User talk:3family6/Archive 5

Archive 1←Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7→Archive 10

The Signpost: 09 October 2013

Opting in to VisualEditor

As you may know, VisualEditor ("Edit beta") is currently available on the English Wikipedia only for registered editors who choose to enable it. Since you have made 100 or more edits with VisualEditor this year, I want to make sure that you know that you can enable VisualEditor (if you haven't already done so) by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable". This will give you the option of using VisualEditor on articles and userpages when you want to, and give you the opportunity to spot changes in the interface and suggest improvements. We value your feedback, whether positive or negative, about using VisualEditor, at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:24, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Hunnic Empire

I have started a discussion concerning your latest edit to the article Hunnic Empire. --Kansas Bear (talk) 17:57, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013

Did you know?

You can create and edit multi-level lists in VisualEditor. The first two icons let you set or remove list formatting.

The last two are used to increase or decrease the indentation level. This can also be done from the keyboard, by using Tab ↹ to indent the list and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ to outdent it.

For more information, read Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide.

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) 18:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 October 2013

The Signpost: 23 October 2013

The Signpost: 30 October 2013

Article work

You may want to edit No More Hell to Pay.HotHat (talk) 21:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013

Did you know?

VisualEditor's toolbar has a new feature (currently working only in some browsers), "Switch to source editing". By choosing this item, you can move directly into the wikitext source editor without saving. This is particularly useful if you need to make significant changes to tables, image galleries, or other elements that are not currently supported.

For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide.

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) 22:10, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Beautiful Eulogy, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Electro (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) 08:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

No More Hell to Pay

Hello!. Stryper's last album "No More Hell to Pay" is the ELEVENTH (11) in his career (you can count them and keep running).

Why do you say that is the eighth? How is the source? Remember to include until the last two without original songs. --Apega71 (talk) 13:44, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

It is the tenth album of their career. The reissue of Yellow and Black attack doesn't count. But, No More Hell to Pay is the eight studio album of the band's career. EPs don't count. I'm not sure if The Covering would be a studio album or a compilation album, so I concede that they might have made nine studio albums.--¿3family6 contribs 16:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello!. I see you have many doubts about it, nor mention the immediately preceding Second Coming. In my opinion, The Covering is a studio album, and it may be that Second Coming is a compilation album. In addition, The Yellow and Black Attack may be an EP (not studio album). In any case, this will then NINTH album with No More Hell to Pay. Do not you think? --Apega71 (talk) 13:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. See the updated version of the article. (At this juncture, I'm considering Second Coming a studio album.--¿3family6 contribs 14:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, is quite valid to say that Sacond Coming is a real studio album. Is true, are new versions of old songs, but it is a studio album, after all. I agree, is a better studio album.--Apega71 (talk) 16:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Spanish version

Hello friend.

I did the article on this same album in Spanish. But I can´t put the link to the English version. You can do that? Thank you. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Hell_to_Pay --Apega71 (talk) 13:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know how to do this either. I'll try and see if I can find out how I can.--¿3family6 contribs 14:48, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

DYK for Anthony House (Adams, Massachusetts)

The DYK project (nominate) 08:48, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 December 2013

See...

I created Christmas Is Here if you want to look at it because I learned my lesson from No More Hell to Pay DYK.HotHat (talk) 13:32, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks good on the quote end. There were some major grammatical issues which I just cleaned up. Thanks for creating this.--¿3family6 contribs 16:01, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
I just want to say thank you for your adept fixes to the article. If you would like to see one that I took from a stub Pushin' Against a Stone by Valerie June.HotHat (talk) 17:52, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Article work two

I worked on Christmas in Diverse City's critical reception section.HotHat (talk) 23:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Definitely better. You still need to work on grammar, but that's always tricky (it took me a while to get it).--¿3family6 contribs 23:37, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

DYK for No More Hell to Pay

Harrias talk 13:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Church Clothes 2

Hello! Your submission of Church Clothes 2 at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Lihaas (talk) 17:23, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

ALMOST done(Lihaas (talk) 16:28, 17 December 2013 (UTC)).
Not sure what to do with only 1 thing left. Left a note there(Lihaas (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)).

VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013

Did you know?

VisualEditor's toolbar has a new drop-down menu that contains all character formatting: bold, italics, subscript, superscript, strikethrough, computer code, underline, and the ability to remove all formatting from text.

For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read the user guide.

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, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://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) 20:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Beautiful Eulogy

Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:48, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Way outside your comfort zone

Could you please look at the copy at Katy Hudson. I don't want my bias to be imposed on the article. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:49, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

What's your specific problem with it?--¿3family6 contribs 03:09, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

Happy New Year 3family6!

Happy New Year!
Hello 3family6:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve the encyclopedia for Wikipedia's readers, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, HotHat (talk) 05:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)



Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2014}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

I just hope your year of editing ahead will be great!HotHat (talk) 05:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited The Return of the Black Death, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Martyrium (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) 08:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

If you want to comment, go here to do so.HotHat (talk) 05:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014

Did you know?

To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter).

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) 20:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

Underoath album (reverted edits)

Good day! I am an author of all edits, reverted by me! Why did you undo it? Yes, I created the information about singles, hoping for "good-faith" edits but after one situation with citations, I decided to delete this! Sorry, but I think that these actions are not respectful and don't want my text to remain there! If you want, you can rewrite the summary about videos and singles in your own words. With respect --ВікіПЕДист (talk) 15:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

P.S. You may also change something (add citations or write your own vision of music videos) if you think my edits to be adequate=) But on my opinion the vision of every person differs from other and should not need any citations (except of the official vision of the band, but if such vision isn't found in Internet you can offer your own description). Thank you--ВікіПЕДист (talk) 15:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I have no real vested interested one way or the other. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't deleting things out of simple frustration. If you don't want the content, than just undo my edit.--¿3family6 contribs 16:15, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

But why the citations are needed in this case? The description is just a retelling of "plot" of the video as I understand....--ВікіПЕДист (talk) 16:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
That's the problem. Is what you've written the plot of the video, or the plot "as you understand" it? The plot should simply tell what happens - any interpretation, either of the events or the message, needs to be backed up by reliable sources.--¿3family6 contribs 22:16, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Church Clothes 2

Hello! Your submission of Church Clothes 2 at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 20:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Church Clothes 2

Orlady (talk) 16:03, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Round of Applause (Lecrae song)

Orlady (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

Nomination of Bloodbath of B-R5RB for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Bloodbath of B-R5RB 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/Bloodbath of B-R5RB until a consensus is reached, and anyone 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. —  scetoaux (T|C) 06:32, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

Feedback needed on using special characters

Hello. Thank you for using VisualEditor! Having editors use it is the best way for the Wikimedia Foundation to develop it into the best tool it can be.

While we always welcome general feedback (please report any issues in Bugzilla in the "VisualEditor" product or drop your feedback on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org), the developers are especially interested right now in feedback on the special character inserter. This new tool is used for inserting special characters (including symbols like ₥, IPA pronunciation symbols, mathematics symbols, and characters with diacritics). It is intended to help people whose computers do not have good character inserters. For example, many Mac users prefer to use the extensive "Special Characters..." tool present at the bottom of the Edit menu in all applications or to learn the keyboard shortcuts for characters like ñ and ü.

The current version of the special characters tool in VisualEditor is very simple and very basic. It will be getting a lot of work in the coming weeks and months. It does not contain very many character sets at this time. (The specific character sets can be customized at each Wikipedia, so that each project could have a local version with the characters it wants.) But the developers want your ideas at this early stage about ways that the overall concept could be improved. I would appreciate your input on this question, so please try out the character inserter and tell me what changes to the design would (or would not!) best work for you.

Screenshot of the Insert menu in VisualEditor
The "insert" pulldown on the task bar of VisualEditor will lead you to the '⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽' tool.
Screenshot of Special Characters tool
This is the ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ inserter as it appears on many wikis. (Some may have customized it.) Your feedback on this tool is particularly important.

Issues you might consider:

  • How often do you normally use Wikipedia's character inserters?
  • Which character sets are useful to you? Should it include all 18 of the character sets provided in the wikitext editor's newer toolbar at the English Wikipedia, the 10 present in the older editor toolbar, or some other combination of character sets?
  • How many special characters would you like to see at one time?
    • Should there be a "priority" or "favorites" section for the 10 or 12 characters that most editors need most often? Is it okay if you need an extra click to go beyond the limited priority set?
    • How should the sections be split up? Should they be nested? Ordered?
    • How should the sections be navigated? Should there be a drop-down? A nested menu?
  • The wikitext editor has never included many symbols and characters, like ℗ and ♀. Do you find that you need these missing characters? If the character inserter in VisualEditor includes hundreds or thousands of special characters, will it be overwhelming? How will you find the character you want? What should be done for users without enough space to display more than a few dozen characters?
  • Should the character inserter be statically available until dismissed? Should it hover near the mouse? Should it go away on every selection or 10 seconds after a selection with no subsequent ones?
  • Some people believe that the toolbar already has too many options—how would you simplify it?

The developers are open to any thoughts on how the special character inserter can best be developed, even if this requires significant changes. Please leave your views on the central feedback page, or, if you'd prefer, you can contact me directly on my talk page. It would be really helpful if you can tell me how frequently you need to use special characters in your typical editing and what languages or other special characters are important to you.

Thank you again for your work with VisualEditor and for any feedback you can provide. I really do appreciate it.

P.S. You might be interested in the current ideas about improving citations, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014

Did you know?
Click this image to see the details.

You can easily re-use references by going to the Insert menu, choosing "Reference", and clicking on "Use an existing reference" in the lower left corner. A list of all references, their numbers, and their ref names (if any) will be shown. You can search the list for any author, title, date, or other keyword. Read the user guide for more information.

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) 04:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Bloodbath of B-R5RB

Thank you Victuallers (talk) 16:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

Cross Rhythms

I made this to display their rating methodology more accurately. So, what do you think?HotHat (talk) 04:34, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

It looks neat.--¿3family6 contribs 04:55, 17 March 2014 (UTC)