Wikipedia:Kōrero/2014
Wikipedia:Kōrero, pūranga 2014
Request for comment on Commons: Should Wikimedia support MP4 video?
takatāI apologize for this message being only in English. Please translate it if needed to help your community.
The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.
Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).
However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.
We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.
Please join this RfC -- and share your advice.
All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.
You are also welcome to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.
We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:47, 16 Hānuere 2014 (UTC)
Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014
takatāOn January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.
We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.
You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. Runa
Amendment to the Terms of Use
takatāHello all,
Please join a discussion about a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing and we encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please translate this statement if you can, and we welcome you to translate the proposed amendment and introduction. Please see the discussion on Meta Wiki for more information. Thank you! Slaporte (WMF) 22:00, 21 Pēpuere 2014 (UTC)
Call for project ideas: funding is available for community experiments
takatāI apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.
Do you have an idea for a project that could improve your community? Individual Engagement Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation help support individuals and small teams to organize experiments for 6 months. You can get funding to try out your idea for online community organizing, outreach, tool-building, or research to help make Wikipedia better. In March, we’re looking for new project proposals.
Examples of past Individual Engagement Grant projects:
- Organizing social media for Chinese Wikipedia ($350 for materials)
- Improving gadgets for Visual Editor ($4500 for developers)
- Coordinating access to reliable sources for Wikipedians ($7500 for project management, consultants and materials)
- Building community and strategy for Wikisource (€10000 for organizing and travel)
Proposals are due by 31 March 2014. There are a number of ways to get involved!
Hope to have your participation,
--Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation 19:44, 28 Pēpuere 2014 (UTC)
Proposed optional changes to Terms of Use amendment
takatāCatalan Culture Challenge
takatāI apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.
The Catalan-speaking world... Want to find out more? From March 16 to April 15 we will organise the Catalan Culture Challenge, a Wikipedia editing contest in which victory will go to those who start and improve the greatest number of articles about 50 key figures of Catalan culture. You can take part by creating or expanding articles on these people in your native language (or any other one you speak). It would be lovely to have you on board. :-)
We look forward to seeing you!
Amical Wikimedia--Kippelboy (talk) 05:46, 16 Māehe 2014 (UTC)
Changes to the default site typography coming soon
takatāThis week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:
- April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
- April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live
This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.
For more information:
- Summary of changes and FAQ
- Discussion page for feedback or questions
- Post on blog.wikimedia.org
-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team
No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto
takatāThere is a current discussion on German Wikipedia on a decision of Asaf Bartov, Head of WMF Grants and Global South Partnerships, Wikimedia Foundation, who rejected a request for funding a proposal from wikipedians from eowiki one year ago with the explanation the existence, cultivation, and growth of the Esperanto Wikipedia does not advance our educational mission. No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto. On meta there has also started a discussion about that decision. --Holder (talk) 10:37, 5 Mei 2014 (UTC)
Media Viewer
takatā
Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.
I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.
Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
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Media Viewer is now live on this wiki
takatā
Greetings— and sorry for writing in English, please translate if it will help your community,
The Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team is happy to announce that Media Viewer was just released on this site today.
Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.
If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.
Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer. You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion on MediaWiki.org in any language, to help improve this feature. You are also welcome to take this quick survey in English, en français, o español.
We hope you enjoy Media Viewer. Many thanks to all the community members who helped make it possible. - Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 Hune 2014 (UTC)
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VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
takatāThis is a one-time mailing to projects that may need this information. Future newsletters will be available as opt-in only. To receive future newsletters (about one per month), please add your page to the subscribers' list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. You're welcome to translate to your language.
Did you know?
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
takatāThe 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
takatāPlease 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 us 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).
If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at Meta (or at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only). Thank you! --Elitre (WMF), 22:33, 25 Hune 2014 (UTC)
Updates related to VisualEditor
takatā- Please help translate this message in your language. Thanks :)
Hi, everybody. This is a reminder that we invite you to discuss VisualEditor's recent development and plans ahead during the next office hours with James Forrester (Product Manager):
If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor global newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).
Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackaton or at the following sessions:
- VisualEditor — helping users edit more easily, Saturday, August 9;
- VisualEditor — engineering against the odds, Sunday, August 10.
WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 16:02, 31 Hūrae 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor global newsletter—July and August 2014
takatāThe 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
takatāThe 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
takatāThe 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. There is a VisualEditor Translation Sprint going on during Wikimania; whether you're in London or not, any contributions are welcome!
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! --Elitre (WMF), 14:40, 9 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
IMPORTANT: Admin activity review
takatāHello. A new policy regarding the removal of "advanced rights" (administrator, bureaucrat, etc) was recently adopted by global community consensus (your community received a notice about the discussion). According to this policy, the stewards are reviewing administrators' activity on smaller wikis. To the best of our knowledge, your wiki does not have a formal process for removing "advanced rights" from inactive accounts. This means that the stewards will take care of this according to the new admin activity review here.
We have determined that the following users meet the inactivity criteria (no edits and no log actions for more than 2 years):
- user:A Pakeha (administrator, bureaucrat)
- user:Kahuroa (administrator, bureaucrat)
- user:Node ue (administrator, bureaucrat)
- user:Perl (administrator, bureaucrat)
- user:Rocastelo (administrator)
- user:Stephen Cope (administrator)
- user:Zigger (administrator)
These users will receive a notification soon, asking them to start a community discussion if they want to retain some or all of their rights. If the users do not respond, then their advanced rights will be removed by the stewards.
However, if you as a community would like to create your own activity review process superseding the global one, want to make another decision about these inactive rights holders, or already have a policy that we missed, then please notify the stewards on Meta-Wiki so that we know not to proceed with the rights review on your wiki. Thanks, --Shanmugamp7 (talk) 16:08, 12 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
- I supported this proposal when it was raised over a year ago, and still support it.-gadfium (talk) 20:28, 12 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
- Long overdue. Admin rights were handed out to people with minimal contributions in the early days of this wiki. Piwaiwaka (talk) 23:16, 13 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
- Just pointing out that Wikipedia:Kaiwhakahaere (kaiwhakahaere = administrators) expressly leaves it up to the Stewards (tuari) to remove admin powers, with community support. It also requires admins to be active (mātātoa - and with edits in the last two months) and to have community support. Gadfium certainly has my support ... Piwaiwaka (talk) 04:09, 14 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
- Long overdue. Admin rights were handed out to people with minimal contributions in the early days of this wiki. Piwaiwaka (talk) 23:16, 13 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
Help for translate
takatāHello and sorry for writing in English. Can anyone help me translate a small article (2 paragraphs) from English to your language and create the article in your wiki? Please, fell free to answer in my talk page in your wiki anytime. Thanks! Xaris333 (talk) 01:19, 13 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decisions
takatāThe Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.
If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.
Process ideas for software development
takatā’’My apologies for writing in English.’’
Hello,
I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation. It would be very appreciated if you could translate this message to help inform your local communities as well.
I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.
Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 Ākuhata 2014 (UTC)
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Grants to improve your project
takatā- Apologies for English. Please help translate this message.
Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals for funding new experiments from September 1st to 30th. Your idea could improve Wikimedia projects with a new tool or gadget, a better process to support community-building on your wiki, research on an important issue, or something else we haven't thought of yet. Whether you need $200 or $30,000 USD, Individual Engagement Grants can cover your own project development time in addition to hiring others to help you.
- Submit your proposal
- Get help: In IdeaLab or an upcoming Hangout session MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 2 Hepetema 2014 (UTC)
Change in renaming process
takatāPart or all of this message may be in English. Please help translate if possible.
The process involves changing all rename processes into one global renaming process. The ability for local bureaucrats to rename users on this wiki will be turned off on Monday, 15 September 2014, as one of the first steps. Global renamers are in the process of being created to make sure projects and languages are represented by the time this occurs. I sent a note to every bureaucrat about this process three weeks ago with an invitation to participate and many have begun requesting to be a part of the group. Together with the stewards, the global renamers will be empowered to help editors work through the often difficult process of getting a global name.
In parting, visit Special:MergeAccount to unify your account if you have never done so. If your local pages about renaming still need to be updated, please do so and consider pointing people to m:SRUC for future rename requests, especially if this project does not have bureaucrats that hold global renamer permissions. If you have any questions, you can read more on the help page on Meta. You can also follow the technical progress on mediawiki.org. Contact me on Meta any time with questions as well. Thank you for your time.-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 9 sep 2014 18:22 (CEST)
VisualEditor available on Internet Explorer 11
takatāVisualEditor will become available to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 during today's regular software update. Support for some earlier versions of Internet Explorer is being worked on. If you encounter problems with VisualEditor on Internet Explorer, please contact the Editing team by leaving a message at VisualEditor/Feedback on Mediawiki.org. Happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 07:29, 11 Hepetema 2014 (UTC).
PS. Please subscribe to the global monthly newsletter to receive further news about VisualEditor.
Upload files, Upload Wizard?
takatāHello! Sorry for writing in English. It was noted that on this wiki there is little community activity around uploads: less than 50 "muku" actions in "File" last year.
I guess this wiki doesn't have the interest or energies to maintain complex templates and metadata, especially for EDP files. I propose to
- send users to commons:Special:UploadWizard from the sidebar and
- limit local "Tuku ake" to the "Administrators" group (for any emergency uploads),
so that no new work is needed on this wiki and all users can have a functioning, easy upload interface in their own language. All registered users can upload on Commons.
All this will be done around 2014-09-30.
- If you disagree with the proposal, just remove this wiki from the list.
- To make the UploadWizard even better, please tell your experience and ideas on commons:Commons:Upload Wizard feedback.
- In all cases, existing files will not be affected, but everyone is welcome to join m:File metadata cleanup drive. The goal is to give better credit to the authors who provided us their works.
VisualEditor News #8—2014
takatāSince 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 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
takatāInternet 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
takatāThe tool for editing TemplateData has been deployed to 30 more Wikipedias this week. 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 page 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
takatāSeveral 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
and mw-disambig
class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these 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
takatāThe 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
takatāAt 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 is available. Thank you all for your work.
This was the first translatable VisualEditor newsletter, so thanks to everybody who made this possible! If it hasn't been delivered in your language, and you'd like to help with translations in the future, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre (WMF), so that you will be notified when the next issue is due.
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. Thank you! —Elitre (WMF)
09:49, 13 Oketopa 2014 (UTC)
Meta RfCs on two new global groups
takatāThere are currently requests for comment open on meta to create two new global groups. The first is a group for members of the OTRS permissions queue, which would grant them autopatrolled rights on all wikis except those who opt-out. That proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Creation of a global OTRS-permissions user group. The second is a group for Wikimedia Commons admins and OTRS agents to view deleted file pages through the 'viewdeletedfile' right on all wikis except those who opt-out. The second proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Global file deletion review.
We would like to hear what you think on both proposals. Both are in English; if you wanted to translate them into your native language that would also be appreciated.
It is possible for individual projects to opt-out, so that users in those groups do not have any additional rights on those projects. To do this please start a local discussion, and if there is consensus you can request to opt-out of either or both at m:Stewards' noticeboard.
Thanks and regards, Ajraddatz (talk) 18:04, 26 Oketopa 2014 (UTC)Hello, Dear wikipedians. I invite you to edit and improve this article and to add information about your and other country.--Kaiyr (talk) 12:20, 31 Oketopa 2014 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (November 2014)
takatāApologies for writing in English, please help translate this into your local language. Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:
- 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.23:19, 5 Noema 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 Global Mass Message to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Global AbuseFilter
takatāAbuseFilter is a MediaWiki extension used to detect likely abusive behavior patterns, like pattern vandalism and spam. In 2013, Global AbuseFilters were enabled on a limited set of wikis including Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki.org, Wikispecies and (in early 2014) all the "small wikis". Recently, global abuse filters were enabled on "medium sized wikis" as well. These filters are currently managed by stewards on Meta-Wiki and have shown to be very effective in preventing mass spam attacks across Wikimedia projects. However, there is currently no policy on how the global AbuseFilters will be managed although there are proposals. There is an ongoing request for comment on policy governing the use of the global AbuseFilters. In the meantime, specific wikis can opt out of using the global AbuseFilter. These wikis can simply add a request to this list on Meta-Wiki. More details can be found on this page at Meta-Wiki. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on m:Talk:Global AbuseFilter.
Thanks,
PiRSquared17, Glaisher— 17:36, 14 Noema 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #9—2014
takatāDid you know?
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
takatāBasic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in them was just introduced to Wikipedias. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be added later.
To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus are now hidden behind a "More" item, such as "Underline" in the styling menu.
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 this week, and the following week 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 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 dialog boxes has already changed in the mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. You are welcome to compare 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 engine 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 an error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [1] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
takatāThe tool for quickly editing TemplateData has been deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool was 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 to learn more about it. 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 value for that parameter. The autovalue can be overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog box 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
takatāThe VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. 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 is being updated to add information about editing tables. The translations of the user guide 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 Meta. Thank you! —Elitre (WMF)
23:29, 14 Noema 2014 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)
takatāApologies for writing in English, please help translate this into your local language. Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- 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.00:22, 18 Tīhema 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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
VisualEditor News #10—2014
takatāDid you know?
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
takatāBasic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete 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
takatāThe current VisualEditor design will be replaced 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 on other sites in 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.
Let's work together
takatā- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations 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!
18:59, 26 Tīhema 2014 (UTC)