's should take precedence over The Plant List, especially as their determinations for this genus only have a "medium confidence level" (explained here). Having said this, it would be good to mention competing taxonomic treatments, either stating that The Plant List recognises 19 species and providing a link to their page, or including their list of species in the article. mgiganteus1 (talk) 15:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- Moorei may have the same problem C. gracilior. Nee counts them as species but this Plant List site doesn't. Not unusual to have disagreement. But the issue at hand is how to deal with this in the genus level Cucurbita article. Nee counts 27 species in 13 groups. But the Plant List has 19 species. What should we do here? HalfGig (talk) 01:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
- Cucurbita sororia, Cucurbita palmeri, Cucurbita kellyana new HalfGig (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
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VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013
VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.
As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u>
(underline), <sub>
(subscript), and <sup>
(superscript), <s>
(strikethrough) and <code>
(computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.
In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).
In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.
Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).
Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.
Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).
Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
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GA review of Cucurbita
Hi, not sure if you've seen that I'm reviewing Cucurbita - looks as if you have been helping nom with the article and can advise on list/table formats to make references clear, I've a couple of small queries there which formatting might iron out. Overall it's a lovely article and it was a pleasure to read it. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Cucurbita GA review
This has been started by Chiswick Chap. If you could do a copyedit, that would be awesome. HalfGig (talk) 18:38, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Helping Hand Barnstar
The Helping Hand Barnstar | ||
For great performance in helping people learn wiki ways, especially myself. HalfGig (talk) 21:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC) |
- With Bar. Really nice to see mentoring and collaboration working so well on an article. Good work both. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
- Chiswick Chap said "It may require care with lists and medical claims, and a separate section on constituents, for progress to FA." I asked for more info on his talk page because I'm not sure about the constituents parts. What do you see we need to do to get it to FA? I would need a helping start with tables. I worked on medical claims, but perhaps more is needed. I'll readily share credit as I couldn't do this without you. The article is definitely better now. HalfGig (talk) 10:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
- New articles: Cayaponia espelina, Pyrus amygdaliformis, Pyrus armeniacifolia, António Luiz Patricio da Silva Manso. If you have time to look at them... HalfGig (talk) 18:27, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
- Chiswick Chap said "It may require care with lists and medical claims, and a separate section on constituents, for progress to FA." I asked for more info on his talk page because I'm not sure about the constituents parts. What do you see we need to do to get it to FA? I would need a helping start with tables. I worked on medical claims, but perhaps more is needed. I'll readily share credit as I couldn't do this without you. The article is definitely better now. HalfGig (talk) 10:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
- With Bar. Really nice to see mentoring and collaboration working so well on an article. Good work both. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
10mm question
Any ideas on what to do with the "10mm question" in User_talk:HalfGig#Cucurbita_copyedit? HalfGig (talk) 21:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
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- Featured content: Wikipedia takes the stage
DYK for Guilá Naquitz Cave
On 28 September 2013, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Guilá Naquitz Cave, which you created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that squash remains at Guilá Naquitz Cave are the oldest known evidence of crop domestication in the Americas? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Guilá Naquitz Cave. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check) and it will be added to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page. |
Help with Lewis Leonard Forman
If you have time, I could use help on this new article: Lewis Leonard Forman. See ref 5, I need title and author name. I'm having trouble getting proper info (and hence format) on refs 4 and 6. Ref 8 is shaky as it says year 1942 but Forman would have been 13 years old then. I got this rough info from es.wiki and went through it to verify it. This is what's left at this point. Thank you. HalfGig (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
- Stemonitis picked up on it from WT:Plants and fixed it. I wonder where he found the stuff. I'm ready for you, if you don't mind, to look at Cucurbita#Chemical_constituents. I think we're close to the peer review ready other users mentioned. HalfGig (talk) 01:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Cucurbita peer review
I just listed Cucurbita at Wikipedia:Peer review/Cucurbita/archive1. Any help you have time for is greatly appreciated. The Cucurbita#Chemical_constituents section could use some attention. I'd greatly appreciate any assistance. HalfGig (talk) 01:48, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 02 October 2013
- Discussion report: References to individuals and groups, merging wikiprojects, portals on the Main page, and more
- News and notes: WMF signals new grantmaking priorities
- Featured content: Bobby, Ben, Roger and a fantasia
- Arbitration report: Infoboxes: After the war
- WikiProject report: U2 Too
The Signpost: 09 October 2013
- Traffic report: Shutdown shenanigans
- WikiProject report: Australian Roads
- Featured content: Under the sea
- News and notes: Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
- In the media: College credit for editing Wikipedia
- Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute and Ebionites 3 cases continue; third arbitrator resigns
Hello Mgiganteus, It looks as though you are busy in other areas right now, but I just wanted to point out that I was told that this kind of template, since it is intended to be a navigational aid, should probably not contain red links (except maybe for a brief period of time). The red links in the cephalopod anatomy template have been there for nearly a year. In the MoS it says about these navigational templates: "Red links should be avoided ... editors are encouraged to write the article first." I do totally understand why these are listed though; I was tempted to do the same thing in the templates for Gastropod anatomy and Bivalve anatomy, but in the end I left them incomplete without any red links. Red links are a useful reminder for us, the writers, but they are not useful for the readers or consumers of WP. Hope you don't mind my pointing this out. All best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 13:36, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable
".
The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).
There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).
Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 October 2013
- News and notes: Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
- Traffic report: Peaceful potpourri
- WikiProject report: Heraldry and Vexillology
- Featured content: That's a lot of pictures
- Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case closes
- Discussion report: Ada Lovelace Day, paid advocacy on Wikipedia, sidebar update, and more
I was wondering if you could help me expand this by, oh, 50% or so. There are 10 references right now but choosing what to add has stymied me. FYI, User:Sasata has given some great feedback on the Cucurbita peer review that I am working through. (talk) 00:20, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 October 2013
- News and notes: Grantmaking season—rumblings in the German-language community
- Traffic report: Your average week ... and a fish
- Featured content: Your worst nightmare as a child is now featured on Wikipedia
- Discussion report: More discussion of paid advocacy, upcoming arbitrator elections, research hackathon, and more
- In the media: The decline of Wikipedia; Sue Gardner releases statement on Wiki-PR; Australian minister relies on Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: Elements of the world
Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter
Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013
Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...
New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian
Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.
New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??
New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges
News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY
Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions
New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration
Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 21:12, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 October 2013
- Traffic report: 200 miles in 200 years
- In the media: Rand Paul plagiarizes Wikipedia?
- News and notes: Sex and drug tourism—Wikivoyage's soft underbelly?
- Featured content: Wrestling with featured content
- Recent research: User influence on site policies: Wikipedia vs. Facebook vs. Youtube
- WikiProject report: Special: Lessons from the dead and dying
The Signpost: 06 November 2013
- Traffic report: Danse Macabre
- Featured content: Five years of work leads to 63-article featured topic
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Accessibility
- Arbitration report: Ebionites 3 case closed
- Discussion report: Sockpuppet investigations, VisualEditor, Wikidata's birthday, and more
Disambiguation link notification for November 9
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes viridis, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Dinagat, Lamina and Stewart McPherson (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
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The Signpost: 13 November 2013
- Traffic report: Google Doodlebugs bust the block
- Featured content: 1244 Chinese handscroll leads nine-strong picture contingent
- WikiProject report: The world of soap operas
- Discussion report: Commas, Draft namespace proposal, education updates, and more
VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.
A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
- Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
- Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
- Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
- File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
- Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
- Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
- Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
- Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through
/wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit
and/w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit
both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915). - Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
- Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
- Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
- Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
- Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
- Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
- Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
- Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid (
$wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies
set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)
Looking ahead:
- VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
- Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
- In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 November 2013
- From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
- Featured content: Rockin' the featured pictures
- WikiProject report: Score! American football on Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Ill Winds
- Arbitration report: WMF opens the door for non-admin arbitrators
The Signpost: 04 December 2013
- Traffic report: Kennedy shot Who
- Recent research: Reciprocity and reputation motivate contributions to Wikipedia; indigenous knowledge and "cultural imperialism"; how PR people see Wikipedia
- Discussion report: Musical scores, diversity conference, Module:Convert, and more
- WikiProject report: Electronic Apple Pie
- Featured content: F*&!
Interesting question
whether Superspecies and Artenkreis should be merged. I'm not very familiar with these terms that are mostly used in zoology. There are dictionary definitions accessible online that seem to say that Ring species and Artenkreis are the same, but I wonder if Artenkreis is supposed to be a ring of species, and consequently a superspecies but not a ring species. More investigation needed. I'll look for original sources, since later ones might have muddled things. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:00, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library's Books and Bytes newsletter (#2)
Welcome to the second issue of The Wikipedia Library's Books & Bytes newsletter! Read on for updates about what is going on at the intersection of Wikipedia and the library world.
Wikipedia Library highlights: New accounts, new surveys, new positions, new presentations...
Spotlight on people: Another Believer and Wiki Loves Libraries...
Books & Bytes in brief: From Dewey to Diversity conference...
Further reading: Digital library portals around the web...
The Wikipedia Library Survey
As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi t | c 15:30, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 11 December 2013
- Traffic report: Deaths of Mandela, Walker top the list
- In the media: Edward Snowden a "hero"; German Wikipedia court ruling
- News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments—winners announced
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Wine
- Interview: Wikipedia's first Featured Article centurion
- Featured content: Viewer discretion advised
- Technology report: MediaWiki 1.22 released
Hi
See my post on Zad68's talk page. I want to deeply thank you for all your help and kindness. Too bad there is so much bickering on wikipedia. HalfGig talk 22:04, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 December 2013
- WikiProject report: Babel Series: Tunisia on the French Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Hopper to the top
- Discussion report: Usernames, template data and documentation, Main page, and more
- News and notes: Nine new arbitrators announced
- Featured content: Triangulum, the most boring constellation in the universe
- Technology report: Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset
VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
- Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
- Auto-numbered external links like [1] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
- Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
- There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
- Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
- It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally. To do so, append
?veaction=edit
to the end of the page name. For example, changehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
tohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit
to open a random page in VisualEditor. This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.
Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for December 27
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes robcantleyi, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Lamina (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
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The Signpost: 25 December 2013
- Recent research: Cross-language editors, election predictions, vandalism experiments
- Featured content: Drunken birds and treasonous kings
- Discussion report: Draft namespace, VisualEditor meetings
- WikiProject report: More Great WikiProject Logos
- News and notes: IEG round 2 funding rewards diverse ambitions
- Technology report: OAuth: future of user designed tools
Disambiguation link notification for January 3
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes hemsleyana, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Parabolic (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
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The Signpost: 01 January 2014
- Traffic report: A year stuck in traffic
- Arbitration report: Examining the Committee's year
- In the media: Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer?
- Book review: Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia
- News and notes: The year in review
- Discussion report: Article incubator, dates and fractions, medical disclaimer
- WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Fifth Edition
- Featured content: 2013—the trends
- Technology report: Looking back on 2013
The Signpost: 08 January 2014
- Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant
- Traffic report: Tragedy and television
- Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit
- News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
- WikiProject report: Jumping into the television universe
- Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology
Trying again
I've decided to try again to make Cucurbita as good as we can. I'll start by going back over the peer review. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you again for your long support and superb guidance. Best wishes to you on the New Year. HalfGig talk 13:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think I had more of the peer review done that I recalled. See article talk page for the issues. HalfGig talk 13:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Books & Bytes New Years Double Issue
Happy New Year, and welcome to a special double issue of Books & Bytes. We've included a retrospective on the changes and progress TWL has seen over the last year, the results of the survey TWL participants completed in December, some of our plans for the future, a second interview with a Wiki Love Libraries coordinator, and more. Here's to 2014 being a year of expansion and innovation for TWL!
The Wikipedia Library completed the first 6 months of its Individual Engagement grant last week. Here's where we are and what we've done:
- Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of 400-600%
- Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC
- New pilot projects: Started the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Wikipedia researchers
- Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors
- Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration
- Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting
VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
- meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
- You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog –
__NOTOC__
and__FORCETOC__
as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and__NOEDITSECTION__
as a checkbox (bug 57166). - The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
- Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide was updated recently to show some new and upcoming features.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
Subscriptions to this newsletter are managed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Please add or remove your name to change your subscription settings. If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:02, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 January 2014
- News and notes: German chapter asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites?
- Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published
- Traffic report: The Hours are Ours
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology
Tables
See User_talk:Sasata#Cucurbita.23Production_tables. Can you or someone you know help with: An intro to the two new tables (I wrote one but it can probably be improved), removing the source column (I tried and it didn't work), and if and how to combine the tables (note the same 10 countries are not in the tables). HalfGig talk 11:41, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 January 2014
- Book review: Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse
- News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
- Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume
- Special report: The few who write Wikipedia
- Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki
- In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager
- Traffic report: No show for the Globes
The Signpost: 29 January 2014
- Traffic report: Six strikes out
- WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
- News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
- Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
Congratulations on winning the Natural History Shield
The Natural History Shield | |
For great service to Wikipedia in the area of Natural History. Your efforts in improving these areas and helping other users is greatly needed and appreciated! HalfGig talk 15:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC) |
- Thank you! I've been a bit quiet lately but hope to get back into the swing of things soon enough. Great to see you editing again, btw. :-) mgiganteus1 (talk) 23:41, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 January 2014
- Traffic report: Six strikes out
- WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
- News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
- Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
The Signpost: 12 February 2014
- Technology report: Left with no choice
- Featured content: Space selfie
- Traffic report: Sports Day
- WikiProject report: Game Time in Russia
VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.
The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.
- The main priority is redesigning the reference dialog, with the goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs and URLs and streamlining the process. Current concept drawings are available at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
- A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog. When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name. If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g.
==section headings==
in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML. - You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext. It will see significant improvements at a later date.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu is being redesigned. Your feedback on the special character inserter is still wanted, especially if you depend on Wikipedia's character inserters for your normal editing rather than using the ones built into your computer.
- You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu (three bars next to the Cancel button) (T54844).
- If you edit categories, your changes will now display correctly after saving the page (T50560).
- Saving the page should be faster now (T61660).
- Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at T53734.
Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting (dir="rtl"
).
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:21, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 February 2014
- News and notes: Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
- Technology report: ULS Comeback
- WikiProject report: Countering Systemic Bias
- Featured content: Holotype
- Traffic report: Chilly Valentines
The Signpost: 26 February 2014
- Featured content: Odin salutes you
- WikiProject report: Racking brains with neuroscience
- Special report: Diary of a protester: Wikimedian perishes in Ukrainian unrest
- Traffic report: Snow big deal
- Recent research: CSCW '14 retrospective; the impact of SOPA on deletionism
Books & Bytes, Issue 4
News for February from your Wikipedia Library.
Donations drive: news on TWL's partnership efforts with publishers
Open Access: Feature from Ocaasi on the intersection of the library and the open access movement
American Library Association Midwinter Conference: TWL attended this year in Philadelphia
Royal Society Opens Access To Journals: The UK's venerable Royal Society will give the public (and Wikipedians) full access to two of their journal titles for two days on March 4th and 5th
Going Global: TWL starts work on pilot projects in other language Wikipedias
(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014
- Traffic report: Brinksmen on the brink
- Discussion report: Four paragraph lead, indefinitely blocked IPs, editor reviews broken?
- Featured content: Full speed ahead for the WikiCup
- WikiProject report: Article Rescue Squadron
The Signpost: 12 March 2014
- Traffic report: War and awards
- Featured content: Ukraine burns
- WikiProject report: Russian WikiProject Entomology
VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
- The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (T56361).
- Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has been slightly redesigned, to introduce larger buttons. Your suggestions for more significant changes to the special character inserter are still wanted.
- The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like
__STATICREDIRECT__
,__[NO]INDEX__
and__
[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__
, and more. New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. - It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
- VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
- You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+S shortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
- After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
- Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.
The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright
size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.
Looking ahead: Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl"
) may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on 19 April 2014 at 2000 UTC. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 March 2014
- WikiProject report: We have history
- Featured content: Spot the bulldozer
- News and notes: Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny
- Traffic report: Into thin air
- Technology report: Wikimedia engineering report
The Signpost: 26 March 2014
- Comment: A foolish request
- Traffic report: Down to a simmer
- News and notes: Commons Picture of the Year—winners announced
- Featured content: Winter hath a beauty that is all his own
- Technology report: Why will Wikipedia look like the Signpost?
- WikiProject report: From the peak
The Signpost: 02 April 2014
- WikiProject report: Deutschland in English
- Special report: On the cusp of the Wikimedia Conference
- Featured content: April Fools
- Traffic report: Regressing to the mean
The Signpost: 09 April 2014
- News and notes: Round 2 of FDC funding open to public comments
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Law
- Special report: Community mourns passing of Adrianne Wadewitz
- Traffic report: Conquest of the Couch Potatoes
- Featured content: Snow heater and Ash sweep
Disambiguation link notification for April 17
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Selective laser sintering, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Sinter (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:57, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 5
- New Visiting Scholar positions
- TWL Branch on Arabic Wikipedia, microgrants program
- Australian articles get a link to librarians
- Spotlight: "7 Reasons Librarians Should Edit Wikipedia"
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:54, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 April 2014
- Special report: 2014 Wikimedia Conference—what is the impact?
- News and notes: Wikimedian passes away
- WikiProject_report: To the altar—Catholicism
- Wikimania: Winning bid announced for 2015
- Traffic report: Reflecting in Gethsemane
- Featured content: There was I, waiting at the church
VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.
- In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
- You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing Return. This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
- VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
- When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
- The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
- The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
- If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "Move" item is currently housed). On the English Wikipedia, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "Edit source" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "Edit source" and "View history" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
- After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.
Looking ahead: A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting (dir="rtl"
) will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Monday, 19 May 2014 at 18:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this on your own page, subscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 April 2014
- News and notes: WMF's draft annual plan turns indigestible as an FDC proposal
- Traffic report: Going to the Doggs
- Breaking: The Foundation's new executive director
- WikiProject report: Genetics
- Interview: Wikipedia in the Peabody Essex Museum
- Featured content: Browsing behaviours
- Recent research: Wikipedia predicts flu more accurately than Google
The Signpost: 07 May 2014
- Traffic report: TMZedia
- WikiCup: 2014 WikiCup enters round three
- In the media: Google and the flu; Adrianne
- WikiProject report: Singing with Eurovision
- Featured content: Wikipedia at the Rijksmuseum
The Signpost: 14 May 2014
- Investigative report: Hong Kong's Wikimania 2013—failure to produce financial statement raises questions of probity
- WikiProject report: Relaxing in Puerto Rico
- Featured content: On the rocks
- Traffic report: Eurovision, Google Doodles, Mothers, and 5 May
- Technology report: Technology report needs editor, Media Viewer offers a new look
VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014
Did you know?
The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.
Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.
Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.
Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.
- There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:
<span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>
. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis. - The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
- The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
- TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
- Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
- Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
- Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
- In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
- There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
- There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
- The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
- At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.
Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 21 May 2014
- News and notes: "Crisis" over Wikimedia Germany's palace revolution
- Featured content: Staggering number of featured articles
- Traffic report: Doodles' dawn
The Signpost: 28 May 2014
- News and notes: The English Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion; wiki inventor interviewed on video
- Featured content: Zombie fight in the saloon
- Traffic report: Get fitted for flipflops and floppy hats
- Recent research: Predicting which article you will edit next
Books & Bytes, Issue 6
- New donations from Oxford University Press and Royal Society (UK)
- TWL does Vegas: American Library Association Annual plans
- TWL welcomes a new coordinator, resources for library students and interns
- New portal on Meta, resources for starting TWL branches, donor call blitzes, Wikipedia Visiting Scholar news, and more
Petiole (botany): why Phyllodes (moth)?
In this edit of Petiole (botany), you inserted {{for|the moth genus|Phyllodes (moth)}}. Why? Is there a citation for this genus having ever been known as Petiole? (A Google search reveals that it is Eublemma amoena that has the common name "petiole moth"). Why did you not instead use {{for|the constricted segment in some ant species|Petiole (insect anatomy)}}? I will look for your response here. —Anomalocaris (talk) 23:09, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Anomalocaris. I added that hatnote because Phyllodes redirects to Petiole (botany). I've now changed the template to the more appropriate {{redirect}}. mgiganteus1 (talk) 23:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you for changing the hatnote template. It made no sense before, but it makes sense now. —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:50, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 June 2014
- News and notes: Two new affiliate-selected trustees
- Featured content: Ye stately homes of England
- In the media: Reliable or not, doctors use Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Autumn in summer
The Signpost: 11 June 2014
- News and notes: PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
- Traffic report: The week the wired went weird
- Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
- Special report: Questions raised over secret voting for WMF trustees
- Featured content: Politics, ships, art, and cyclones
The Wikipedia Library: New Account Coordinators Needed
Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.
It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 June 2014
- News and notes: With paid advocacy in its sights, the Wikimedia Foundation amends their terms of use
- Featured content: Worming our way to featured picture
- Special report: Wikimedia Bangladesh: a chapter's five-year journey
- Traffic report: You can't dethrone Thrones
- WikiProject report: Visiting the city
VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
Did you know?
The character formatting menu, or "Style text" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.
Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
- They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
- You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
- The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "
date"
for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and "boolean"
for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like{{citeweb}}
→{{cite web}}
) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc. - Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
- They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
- It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
- You can now add and edit
{{DISPLAYTITLE}}
and__DISAMBIG__
in the "Page options" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned. - The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.
Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.
The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.
Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.
If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact me if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).
To change your subscription to this newsletter, please see the subscription pages on Meta or the English Wikipedia. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 June 2014
- News and notes: US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan
- Traffic report: Fake war, or real sport?
- Exclusive: "We need to be true to who we are": Foundation's new executive director speaks to the Signpost
- Discussion report: Media Viewer, old HTML tags
- Featured content: Showing our Wörth
- WikiProject report: The world where dreams come true
- Recent research: Power users and diversity in WikiProjects
The Signpost: 02 July 2014
- In the media: Wiki Education; medical content; PR firms
- Traffic report: The Cup runneth over... and over.
- News and notes: Wikimedia Israel receives Roaring Lion award
- Featured content: Ship-shape
- WikiProject report: Indigenous Peoples of North America
- Technology report: In memoriam: the Toolserver (2005–14)
The Signpost: 09 July 2014
- Special report: Wikimania 2014—what will it cost?
- Wikimedia in education: Exploring the United States and Canada with LiAnna Davis
- Featured content: Three cheers for featured pictures!
- News and notes: Echoes of the past haunt new conflict over tech initiative
- Traffic report: World Cup, Tim Howard rule the week
The Signpost: 16 July 2014
- Special report: $10 million lawsuit against Wikipedia editors withdrawn, but plaintiff intends to refile
- Traffic report: World Cup dominates for another week
- Wikimedia in education: Serbia takes the stage with Filip Maljkovic
- Featured content: The Island with the Golden Gun
The Signpost: 23 July 2014
- Wikimedia in education: Education program gaining momentum in Israel
- Traffic report: The World Cup hangs on, though tragedies seek to replace it
- News and notes: Institutional media uploads to Commons get a bit easier
- Featured content: Why, they're plum identical!
Books and Bytes - Issue 7
Books & Bytes
Issue 7, June-July 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- Seven new donations, two expanded partnerships
- TWL's Final Report up, read the summary
- Adventures in Las Vegas, WikiConference USA, and updates from TWL coordinators
- Spotlight: Blog post on BNA's impact on one editor's research
The Signpost: 30 July 2014
- Book review: Knowledge or unreality?
- Recent research: Shifting values in the paid content debate
- News and notes: How many more hoaxes will Wikipedia find?
- Wikimedia in education: Success in Egypt and the Arab World
- Traffic report: Doom and gloom vs. the power of Reddit
- Featured content: Skeletons and Skeltons
VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014
The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
- Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
- You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
- All references and footnotes (
<ref>
tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu. - When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
- All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
- The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
- The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).
If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 August 2014
- Technology report: A technologist's Wikimania preview
- Traffic report: Ebola
- Featured content: Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them
- Wikimedia in education: Leading universities educate with Wikipedia in Mexico
The Signpost: 13 August 2014
- Special report: Twitter bots catalogue government edits to Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Disease, decimation and distraction
- Wikimedia in education: Global Education: WMF's Perspective
- Wikimania: Promised the moon, settled for the stars
- News and notes: Media Viewer controversy spreads to German Wikipedia
- In the media: Monkey selfie, net neutrality, and hoaxes
- Featured content: Cambridge got a lot of attention this week
Disambiguation link notification for August 19
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited List of giant squid specimens and sightings, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Buccal. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
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The Signpost: 20 August 2014
- Traffic report: Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
- WikiProject report: Bats and gloves
- Op-ed: A new metric for Wikimedia
- Featured content: English Wikipedia departs for Japan
Hyphenation and Nepenthes junghuhnii
I don't think it was necessary to undo the hyphenation change. WP:QUOTE says "Exceptions are trivial spelling or typographical errors that obviously do not affect the intended meaning; these may be silently corrected ..." Happy editing! Chris the speller yack 14:07, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 August 2014
- In the media: Plagiarism and vandalism dominate Wikipedia news
- News and notes: Media Viewer—Wikimedia's emotional roller-coaster
- Traffic report: Viral
- Featured content: Cheats at Featured Pictures!
The Signpost: 03 September 2014
- Arbitration report: Media viewer case is suspended
- Featured content: 1882 × 5 in gold, and thruppence more
- Traffic report: Holding Pattern
- WikiProject report: Gray's Anatomy (v. 2)
The Signpost: 10 September 2014
- Traffic report: Refuge in celebrity
- Featured content: The louse and the fish's tongue
- WikiProject report: Checking that everything's all right
The Signpost: 17 September 2014
- WikiProject report: A trip up north to Scotland
- News and notes: Wikipedia's traffic statistics are off by nearly one-third
- Traffic report: Tolstoy leads a varied pack
- Featured content: Which is not like the others?
Disambiguation link notification for September 24
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes abgracilis, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Type locality. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
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The Signpost: 24 September 2014
- Featured content: Oil paintings galore
- Recent research: 99.25% of Wikipedia birthdates accurate; focused Wikipedians live longer; merging WordNet, Wikipedia and Wiktionary
- Traffic report: Wikipedia watches the referendum in Scotland
- WikiProject report: GAN reviewers take note: competition time
- Arbitration report: Banning Policy, Gender Gap, and Waldorf education
The Signpost: 01 October 2014
- From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
- Dispatches: Let's get serious about plagiarism
- WikiProject report: Animals, farms, forests, USDA? It must be WikiProject Agriculture
- Traffic report: Shanah Tovah
- Featured content: Brothers at War
Books and Bytes - Issue 8
Books & Bytes
Issue 8, August-September2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- TWL now a Wikimedia Foundation program, moves on from grant status
- Four new donations, including large DeGruyter parntership, pilot with Elsevier
- New TWL coordinators, Wikimania news, new library platform discussions, Wiki Loves Libraries update, and more
- Spotlight: "Traveling Through History" - an editor talks about his experiences with a TWL newspaper archive, Newspapers.com
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect
or mw-disambig
class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir
attribute but no lang
set (bug 69955).
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.
Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. To help with translations, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre at Meta. Thank you!
The Signpost: 08 October 2014
- In the media: Opposition research firm blocked; Australian bushfires
- Featured content: From a wordless novel to a coat of arms via New York City
- Traffic report: Panic and denial
- Technology report: HHVM is the greatest thing since sliced bread
The Signpost: 15 October 2014
- Op-ed: Ships—sexist or sexy?
- Arbitration report: One case closed and two opened
- Featured content: Bells ring out at the Temple of the Dragon at Peace
- Technology report: Attempting to parse wikitext
- Traffic report: Now introducing ... mobile data
- WikiProject report: Signpost reaches the Midwest
The Signpost: 22 October 2014
- Featured content: Admiral on deck: a modern Ada Lovelace
- Traffic report: Death, War, Pestilence... Movies and TV
- WikiProject report: De-orphanning articles—a huge task but with a huge team of volunteers to help
The Signpost: 29 October 2014
- Featured content: Go West, young man
- In the media: Wikipedia a trusted source on Ebola; Wikipedia study labeled government waste; football biography goes viral
- Maps tagathon: Find 10,000 digitised maps this weekend
- Traffic report: Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles
Disambiguation link notification for November 3
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes viridis, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dinagat. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 13:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (November 2014)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:
- DeGruyter: 1000 new accounts for English and German-language research. Sign up on one of two language Wikipedias:
- Fold3: 100 new accounts for American history and military archives
- Scotland's People: 100 new accounts for Scottish genealogy database
- British Newspaper Archive: expanded by 100+ accounts for British newspapers
- Highbeam: 100+ remaining accounts for newspaper and magazine archives
- Questia: 100+ remaining accounts for journal and social science articles
- JSTOR: 100+ remaining accounts for journal archives
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 23:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
- This message was delivered via the Mass Message to the Book & Bytes recipient list.
VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014
VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.
It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.
Recent improvements
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.
The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.
VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.
The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)
Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [2] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.
Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.
The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.
You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!
The Signpost: 05 November 2014
Hi again
Hi. I started editing again yesterday. I made 2 new short articles, started a third, and then User:Sminthopsis84 asked me if I wanted to help get Cucurbita to FA. She and User:CorinneSD are helping. I'd like Sminthopsis84 to get official credit for it. I was wondering if you could help too. I guess some sort of precheck would be warranted. Nice to chat again and hope you can help out. CorinneSD is a very good copyeditor. I suggested she ask Sasata for input on what to look for. Let's coordinate the talk at Talk:Cucurbita. HalfGig talk 13:43, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 12 November 2014
- In the media: Amazon Echo; EU freedom of panorama; Bluebeard's Castle
- Traffic report: Holidays, anyone?
- Featured content: Wikipedia goes to church in Lithuania
- WikiProject report: Talking hospitals
The Signpost: 26 November 2014
- Featured content: Orbital Science: Now you're thinking with explosions
- WikiProject report: Back with the military historians
- Traffic report: Big in Japan
The Signpost: 03 December 2014
- In the media: Embroidery and cheese
- Featured content: ABCD: Any Body Can Dance!
- Traffic report: Turkey and a movie
- WikiProject report: Today on the island
The Signpost: 10 December 2014
- Op-ed: It's GLAM up North!
- Traffic report: Dead Black Men and Science Fiction
- Featured content: Honour him, love and obey? Good idea with military leaders.
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:
- Elsevier - science and medicine journals and books
- Royal Society of Chemistry - chemistry journals
- Pelican Books - ebook monographs
- Public Catalogue Foundation- art books
Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
- This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.
The Signpost: 17 December 2014
- Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee election results
- Featured content: Tripping hither, tripping thither, Nobody knows why or whither; We must dance and we must sing, Round about our fairy ring!
- Traffic report: A December Lull
VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014
Did you know?
Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).
Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan
and colspan
elements, instead of trying to repair them.
You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.
You can now create and edit simple <blockquote>
paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".
Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1. " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.
If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.
You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.
Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.
Help
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
- Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.
Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 December 2014
- From the editor: Looking for new editors-in-chief
- In the media: Wales on GamerGate
- Featured content: Still quoting Iolanthe, apparently.
- WikiProject report: Microsoft does The Signpost
- Traffic report: North Korea is not pleased
Replaceable fair use File:Fischeripollis pollen.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Fischeripollis pollen.jpg. I noticed that this file is being used under a claim of fair use. However, I think that the way it is being used fails the first non-free content criterion. This criterion states that files used under claims of fair use may have no free equivalent; in other words, if the file could be adequately covered by a freely-licensed file or by text alone, then it may not be used on Wikipedia. If you believe this file is not replaceable, please:
- Go to the file description page and add the text
{{di-replaceable fair use disputed|<your reason>}}
below the original replaceable fair use template, replacing<your reason>
with a short explanation of why the file is not replaceable. - On the file discussion page, write a full explanation of why you believe the file is not replaceable.
Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).
If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 23:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
Cucurbita at FAC
It is finally there! Your input and review would be greatly appreciated. I can never thank you enough for helping me get started here. The main reason I got serious about editing was to improve this article. HalfGig talk 00:16, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 December 2014
- News and notes: The next big step for Wikidata—forming a hub for researchers
- In the media: Study tour controversy; class tackles the gender gap
- Traffic report: Surfin' the Yuletide
- Featured content: A bit fruity
Disambiguation link notification for January 8
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
- Nepenthes sumagaya
- added a link pointing to Nepenthes amabilis
- Nepenthes × hookeriana
- added a link pointing to Nepenthes amabilis
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:02, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 9
Books & Bytes
Issue 9, November-December 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- New donations, including real-paper-and-everything books, e-books, science journal databases, and more
- New TWL coordinators, conference news, a new open-access journal database, summary of library-related WMF grants, and more
- Spotlight: "Global Impact: The Wikipedia Library and Persian Wikipedia" - a Persian Wikipedia editor talks about their experiences with database access in Iran, writing on the Persian project and the JSTOR partnership
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 January 2015
- In the media: ISIL propaganda video; AirAsia complaints
- Featured content: Kock up
- Traffic report: Auld Lang Syne
The Signpost: 14 January 2015
- WikiProject report: Articles for creation: the inside story
- News and notes: Erasmus Prize recognizes the global Wikipedia community
- Featured content: Citations are needed
- Traffic report: Wikipédia sommes Charlie
The Signpost: 21 January 2015
- From the editor: Introducing your new editors-in-chief
- Anniversary: A decade of the Signpost
- News and notes: Annual report released; Wikimania; steward elections
- In the media: Johann Hari; bandishes and delicate flowers
- Featured content: Yachts, marmots, boat races, and a rocket engineer who attempted to birth a goddess
- Arbitration report: As one door closes, a (Gamer)Gate opens
The Signpost: 28 January 2015
- From the editor: An editorial board that includes you
- In the media: A murderous week for Wikipedia
- Traffic report: A sea of faces
VisualEditor News 2015—#1
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.
Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.
Recent improvements
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:
- starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
- takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
- might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
- is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray.
The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.
Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).
Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
Looking ahead
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.
We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
- Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
- Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.
Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 February 2015
- Op-ed: Is Wikipedia for sale?
- In the media: Gamergate and Muhammad controversies continue
- Traffic report: The American Heartland
- Featured content: It's raining men!
- Arbitration report: Slamming shut the GamerGate
- WikiProject report: Dicing with death – on Wikipedia?
- Technology report: Security issue fixed; VisualEditor changes
- Gallery: Langston Hughes
The Signpost: 11 February 2015
- From the editors: We want to know what you think!
- In the media: Is Wikipedia eating itself?
- Featured content: A grizzly bear, Operation Mascot, Freedom Planet & Liberty Island, cosmic dust clouds, a cricket five-wicket list, more fine art, & a terrible, terrible opera...
- Traffic report: Bowled over
- WikiProject report: Brand new WikiProjects profiled
- Gallery: Feel the love
The Signpost: 18 February 2015
- In the media: Students' use and perception of Wikipedia
- Special report: Revision scoring as a service
- Gallery: Darwin Day
- Traffic report: February is for lovers
- Featured content: A load of bull-sized breakfast behind the restaurant, Koi feeding, a moray eel, Spaghetti Nebula and other fishy, fishy fish
- Arbitration report: We've built the nuclear reactor; now what colour should we paint the bikeshed?
The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- Gallery: Far from home
- Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?
- Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired
- WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight
The Signpost: 25 February 2015
- News and notes: Questions raised over WMF partnership with research firm
- In the media: WikiGnomes and Bigfoot
- Gallery: Far from home
- Traffic report: Fifty Shades of... self-denial?
- Recent research: Gender bias, SOPA blackout, and a student assignment that backfired
- WikiProject report: Be prepared... Scouts in the spotlight
Books and Bytes - Issue 10
Books & Bytes
Issue 10, January-February 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- New donations - ProjectMUSE, Dynamed, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and Women Writers Online
- New TWL coordinator, conference news, and a new guide and template for archivists
- TWL moves into the new Community Engagement department at the WMF, quarterly review
The Signpost: 04 March 2015
- From the editor: A sign of the times: the Signpost revamps its internal structure to make contributing easier
- Traffic report: Attack of the movies
- Arbitration report: Bradspeaks—impact, regrets, and advice; current cases hinge on sex, religion, and ... infoboxes
- Interview: Meet a paid editor
- Featured content: Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Signpost: 11 March 2015
- Special report: An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey
- In the media: Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West
- Traffic report: Wikipedia: handing knowledge to the world, one prank at a time
- Featured content: Here they come, the couple plighted –
- Op-ed: Why the Core Contest matters
Orphaned non-free image File:Alien 2 poster.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Alien 2 poster.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 10:41, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 March 2015
- From the editor: A salute to Pine
- Featured content: A woman who loved kings
- Traffic report: It's not cricket
.
The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy
- Featured content: A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude
- Special report: Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2014
- Traffic report: Oddly familiar
- Recent research: Most important people; respiratory reliability; academic attitudes
The Signpost, 1 April 2015
- In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism
- Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.
- Traffic report: All over the place
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
The Signpost: 01 April 2015
- In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism
- Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.
- Traffic report: All over the place
- Special report: Pictures of the Year 2015
VisualEditor News #2—2015
With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:
Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:
After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.
Recent improvements
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.
The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.
Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.
Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.
The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.
You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.
The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.
Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.
Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).
Looking ahead
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.
The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- Traffic report: Resurrection week
- Featured content: Partisan arrangements, dodgy dollars, a mysterious union of strings, and a hole that became a monument
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Christianity
- Arbitration report: New Functionary appointments
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Signpost: 08 April 2015
- Traffic report: Resurrection week
- Featured content: Partisan arrangements, dodgy dollars, a mysterious union of strings, and a hole that became a monument
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Christianity
- Arbitration report: New Functionary appointments
- Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
A new reference tool
Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 April 2015
- Traffic report: Furious domination
Disambiguation link notification for April 19
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nepenthes ramos, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Surigao. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:01, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 April 2015
- In the media: UK political editing; hoaxes; net neutrality
- Featured content: Vanguard on guard
- Traffic report: A harvest of couch potatoes
- Gallery: The bitter end
The Signpost: 29 April 2015
- Featured content: Another day, another dollar
- Traffic report: Bruce, Nessie, and genocide
- Recent research: Military history, cricket, and Australia targeted in Wikipedia articles' popularity vs. quality; how copyright damages economy
- Technology report: VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates
Books and Bytes - Issue 11
Books & Bytes
Issue 11, March-April 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)
- New donations - MIT Press Journals, Sage Stats, Hein Online and more
- New TWL coordinators, conference news, and new reference projects
- Spotlight: Two metadata librarians talk about how library professionals can work with Wikipedia
The Signpost: 06 May 2015
- News and notes: "Inspire" grant-making campaign concludes, grantees announced
- Featured content: The amorous android and the horsebreeder; WikiCup round two concludes
- Special report: FDC candidates respond to key issues
- Traffic report: The grim ship reality
The Signpost: 13 May 2015
- Foundation elections: Board candidates share their views with the Signpost
- Traffic report: Round Two
- In the media: Grant Shapps story continues
- Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way
The Signpost: 20 May 2015
- From the editor: Your voice is needed: strategic voting in the WMF election
- Traffic report: Inner Core
- News and notes: A dark side of comedy: the Wikipedia volunteers cleaning up behind John Oliver's fowl jokes
- Featured content: Puppets, fungi, and waterfalls
- In the media: Jimmy Wales accepts Dan David Prize
- WikiProject report: Cell-ebrating Molecular Biology
- Arbitration report: Editor conduct the subject of multiple cases
The Signpost: 27 May 2015
- News and notes: WMF releases quarterly reports, annual plans
- Discussion report: A relic from the past that needs to be updated
- Featured content: When music was confined to a ribbon of rust
- Recent research: Drug articles accurate and largely complete; women "slightly overrepresented"; talking like an admin
- Traffic report: Summer, summer, summertime
- Technology report: MediaWiki blows up printers
VisualEditor News #3—2015
When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:
The link tool has been re-designed:
There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.
The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).
The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).
Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).
The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.
The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
- If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
- If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 June 2015
- News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out
- Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia
- Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings
- Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier
- Special report: Towards "Health Information for All": Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013
- Traffic report: A rather ordinary week
The Wikipedia Library needs you!
The Wikipedia Library is expanding, and we need your help! With only a couple of hours per week, you can make a big difference in helping editors get access to reliable sources and other resources. Sign up for one of the following roles:
- Account coordinators help distribute research accounts to editors.
- Partner coordinators seek donations from new partners.
- Outreach coordinators reach out to the community through blog posts, social media, and newsletters or notifications.
- Technical coordinators advise on building tools to support the library's work.
Delivered on behalf of The Wikipedia Library by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 10 June 2015
- News and notes: Chapter financial trends analyzed, news in brief
- Traffic report: Two households, both alike in dignity
- Featured content: Just the bear facts, ma'am
- Technology report: Wikimedia sites are going HTTPS only
The Signpost: 17 June 2015
- Arbitration report: An election has consequences
- News and notes: Labs outage kills tools, self; news in brief
- Featured content: Great Dane hits 150
- Discussion report: A quick way of becoming an admin
- WikiProject report: Western Australia speaks – we are back
Replaceable fair use File:St augustine monster locations.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:St augustine monster locations.jpg. I noticed that this file is being used under a claim of fair use. However, I think that the way it is being used fails the first non-free content criterion. This criterion states that files used under claims of fair use may have no free equivalent; in other words, if the file could be adequately covered by a freely-licensed file or by text alone, then it may not be used on Wikipedia. If you believe this file is not replaceable, please:
- Go to the file description page and add the text
{{di-replaceable fair use disputed|<your reason>}}
below the original replaceable fair use template, replacing<your reason>
with a short explanation of why the file is not replaceable. - On the file discussion page, write a full explanation of why you believe the file is not replaceable.
Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).
If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:00, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 June 2015
- From the editor: The Signpost tagging initiative
- Featured content: One eye when begun, two when it's done
- Technology report: 2015 MediaWiki architecture focus and Multimedia roadmap announced
- News and notes: Board of Trustees propose bylaw amendments
- Arbitration report: Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration
The Signpost: 01 July 2015
- News and notes: Training the Trainers; VP of Engineering leaves WMF
- In the media: EU freedom of panorama; Nehru outrage; BBC apology
- WikiProject report: Able to make a stand
- Featured content: Viva V.E.R.D.I.
- Traffic report: We're Baaaaack
- Technology report: Technical updates and improvements
The Signpost: 08 July 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation annual plan released, news in brief
- In the media: Wikimania warning; Wikipedia "mystery" easily solved
- Traffic report: The Empire lobs back
- Featured content: Pyrénées, Playmates, parliament and a prison...
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Books and Bytes - Issue 12
Books & Bytes
Issue 12, May-June 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)
- New donations - Taylor & Francis, Science, and three new French-language resources
- Expansion into new languages, including French, Finnish, Turkish, and Farsi
- Spotlight: New partners for the Visiting Scholar program
- American Library Association Annual meeting in San Francisco
The Signpost: 15 July 2015
- Op-ed: On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it
- Traffic report: Belles of the ball
- WikiProject report: What happens when a country is no longer a country?
- News and notes: The Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania
- Featured content: When angels and daemons interrupt the vicious and intemperate
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 22 July 2015
- From the editor: Change the world
- News and notes: Wikimanía 2016; Lightbreather ArbCom case
- Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015 report, part 1, the plenaries
- Traffic report: The Nerds, They Are A-Changin'
- WikiProject report: Some more politics
- Featured content: The sleep of reason produces monsters
- Gallery: "One small step..."
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 29 July 2015
- News and notes: BARC de-adminship proposal; Wikimania recordings debate
- Recent research: Wikipedia and collective intelligence; how Wikipedia is tweeted
- In the media: Is Wikipedia a battleground in the culture wars?
- Featured content: Even mammoths get the Blues
- Traffic report: Namaste again, Reddit
The Signpost: 05 August 2015
- Op-ed: Je ne suis pas Google
- News and notes: VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief
- WikiProject report: Meet the boilerplate makers
- Traffic report: Mrityorma amritam gamaya...
- Featured content: Maya, Michigan, Medici, Médée, and Moul n'ga
VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition
You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.
Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).
Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.
In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
- If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
- Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 12 August 2015
- News and notes: Superprotect, one year later; a contentious RfA
- In the media: Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj
- Wikimanía report: Wikimanía 2015, part 2, a community event
- Traffic report: Fighting from top to bottom
- Featured content: Fused lizards, giant mice, and Scottish demons
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
- Blog: The Hunt for Tirpitz
The Signpost: 19 August 2015
- Travelogue: Seeing is believing
- Traffic report: Straight Outta Connecticut
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 26 August 2015
- In focus: An increase in active Wikipedia editors
- In the media: Russia temporarily blocks Wikipedia
- News and notes: Re-imagining grants
- Featured content: Out to stud, please call later
- Arbitration report: Reinforcing Arbitration
- Recent research: OpenSym 2015 report
Disambiguation link notification for August 29
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The Signpost: 02 September 2015
- Special report: Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flow placed on ice
- Discussion report: WMF's sudden reversal on Wiki Loves Monuments
- Featured content: Brawny
- In the media: Orangemoody sockpuppet case sparks widespread coverage
- Traffic report: You didn't miss much
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 09 September 2015
- Gallery: Being Welsh
- Featured content: Killed by flying debris
- News and notes: The Swedish Wikipedia's controversial two-millionth article
- Traffic report: Mass media production traffic
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 16 September 2015
- Editorial: No access is no answer to closed access
- News and notes: Byrd and notifications leave, but page views stay; was a terror suspect editing Wikipedia?
- In the media: Is there life on Mars?
- Featured content: Why did the emu cross the road?
- Traffic report: Another week
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 23 September 2015
- In the media: PETA makes "monkey selfie" a three-way copyright battle; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Featured content: Inside Duke Humfrey's Library
- WikiProject report: Dancing to the beat of a... wikiproject?
- Traffic report: ¡Viva la Revolución! Kinda.
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Books and Bytes - Issue 13
Books & Bytes
Issue 13, August-September 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)
- New donations - EBSCO, IMF, more newspaper archives, and Arabic resources
- Expansion into new languages, including Viet and Catalan
- Spotlight: Elsevier partnership garners controversy, dialogue
- Conferences: PKP, IFLA, upcoming events
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2015
- Recent research: Wiktionary special; newbies, conflict and tolerance; Is Wikipedia's search function inferior?
- Tech news: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor update
- This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.
The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.
This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.
We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 October 2015
- Op-ed: Walled gardens of corruption
- Traffic report: Reality is for losers
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Arbitration report: Warning: Contains GMOs
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 14 October 2015
- WikiConference report: US gathering sees speeches from Andrew Lih, AfroCrowd, and the Archivist of the United States
- News and notes: 2015–2016 Q1 fundraising update sparks mailing list debate
- Traffic report: Screens, Sport, Reddit, and Death
- Featured content: A fistful of dollars
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Disputed non-free use rationale for File:Megalocranchia fisheri.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:Megalocranchia fisheri.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this file on Wikipedia may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the file description page and adding or clarifying the reason why the file qualifies under this policy. Adding and completing one of the templates available from Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your file is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. Please be aware that a non-free use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for files used under the non-free content policy require both a copyright tag and a non-free use rationale.
If it is determined that the file does not qualify under the non-free content policy, it might be deleted by an administrator within a few days in accordance with our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 15:56, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 21 October 2015
- Editorial: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching
- In the media: "Wikipedia's hostility to women"
- Special report: One year of GamerGate, or how I learned to stop worrying and love bare rule-level consensus
- Featured content: A more balanced week
- Arbitration report: Four ArbCom cases ongoing
- Traffic report: Hiding under the covers of the Internet
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor News #5—2015
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Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
- Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
- The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you can't read this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
The Signpost: 28 October 2015
- From the editor: The Signpost's reorganization plan—we need your help
- News and notes: English Wikipedia reaches five million articles
- In the media: The world's Wikipedia gaps; Google and Wikipedia accused of tying Ben Carson to NAMBLA
- Arbitration report: A second attempt at Arbitration enforcement
- Traffic report: Canada, the most popular nation on Earth
- Recent research: Student attitudes towards Wikipedia; Jesus, Napoleon and Obama top "Wikipedia social network"; featured article editing patterns in 12 languages
- Featured content: Birds, turtles, and other things
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
- Community letter: Five million articles
The Signpost: 04 November 2015
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation finances; Superprotect is gone
- In the media: Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov: propaganda myth or history?
- Traffic report: Death, the Dead, and Spectres are abroad
- Featured content: Christianity, music, and cricket
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 11 November 2015
- Arbitration report: Elections, redirections, and a resignation from the Committee
- Discussion report: Compromise of two administrator accounts prompts security review
- Featured content: Texas, film, and cycling
- In the media: Sanger on Wikipedia; Silver on Vox; lawyers on monkeys
- Traffic report: Doodles of popularity
- Gallery: Paris
The Signpost: 18 November 2015
- Special report: ArbCom election—candidates’ opinions analysed
- In the media: Icelandic milestone; apolitical editing
- Discussion report: BASC disbanded; other developments in the discussion world
- Arbitration report: Ban Appeals Subcommittee goes up in smoke; 21 candidates running
- Featured content: Fantasia on a Theme by Jimbo Wales
- Traffic report: Darkness and light
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 November 2015
- News and notes: Fundraising update; FDC recommendations
- Featured content: Caves and stuff
- Traffic report: J'en ai ras le bol
- Arbitration report: Third Palestine-Israel case closes; Voting begins
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 02 December 2015
- Op-ed: Whither Wikidata?
- Traffic report: Jonesing for episodes
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
Books and Bytes - Issue 14
Books & Bytes
Issue 14, October-November 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)
- New donations - Gale, Brill, plus Finnish and Farsi resources
- Open Access Week recap, and DOIs, Wikipedia, and scholarly citations
- Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref - a citation drive for librarians
The Interior, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:13, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 09 December 2015
- News and notes: ArbCom election results announced
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 winners
- Traffic report: So do you laugh, or does it cry?
- Featured content: Sports, ships, arts... and some other things
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 16 December 2015
- In the media: Wales in China; #Edit2015
- Arbitration report: GMO case decided
- Featured content: An unusually slow week
- WikiProject report: Women in Red—using teamwork and partnerships to elevate online and offline collaborations
- Traffic report: A feast of Spam
VisualEditor News #6—2015
Read this in another language • Subscription list
A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.
The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.
The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.
In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)
Testing opportunities
- Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
The Signpost: 30 December 2015
- News and notes: WMF Board dismisses community-elected trustee
- Arbitration report: Second Arbitration Enforcement case concludes as another case is suspended
- Featured content: The post-Christmas edition
- Traffic report: The Force we expected
- Year in review: The top ten Wikipedia stories of 2015
- In the media: Wikipedia plagued by a "Basket of Deception"
- Gallery: It's that time of year again
The Signpost: 06 January 2016
- News and notes: The WMF's age of discontent
- In the media: Impenetrable science; Jimmy Wales back in the UAE
- Arbitration report: Catflap08 and Hijiri88 case been decided
- Featured content: Featured menagerie
- WikiProject report: Try-ing to become informed - WikiProject Rugby League
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 13 January 2016
- Community view: Battle for the soul of the WMF
- Editorial: We need a culture of verification
- In focus: The Crisis at New Montgomery Street
- Op-ed: Transparency
- Traffic report: Pattern recognition: Third annual Traffic Report
- Special report: Wikipedia community celebrates Public Domain Day 2016
- News and notes: Community objections to new Board trustee
- Featured content: This Week's Featured Content
- Arbitration report: Interview: outgoing and incumbent arbitrators 2016
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 20 January 2016
- News and notes: Vote of no confidence; WMF trustee speaks out
- In the media: 15th anniversary news round-up
- Traffic report: Danse Macabre
- Featured content: This week's featured content
The Signpost: 27 January 2016
- News and notes: Geshuri steps down from the Board
- In the media: Media coverage of the Arnnon Geshuri no-confidence vote
- Recent research: Bursty edits; how politics beat religion but then lost to sports; notability as a glass ceiling
- Traffic report: Death and taxes
- Featured content: This week's featured content
Disambiguation link notification for February 5
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Cephalopod size, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Dorsal and Onondaga. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 February 2016
- From the editors: Help wanted
- Special report: Board chair and new trustee speak with the Signpost
- Arbitration report: Catching up on arbitration
- Traffic report: Bowled
- Featured content: This week's featured content
The Signpost: 10 February 2016
- News and notes: Another WMF departure
- In the media: Jeb Bush swings at Wikipedia and connects
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: A river of revilement
Books & Bytes - Issue 15
Books & Bytes
Issue 15, December-January 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - Ships, medical resources, plus Arabic and Farsi resources
- #1lib1ref campaign summary and highlights
- New branches and coordinators
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 February 2016
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: Super Bowling
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
The Signpost: 24 February 2016
- Special report: WMF in limbo as decision on Tretikov nears
- Op-ed: Backward the Foundation
- Traffic report: Of Dead Pools and Dead Judges
- Arbitration report: Arbitration motion regarding CheckUser & Oversight inactivity
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Technology report: Tech news in brief
VisualEditor News #1—2016
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.
Let's work together
- Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
- Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
The Signpost: 02 March 2016
- News and notes: Tretikov resigns, WMF in transition
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: Brawling
The Signpost: 09 March 2016
- News and notes: Katherine Maher named interim head of WMF; Wales email re-sparks Heilman controversy; draft WMF strategy posted
- Technology report: Wikimedia wikis will temporarily go into read-only mode on several occasions in the coming weeks
- WikiCup report: First round of the WikiCup finishes
- Traffic report: All business like show business
The Signpost: 16 March 2016
- News and notes: Wikipedia Zero: Orange mobile partnership in Africa ends; the evolution of privacy loss in Wikipedia
- In the media: Wales at SXSW; lawsuit over Wikipedia PR editing
- Discussion report: Is an interim WMF executive director inherently notable?
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Technology report: Watchlists, watchlists, watchlists!
- Traffic report: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #119: The Foundation and the departure of Lila Tretikov
The Signpost: 23 March 2016
- News and notes: Lila Tretikov a Young Global Leader; Wikipediocracy blog post sparks indefinite blocks
- In the media: Angolan file sharers cause trouble for Wikipedia Zero; the 3D printer edit war; a culture based on change and turmoil
- Traffic report: Be weary on the Ides of March
- Editorial: "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
- Featured content: Watch out! A slave trader, a live mascot and a crested serpent awaits!
- Arbitration report: Palestine-Israel article 3 case amended
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #120: Status of Wikimania 2016
The Signpost: 1 April 2016
- News and notes: Trump/Wales 2016
- WikiProject report: Why should the Devil have all the good music? An interview with WikiProject Christian music
- Traffic report: Donald v Daredevil
- Featured content: A slow, slow week
- Technology report: Browse Wikipedia in safety? Use Telnet!
- Recent research: "Employing Wikipedia for good not evil" in education; using eyetracking to find out how readers read articles
- Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #121: How April Fools went down
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.
There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
The Signpost: 14 April 2016
- News and notes: Denny Vrandečić resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board
- In the media: Wikimedia Sweden loses copyright case; Tex Watson; AI assistants; David Jolly biography
- Featured content: This week's featured content
- Traffic report: A welcome return to pop culture and death
- Arbitration report: The first case of 2016—Wikicology
- Gallery: A history lesson
Books & Bytes - Issue 16
Books & Bytes
Issue 16, February-March 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - science, humanities, and video resources
- Using hashtags in edit summaries - a great way to track a project
- A new cite archive template, a new coordinator, plus conference and Visiting Scholar updates
- Metrics for the Wikipedia Library's last three months
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 April 2016
- Special report: Update on EranBot, our new copyright violation detection bot
- Traffic report: Two for the price of one
- Featured content: The double-sized edition
- Arbitration report: Amendments made to the Race and intelligence case
The Signpost: 2 May 2016
- In the media: Wikipedia Zero piracy in Bangladesh; bureaucracy; chilling effects; too few cooks; translation gaps
- Traffic report: Purple
- Featured content: The best ... from the past two weeks
The Signpost: 17 May 2016
- Op-ed: Swiss chapter in turmoil
- In the media: Wikimedia's Dario Taraborelli quoted on Google's Knowledge Graph in The Washington Post
- Featured content: Two weeks for the prize of one
- Traffic report: Oh behave, Beyhive / Underdogs
- Arbitration report: "Wikicology" ends in site ban; evidence and workshop phases concluded for "Gamaliel and others"
- Wikicup: That's it for WikiCup Round 2!
Disambiguation link notification for May 28
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The Signpost: 28 May 2016
- News and notes: Upcoming Wikimedia conferences in the US and India; May Metrics and Activities Meeting
- Special report: Compensation paid to Sue Gardner increased by almost 50 percent after she stepped down as executive director
- Featured content: Eight articles, three lists and five pictures
- Op-ed: Journey of a Wikipedian
- Arbitration report: Gamaliel resigns from the arbitration committee
- Recent research: English as Wikipedia's Lingua Franca; deletion rationales; schizophrenia controversies
- Traffic report: Splitting (musical) airs / Slow Ride
The Signpost: 05 June 2016
- News and notes: WMF cuts budget for 2016-17 as scope tightens
- Featured content: Overwhelmed ... by pictures
- Traffic report: Pop goes the culture, again.
- Arbitration report: ArbCom case "Gamaliel and others" concludes
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Video Games
Disambiguation link notification for June 6
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The Signpost: 15 June 2016
- News and notes: Clarifications on status and compensation of outgoing executive directors Sue Gardner and Lila Tretikov
- Special report: Wikiversity Journal—A new user group
- Featured content: From the crème de la crème
- In the media: Biography disputes; Craig Newmark donation; PR editing
- Traffic report: Another one with sports; Knockout, brief candle
Books & Bytes - Issue 17
Books & Bytes
Issue 17, April-May 2016
by The Interior, Ocaasi, UY Scuti, Sadads, and Nikkimaria
- New donations this month - a German-language legal resource
- Wikipedia referals to academic citations - news from CrossRef and WikiCite2016
- New library stats, WikiCon news, a bot to reveal Open Access versions of citations, and more!
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
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Editing News #2—2016
Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
It's quick and easy to insert a references list.
Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).
If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.
Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.
Recent changes
The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.
The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.
Future changes
The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.
The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
- Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
The Signpost: 04 July 2016
- News and notes: Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director; Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany
- Op-ed: Two policies in conflict?
- In the media: Terrorism database cites Wikipedia as a source
- Featured content: Triple fun of featured content
- Traffic report: Goalposts; Oy vexit
The Signpost: 21 July 2016
- Discussion report: Busy month for discussions
- Featured content: A wide variety from the best
- Traffic report: Sports and esports
- Arbitration report: Script writers appointed for clerks
- Recent research: Using deep learning to predict article quality
The Signpost: 04 August 2016
- News and notes: Foundation presents results of harassment research, plans for automated identification; Wikiconference submissions open
- Obituary: Kevin Gorman, who took on Wikipedia's gender gap and undisclosed paid advocacy, dies at 24
- Traffic report: Summer of Pokémon, Trump, and Hillary
- Featured content: Women and Hawaii
- Recent research: Easier navigation via better wikilinks
- Technology report: User script report (January to July 2016, part 1)
The Signpost: 18 August 2016
- News and notes: Focus on India—WikiConference produces new apps; state government adopts free licenses
- Special report: Engaging diverse communities to profile women of Antarctica
- In the media: The ugly, the bad, the playful, and the promising
- Featured content: Simply the best ... from the last two weeks
- Traffic report: Olympic views
- Technology report: User script report (January–July 2016, part 2)
- Arbitration report: The Michael Hardy case
Books & Bytes - Issue 18
Books & Bytes
Issue 18, June–July 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi, Samwalton9, UY Scuti, and Sadads
- New donations - Edinburgh University Press, American Psychological Association, Nomos (a German-language database), and more!
- Spotlight: GLAM and Wikidata
- TWL attends and presents at International Federation of Library Associations conference, meets with Association of Research Libraries
- OCLC wins grant to train librarians on Wikimedia contribution
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 September 2016
- Special report: Olympics readership depended on language
- WikiProject report: Watching Wikipedia
- Featured content: Entertainment, sport, and something else in-between
- Traffic report: From Phelps to Bolt to Reddit
- Technology report: Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them
- Recent research: Ethics of machine-created articles and fighting vandalism
The Signpost: 29 September 2016
- News and notes: Wikipedia Education Program case study published; and a longtime Wikimedian has made his final edit
- In the media: Wikipedia in the news
- Featured content: Three weeks in the land of featured content
- Arbitration report: Arbcom looking for new checkusers and oversight appointees while another case opens
- Traffic report: From Gene Wilder to JonBenét
- Technology report: Category sorting and template parameters
Editing News #3—2016
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia
Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?
Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.
Recent changes
- You can now set text as small or big.[3]
- Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[4] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[5]
- Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[6]
- At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[7]
- The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[8] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
- Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[9]
Future changes
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 October 2016
- News and notes: Fundraising, flora and fauna
- Discussion report: Cultivating leadership: Wikimedia Foundation seeks input
- Technology report: Upcoming tech projects for 2017
- Featured content: Variety is the spice of life
- Traffic report: Debates and escapes
- Recent research: A 2011 study resurfaces in a media report
Books and Bytes - Issue 19
Books & Bytes
Issue 19, September–October 2016
by Nikkimaria, Sadads and UY Scuti
- New and expanded donations - Foreign Affairs, Open Edition, and many more
- New Library Card Platform and Conference news
- Spotlight: Fixing one million broken links
19:07, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- In the media: Washington Post continues in-depth Wikipedia coverage
- Wikicup: WikiCup winners
- Discussion report: What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?
- Technology report: New guideline for technical collaboration; citation templates now flag open access content
- Featured content: Cream of the crop
- Traffic report: Un-presidential politics
- Arbitration report: Recapping October's activities
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, Mgiganteus1. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence
- Featured content: Featured mix
- Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog
- Traffic report: President-elect Trump
Nomination for deletion of Template:Nepenthes ecology sidebar
Template:Nepenthes ecology sidebar has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 20:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 December 2016
- Year in review: Looking back on 2016
- News and notes: Strategic planning update; English ArbCom election results
- Special report: German ArbCom implodes
- Featured content: The Christmas edition
- Technology report: Labs improvements impact 2016 Tool Labs survey results
- Traffic report: Post-election traffic blues
- Recent research: One study and several abstracts
The Signpost: 17 January 2017
- From the editor: Next steps for the Signpost
- News and notes: Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?
- In the media: Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more
- Featured content: One year ends, and another begins
- Arbitration report: Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases
- Traffic report: Out with the old, in with the new
- Technology report: Tech present, past, and future
Books and Bytes - Issue 20
Books & Bytes
Issue 20, November-December 2016
by Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs), Samwalton9 (talk · contribs)
- Partner resource expansions
- New search tool for finding TWL resources
- #1lib1ref 2017
- Wikidata Visiting Scholar
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:00, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 February 2017
- Arbitration report: WMF Legal and ArbCom weigh in on tension between disclosure requirements and user privacy
- WikiProject report: For the birds!
- Technology report: Better PDFs, backup plans, and birthday wishes
- Traffic report: Cool It Now
- Featured content: Three weeks dominated by articles
The Signpost: 27 February 2017
- From the editors: Results from our poll on subscription and delivery, and a new RSS feed
- Recent research: Special issue: Wikipedia in education
- Technology report: Responsive content on desktop; Offline content in Android app
- In the media: The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia
- Gallery: A Met montage
- Special report: Peer review – a history and call for reviewers
- Op-ed: Wikipedia has cancer
- Featured content: The dominance of articles continues
- Traffic report: Love, football, and politics
File:Argonauta awaensis.jpg listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Argonauta awaensis.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Mr. Guye (talk) 20:25, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 21
Books & Bytes
Issue 21, January-March 2017
by Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs), Samwalton9 (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- #1lib1ref 2017
- Wikipedia Library User Group
- Wikipedia + Libraries at Wikimedia Conference 2017
- Spotlight: Library Card Platform
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2017
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know that you can review your changes visually?
In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [10]
The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references />
block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [11]
Other changes:
- You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [12]
- The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [13]
- The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the icon) for quicker access. [14] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [15]
- You can now create
<chem>
tags (sometimes used as<ce>
) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [16] - Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [17]
- The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [18]
- A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [19]
- There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:
Control
+Shift
+K
on a PC, orCommand
+Shift
+K
on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which isControl
+K
on a PC orCommand
+K
on a Mac. [20]
Future changes
- The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of
<ref>
tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [21] - The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding
&ooui=1
to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [22] - The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [23]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 9 June 2017
- From the editors: Signpost status: On reserve power, help wanted!
- News and notes: Global Elections
- Arbitration report: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis
- Featured content: Three months in the land of the featured
- In the media: Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?
- Recent research: Wikipedia bot wars capture the imagination of the popular press
- Technology report: Tech news catch-up
- Traffic report: Film on Top: Sampling the weekly top 10
Books and Bytes - Issue 22
Books & Bytes
Issue 22, April-May 2017
- New and expanded research accounts
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: OCLC Partnership
- Bytes in brief
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 June 2017
- News and notes: Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)
- In the media: Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
- Op-ed: Facto Post: a fresh take
- Featured content: Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues
- Traffic report: Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth
- Technology report: Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all
The Signpost: 15 July 2017
- News and notes: French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes
- Featured content: Spectacular animals, Pine Trees screens, and more
- In the media: Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce
- Recent research: The chilling effect of surveillance on Wikipedia readers
- Gallery: A mix of patterns
- Humour: The Infobox Game
- Traffic report: Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday
- Technology report: New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts
- Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 3 wrap-up
The Signpost: 5 August 2017
- Recent research: Wikipedia can increase local tourism by +9%; predicting article quality with deep learning; recent behavior predicts quality
- WikiProject report: Comic relief
- In the media: Wikipedia used to judge death penalty, arms smuggling, Indonesian governance, and HOTTEST celebrity
- Traffic report: Swedish countess tops the list
- Featured content: Everywhere in the lead
- Technology report: Introducing TechCom
- Humour: WWASOHs and ETCSSs
Merger discussion for Monotypic taxon and Monospecificity
Articles that you have been involved in editing—Monotypic taxon and Monospecificity—have been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Nessie (talk) 16:14, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 23
Books & Bytes
Issue 23, June-July 2017
- Library card
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: Combating misinformation, fake news, and censorship
- Bytes in brief
Chinese, Arabic and Yoruba versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:04, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 September 2017
- From the editors: What happened at Wikimania?
- News and notes: Basselpedia; WMF Board of Trustees appointments
- Featured content: Warfighters and their tools or trees and butterflies
- Traffic report: A fortnight of conflicts
- Special report: Biomedical content, and some thoughts on its future
- Recent research: Discussion summarization; Twitter bots tracking government edits; extracting trivia from Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: WikiProject YouTube
- Technology report: Latest tech news
- Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 4 wrap-up
- Humour: Bots
The Signpost: 25 September 2017
- News and notes: Chapter updates; ACTRIAL
- Humour: Chickenz
- Recent research: Wikipedia articles vs. concepts; Wikipedia usage in Europe
- Technology report: Flow restarted; Wikidata connection notifications
- Gallery: Chicken mania
- Traffic report: Fights and frights
- Featured content: Flying high
Books and Bytes - Issue 24
Books & Bytes
Issue 24, August-September 2017
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Star Coordinator Award - last quarter's star coordinator: User:Csisc
- Wikimania Birds of a Feather session roundup
- Spotlight: Wiki Loves Archives
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Kiswahili and Yoruba versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:53, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 October 2017
- News and notes: Money! WMF fundraising, Wikimedia strategy, WMF new office!
- Featured content: Don, Marcel, Emily, Jessica and other notables
- Humour: Guys named Ralph
- In the media: Facebook and poetry
- Special report: Working with GLAMs in the UK
- Traffic report: Death, disaster, and entertainment
The Signpost: 24 November 2017
- News and notes: Cons, cons, cons
- Arbitration report: Administrator desysoped; How to deal with crosswiki issues; Mister Wiki case likely
- Technology report: Searching and surveying
- Interview: A featured article centurion
- WikiProject report: Recommendations for WikiProjects
- In the media: Open knowledge platform as a media institution
- Traffic report: Strange and inappropriate
- Featured content: We will remember them
- Recent research: Who wrote this? New dataset on the provenance of Wikipedia text
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, Mgiganteus1. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 25
Books & Bytes
Issue 25, October – November 2017
- OAWiki & #1Lib1Ref
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: Research libraries and Wikimedia
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Korean and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:57, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 December 2017
- Special report: Women in Red World Contest wrap-up
- Featured content: Featured content to finish 2017
- In the media: Stolen seagulls, public domain primates and more
- Arbitration report: Last case of 2017: Mister Wiki editors
- Gallery: Wiki loving
- Recent research: French medical articles have "high rate of veracity"
- Technology report: Your wish lists and more Wikimedia tech
- Traffic report: Notable heroes and bad guys
The Signpost: 16 January 2018
- News and notes: Communication is key
- In the media: The Paris Review, British Crown and British Media
- Featured content: History, gaming and multifarious topics
- Interview: Interview with Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the top contributor to English Wikipedia by edit count
- Technology report: Dedicated Wikidata database servers
- Arbitration report: Mister Wiki is first arbitration committee decision of 2018
- Traffic report: The best and worst of 2017
Disambiguation link notification for January 20
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Recent change
The change you made here is actually unbalancing brackets and adding double brackets to external links and reverting typos which I fixed. It was helpful to added the
tag to the quote but the other reversions weren't correct. Pkbwcgs (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 26
Books & Bytes
Issue 26, December – January 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: What can we glean from OCLC’s experience with library staff learning Wikipedia?
- Bytes in brief
Arabic and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 5 February 2018
- Featured content: Wars, sieges, disasters and everything black possible
- Traffic report: TV, death, sports, and doodles
- Special report: Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative
- Arbitration report: New cases requested for inter-editor hostility and other collaboration issues
- In the media: Solving crime; editing out violence allegations
- Humour: You really are in Wonderland
The Signpost: 20 February 2018
- News and notes: The future is Swedish with a lack of administrators
- Recent research: Politically diverse editors write better articles; Reddit and Stack Overflow benefit from Wikipedia but don't give back
- Arbitration report: Arbitration committee prepares to examine two new cases
- Traffic report: Addicted to sports and pain
- Featured content: Entertainment, sports and history
- Technology report: Paragraph-based edit conflict screen; broken thanks
Editing News #1—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for the English Wikipedia • Subscription list for the multilingual edition
Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?
Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.
If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
- The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
- The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [24]
- Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [25]
- The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.
Let's work together
- The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
- Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
- The
<references />
block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either<references />
or the plain (no parameters){{reflist}}
template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [26] - If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
—User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018
- News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.
- Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.
- Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers
- Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs
- Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.
- Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.
- Humour: WikiWorld Reruns
From a single image to more images of the same object
@ you Major Giant :)
Many if not most of the sporadic visitors of Wikipedia do not know that from any single image they can get to more images of the same object, if they are available in WM Commons. Nor they know the link from the category to the Wikidata object.
If we want to address not only giants and nerts, but also muggles, we have to show them their chances.
In this very long list that allows only few exeptions fom the limit of one photo per object, the initial hint in the box is necessary.
Best regards, Ulamm (talk) 17:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi
With this edit [27] you restored a predatory open access journal, which fails WP:RS. If you are determined that this content should be included, please find an alternative source. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 09:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- You reinserted it again. I repeat: this is a predatory journal and is not a WP:RS. Please read the article on predatory open access to understand why. Guy (Help!) 14:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Aliens- Colonial Marines.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Aliens- Colonial Marines.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:05, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 27
Books & Bytes
Issue 27, February – March 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- New collections
- Alexander Street (expansion)
- Cambridge University Press (expansion)
- User Group
- Global branches update
- Wiki Indaba Wikipedia + Library Discussions
- Spotlight: Using librarianship to create a more equitable internet: LGBTQ+ advocacy as a wiki-librarian
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 April 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again
- Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost
- In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop
- In focus: Admin reports board under criticism
- Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide
- Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias
- Discussion report: The future of portals
- Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History
- Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March
- Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
Disambiguation link notification for May 6
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The Signpost: 24 May 2018
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
- Humour: Play with your food
- Gallery: Wine not?
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
The Signpost: 24 May 2018
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
- Humour: Play with your food
- Gallery: Wine not?
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
Books & Bytes – Issue 28
Books & Bytes
Issue 28, April – May 2018
- #1Bib1Ref
- New partners
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Wikipedia Library global coordinators' meeting
- Spotlight: What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? Let's ask the data
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Insectivorous Plant Society logo.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Insectivorous Plant Society logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:26, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Email re Gede image
I sent you an email re use of one of your Gede images.
The Signpost: 29 June 2018
- Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?
- Op-ed: What do admins do?
- News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania
- In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress
- Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page
- Featured content: New promotions
- Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed
- Traffic report: Endgame
- Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa
- Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry
- Humour: Television plot lines
- Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors
- From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
The Signpost: 31 July 2018
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
Disambiguation link notification for August 4
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of giant squid specimens and sightings, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Aoshima (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
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Disambiguation link notification for August 11
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of giant squid specimens and sightings, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Awashima Island (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
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Books & Bytes – Issue 29
Books & Bytes
Issue 29, June – July 2018
- New partners
- Economic & Political Weekly–10 accounts
- Wikimania
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2018
- From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend
- In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles
- Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Special report: Wikimania 2018
- Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits
- Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work
- Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies
- Humour: Signpost editor censors herself
- From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words
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The Signpost: 1 October 2018
- From the editor: Is this the new normal?
- News and notes: European copyright law moves forward
- In the media: Knowledge under fire
- Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom
- Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile
- Gallery: A pat on the back
- Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?
- Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle
- Essay: Expressing thanks
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Books & Bytes, Issue 30
Books & Bytes
Issue 30, August – Septmeber 2018
- Library Card translation
- Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and beyond
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely
- News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks
- In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias
- Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform
- Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring
- Technology report: Bots galore!
- Special report: NPP needs you
- Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six
- In focus: Alexa
- Gallery: Out of this world!
- Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion
- Humour: Talk page humour
- Opinion: Strickland incident
- From the archives: The Gardner Interview
Editing News #2—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia
Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.
You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.
Remember to publish your changes when you're done.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [28]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
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ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Mgiganteus1. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for November 27
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The Signpost: 1 December 2018
- From the editor: Time for a truce
- Special report: The Christmas wishlist
- Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee
- Arbitration report: A long break ends
- Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight
- Gallery: Intersections
- From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis
Books & Bytes, Issue 31
Books & Bytes
Issue 31, October – Novemeber 2018
- OAWiki
- 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) 14:34, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 December 2018
- From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?
- News and notes: Some wishes do come true
- In the media: Political hijinks
- Discussion report: A new record low for RfA
- WikiProject report: Articlegenesis
- Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case
- Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents
- Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone
- Blog: News from the WMF
- Humour: I believe in Bigfoot
- Essay: Requests for medication
- From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again
Disambiguation link notification for January 13
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The Signpost: 31 January 2019
- Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected
- News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives
- Discussion report: The future of the reference desk
- Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity
- Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope
- Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther
- Technology report: When broken is easily fixed
- News from the WMF: News from WMF
- Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?
- Essay: How
- Humour: Village pump
- From the archives: An editorial board that includes you
Books & Bytes, Issue 32
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)
The Signpost: 28 February 2019
- From the editors: Help wanted (still)
- News and notes: Front-page issues for the community
- Discussion report: Talking about talk pages
- Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Binge-watching
- Technology report: Tool labs casters-up
- Gallery: Signed with pride
- From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love
- Humour: Pesky Pronouns
The Signpost: 31 March 2019
- From the editors: Getting serious about humor
- News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive
- In the media: Women's history month
- Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding
- Featured content: Out of this world
- Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM
- Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations
- Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles
- News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive
- Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention
- From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion
- Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37
- In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch
- Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride
- Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings
The Signpost: 30 April 2019
- News and notes: An Action Packed April
- In the media: Is Wikipedia just another social media site?
- Discussion report: English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages
- Featured content: Anguish, accolades, animals, and art
- Arbitration report: An Active Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Mötley Crüe, Notre-Dame, a black hole, and Bonnie and Clyde
- Technology report: A new special page, and other news
- Gallery: Notre-Dame de Paris burns
- News from the WMF: Can machine learning uncover Wikipedia’s missing “citation needed” tags?
- Recent research: Female scholars underrepresented; whitepaper on Wikidata and libraries; undo patterns reveal editor hierarchy
- From the archives: Portals revisited
Books & Bytes, Issue 33
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)
The Signpost: 31 May 2019
- From the editors: Picture that
- News and notes: Wikimania and trustee elections
- In the media: Politics, lawsuits and baseball
- Discussion report: Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia
- Arbitration report: ArbCom forges ahead
- Technology report: Lots of Bots
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey
- Essay: Paid editing
- From the archives: FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
The June 2019 Signpost is out!
- Discussion report: A constitutional crisis hits English Wikipedia
- News and notes: Mysterious ban, admin resignations, Wikimedia Thailand rising
- In the media: The disinformation age
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Traffic report: Juneteenth, Beauty Revealed, and more nuclear disasters
- Technology report: Actors and Bots
- Special report: Did Fram harass other editors?
- Recent research: What do editors do after being blocked?; the top mathematicians, universities and cancers according to Wikipedia
- From the archives: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching
- In focus: WikiJournals: A sister project proposal
- Community view: A CEO biography, paid for with taxes
Books & Bytes Issue 34, May – June 2019
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)
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)
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
Tireless Contributor Barnstar
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | ||
For your tireless dedication in the creation and maintenance of List of giant squid specimens and sightings (21st century) (and for weathering an AFD nomination of the same article two months ago). Thank you for your hard work! TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername 20:06, 31 July 2019 (UTC) |
- Why thank you, TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername! :) mgiganteus1 (talk) 01:43, 1 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?
Cyathea articles
Hi, in 2006 you created an impressive number of articles on species of Cyathea, such as this one. Many of the species are now placed in the genus Alsophila in the PPG I classification, as reflected in Checklist of Ferns and Lycophytes of the World, Plants of the World Online, GBIF, etc. So I've been working on moving those affected.
One issue is that you always gave as a general reference "Braggins, John E. & Large, Mark F. 2004. Tree Ferns. Timber Press, Inc. ISBN 0881926302". However, as reflected here and in some of the in text references you made to the book (e.g. in the text here), it appears to have the authors in the opposite order, i.e. as per the citation:
- Large, Mark F.; Braggins, John E. (2004), Tree Ferns, Timber Press, ISBN 978-0-88192-630-9
{{citation}}
: Unknown parameter|lastauthoramp=
ignored (|name-list-style=
suggested) (help)
Do you remember why you have the names the other way round?
Another issue is that some of the articles have been flagged as needing more inline citations. So I'm inclined to add the Tree Ferns book ref to the end of each general paragraph, as I've done at Alsophila acanthophora. Is this right from how you created the articles?
Thanks in advance. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:53, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Nomination of Journal of Biological Sciences for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Journal of Biological Sciences is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Biological Sciences until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 35, July – August 2019
Books & Bytes
Issue 35, July – August 2019
- Wikimania
- We're building something great, but..
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- A Wikibrarian's story
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:58, 27 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?
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
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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.
- 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.
- 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)
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
- Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Nepenthes mapuluensis pictures
Hello, new pictures of Nepenthes mapuluensis were uploaded yesterday in the corresponding category of wikimedia commons ; as a newcomer, I don't know how to make them appear in the N. mapuluensis en.wikipedia page - I fear making a mess. As I see that you did most of the work on this page, albeit some time ago, could you do it ? thank you !Ethyle64 (talk) 09:30, 17 November 2019 (UTC) Thank you for doing it ! Ethyle64 (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Nepenthes mapuluensis.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Nepenthes mapuluensis.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
Books & Bytes – Issue 36
Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019
- #1Lib1Ref January 2020
- #1Lib1Ref 2019 stories and learnings
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:21, 21 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?
- Arbitration report: Two requests for arbitration cases
- Traffic report: The queen and the princess meet the king and the joker
- Technology report: Reference things, sister things, stranger things
- Gallery: Winter and holidays
- Recent research: Bot census; discussions differ on Spanish and English Wikipedia; how nature's seasons affect pageviews
- Essay: Adminitis
- From the archives: WikiProject Spam, revisited
Nomination of Four Mile Globster for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Four Mile Globster is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Four Mile Globster until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. –dlthewave ☎ 03:21, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Nomination of Hebrides blob for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hebrides blob is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hebrides blob until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. –dlthewave ☎ 21:37, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Nomination of Newfoundland Blob for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Newfoundland Blob is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Newfoundland Blob until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. –dlthewave ☎ 22:32, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Four Mile Globster.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Four Mile Globster.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:34, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Newfoundland Blob.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Newfoundland Blob.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:47, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 December 2019
- From the editors: Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, again
- News and notes: What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages
- In the media: "The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?
- Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki
- Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Queens and aliens, exactly alike, once upon a December
- Technology report: User scripts and more
- Gallery: Holiday wishes
- Recent research: Acoustics and Wikipedia; Wiki Workshop 2019 summary
- From the archives: The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited (re-revisited?)
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- WikiProject report: Wikiproject Tree of Life: A Wikiproject report
The Signpost: 27 January 2020
- From the editor: Reaching six million articles is great, but we need a moratorium
- News and notes: Six million articles on the English language Wikipedia
- Special report: The limits of volunteerism and the gatekeepers of Team Encarta
- Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019
- News from the WMF: Capacity Building: Top 5 Themes from Community Conversations
- Community view: Our most important new article since November 1, 2015
- From the archives: A decade of The Signpost, 2005-2015
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Japan: a wikiProject Report
Books & Bytes – Issue 37
Books & Bytes
Issue 37, November – December 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for February 29
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of giant squid specimens and sightings (21st century), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Hoki (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 March 2020
- From the editor: The ball is in your court
- News and notes: Alexa ranking down to 13th worldwide
- Special report: More participation, more conversation, more pageviews
- Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?
- Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed
- Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman
- In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019
- From the archives: Is Wikipedia for sale?
- Traffic report: February articles, floating in the dark
- Gallery: Feel the love
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Opinion: Wikipedia is another country
- Humour: The Wilhelm scream
The Signpost: 29 March 2020
- From the editors: The bad and the good
- News and notes: 2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked
- WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report
- Special report: Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters
- In the media: Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story
- Discussion report: Rethinking draft space
- Arbitration report: Unfinished business
- In focus: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"
- Community view: Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19
- From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own
- Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world
- Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools
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The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.
The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.
- On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
- The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
- an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
- a rich-text visual editing option, and
- other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 April 2020
- News and notes: Unbiased information from Ukraine's government?
- In the media: Coronavirus, again and again
- Discussion report: Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit
- Featured content: Featured content returns
- Arbitration report: Two difficult cases
- Traffic report: Disease the Rhythm of the Night
- Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias
- Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors
Issue 38, January – April 2020
Books & Bytes
Issue 38, January – April 2020
- New partnership
- Global roundup
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:57, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
The file File:Giant squid harveyi.jpg has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
unused, low-res, no obvious use
While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}}
notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.
Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}}
will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.
This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
File:Bermuda Blob 2.jpg listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Bermuda Blob 2.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Hog Farm (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 May 2020
- From the editor: Meltdown May?
- News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting
- Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct
- Featured content: Weathering the storm
- Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction
- Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam
- Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book
- News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement
- Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
- Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime
- WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles
- On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020
Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020
- Library Card Platform
- New partnerships
- ProQuest
- Springer Nature
- BioOne
- CEEOL
- IWA Publishing
- ICE Publishing
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
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This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@
. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
The Signpost: 28 June 2020
- News and notes: Progress at Wikipedia Library and Wikijournal of Medicine
- Community view: Community open letter on renaming
- Gallery: After the killing of George Floyd
- In the media: Part collaboration and part combat
- Discussion report: Community reacts to WMF rebranding proposals
- Featured content: Sports are returning, with a rainbow
- Arbitration report: Anti-harassment RfC and a checkuser revocation
- Traffic report: The pandemic, alleged murder, a massacre, and other deaths
- News from the WMF: We stand for racial justice
- Recent research: Wikipedia and COVID-19; automated Wikipedia-based fact-checking
- Humour: Cherchez une femme
- On the bright side: For what are you grateful this month?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Black Lives Matter
Editing news 2020 #3
Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
- The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
- More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
- Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
- The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
- Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
- On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
- In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
The Signpost: 2 August 2020
- Special report: Wikipedia and the End of Open Collaboration?
- COI and paid editing: Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money
- News and notes: Abstract Wikipedia, a hoax, sex symbols, and a new admin
- In the media: Dog days gone bad
- Discussion report: Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy
- Featured content: Remembering Art, Valor, and Freedom
- Traffic report: Now for something completely different
- News from the WMF: New Chinese national security law in Hong Kong could limit the privacy of Wikipedia users
- Obituaries: Hasteur and Brian McNeil
The Signpost: 30 August 2020
- News and notes: The high road and the low road
- In the media: Storytelling large and small
- Featured content: Going for the goal
- Special report: Wikipedia's not so little sister is finding its own way
- Op-Ed: The longest-running hoax
- Traffic report: Heart, soul, umbrellas, and politics
- News from the WMF: Fourteen things we’ve learned by moving Polish Wikimedia conference online
- Recent research: Detecting spam, and pages to protect; non-anonymous editors signal their intelligence with high-quality articles
- Arbitration report: A slow couple of months
- From the archives: Wikipedia for promotional purposes?
Editing news 2020 #4
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Reply tool
The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.
- More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
- Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
- Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[29]
The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.
New requirements for user signatures
- The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
- Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.
Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.
Books & Bytes – Issue 40
Books & Bytes
Issue 40, July – August 2020
- New partnerships
- Al Manhal
- Ancestry
- RILM
- #1Lib1Ref May 2020 report
- AfLIA hires a Wikipedian-in-Residence
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:14, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 September 2020
- Special report: Paid editing with political connections
- News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki
- In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
- Featured content: Life finds a Way
- Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests
- Traffic report: Is there no justice?
- Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases
The Signpost: 27 September 2020
- Special report: Paid editing with political connections
- News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki
- In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
- Featured content: Life finds a Way
- Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests
- Traffic report: Is there no justice?
- Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases
The Signpost: 1 November 2020
- News and notes: Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking
- In the media: Murder, politics, religion, health and books
- Book review: Review of Wikipedia @ 20
- Discussion report: Proposal to change board composition, In The News dumps Trump story
- Featured content: The "Green Terror" is neither green nor sufficiently terrifying. Worst Hallowe'en ever.
- Traffic report: Jump back, what's that sound?
- Interview: Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner
- News from the WMF: Meet the 2020 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: OpenSym 2020: Deletions and gender, masses vs. elites, edit filters
- In focus: The many (reported) deaths of Wikipedia
Books & Bytes – Issue 41
Books & Bytes
Issue 41, September – October 2020
- New partnership: Taxmann
- WikiCite
- 1Lib1Ref 2021
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message
The Signpost: 29 November 2020
- News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"
- Op-Ed: Re-righting Wikipedia
- Opinion: How billionaires re-write Wikipedia
- Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria
- Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election
- News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker
- GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large
- Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup
- Recent research: Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail
- Essay: Writing about women
"Glover's Harbour" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Glover's Harbour. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2020_December_22#Glovers_Harbour,_Newfoundland_and_Labrador until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:31, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 December 2020
- Arbitration report: 2020 election results
- Featured content: Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time.
- Traffic report: 2020 wraps up
- Recent research: Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions
- Essay: Subjective importance
- Gallery: Angels in the architecture
- Humour: 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas
January 2021:Genlisea nigrocaulis
I see that the above species disambiguates to Genlisea pygmaea on Wikipedia, but can find nothing written anywhere which suggests their synonymy. Was the DAB page you created perhaps an error?--Quisqualis (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
Eight years! |
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Editing news 2021 #1
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Reply tool
The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.
- The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
- It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.
Research notes:
- As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
- There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[30]
- The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[31] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
- A large A/B test will start soon.[32] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
New discussion tool
The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[33] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.
Next: Notifications
During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.
Books & Bytes - Issue 42
Books & Bytes
Issue 42, November – December 2020
- New EBSCO collections now available
- 1Lib1Ref 2021 underway
- Library Card input requested
- Libraries love Wikimedia, too!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for January 31
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Centro del Calamar Gigante, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Annex.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 January 2021
- News and notes: 1,000,000,000 edits, board elections, virtual Wikimania 2021
- Special report: Wiki reporting on the United States insurrection
- In focus: From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades
- Technology report: The people who built Wikipedia, technically
- Videos and podcasts: Celebrating 20 years
- News from the WMF: Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world
- Recent research: Students still have a better opinion of Wikipedia than teachers
- Humour: Dr. Seuss's Guide to Wikipedia
- Featured content: New Year, same Featured Content report!
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2020
- Obituary: Flyer22 Frozen
The Signpost: 28 February 2021
- News and notes: Maher stepping down
- Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
- In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house
- News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia
- Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day
- Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
- Gallery: What is Black history and culture?
Disambiguation link notification for March 3
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of giant squid specimens and sightings (21st century), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Breakwater.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 42
Books & Bytes
Issue 42, January – February 2021
- New partnerships: PNAS, De Gruyter, Nomos
- 1Lib1Ref
- Library Card
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)