User talk:David Gerard/archive 12

Winston McCall Comment

About the PROD, someone placed a no-reference BLP, which was rectified. I was torn between CSD and AfD, hoping to give the author/others a chance to expand. Therefore I did a normal PROD on it. Unless there is any improvement today I'll AfD Winston McCall.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(talk) 18:50, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely fair enough :-) - David Gerard (talk) 19:39, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of content management systems

Hey there,

Do you think you could review this page again? I have been trying to delete entries that do not have any notabilities and/or even pages but my changes are being reverted! (By people who added their own companies I am guessing)

Thanks :) Puda (talk) 11:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A Sisyphean task. Just cleaned out the redlinked and unlinked entries again - David Gerard (talk) 11:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are the best. Puda (talk) 12:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

errol dave et al

Hello, David Gerard. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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or something like that satusuro 16:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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) 20:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Overmars Nominated For Deletion

Hello there, I noticed you were in the previous discussion for the deletion of the Mark Overmars article which has since been recreated posing the same issues as before. If you could possibly weigh in on the new discussion it would be appreciated. Thanks. BlitzGreg (talk) 03:56, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Amira Pyliotis > Tecoma (musician)

I've opened a discussion at talkpage suggesting the above move. I believe it is not controversial so I haven't used the formal 'plate. If you have an opinion either way you're welcome to provide it.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 23:41, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brendan Eich article

Hi David! As an editor on Brendan Eich, would you be up for contributing to the discussion at Talk:Brendan Eich#Prop 8 donation? Thanks! Dreamyshade (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Errors on 27 January

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the SourceForge page, your edit caused a URL error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh! - David Gerard (talk) 00:24, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to join WikiProject Freedom of speech

• WP:WikiProject Freedom of speech

There is a WikiProject about Freedom of speech, called WP:WikiProject Freedom of speech. If you're interested, here are some easy things you can do:

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4. Join in discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Freedom of speech.
5. Notify others you think might be interested in Freedom of speech to join the WikiProject.

Thank you for your interest in Freedom of speech, — Cirt (talk) 20:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice.org

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The discussion is about the topic OpenOffice.org. Thank you. --Tóraí (talk) 23:59, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure content disputes are administrative issues - David Gerard (talk) 08:41, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all unsourced BLP statements on sight?

Your input would be appreciated at BLP Talk . Dezastru (talk) 00:49, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice

David, thank you for your compliment on my recent edit to OpenOffice. This is a thoroughly confusing, misused and misapropriated phrase both in common parlance and (even) within technical circles. I further elaborated on that subsequent to your acolade (interspersed by an edit by User:Walter Görlitz) ... especially now that there is a new generation who seem to be anaware of, for example, OpenDoc.
Enquire (talk) 22:29, 16 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's a tangled mess. I'm not sure your rewrite is ideal, but it's not wrong. I can see someone taking exception to the link in the header for the link to OOXML. (Though I suppose in a disambig page, we can't really put a reference to the Microsoft person erroneously calling it "Open Office XML" at a conference ...) But in general, cheers for diving in :-) - David Gerard (talk) 22:38, 16 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

rfc/u

Neutral notification to all participants in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BeerXML of this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/PrivateWiddle.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

February 2014

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Tablewaiters

An AfD discussion for the article on Tablewaiters is currently being debated. At this stage I am undecided as to whether it should be kept or not but I do feel the arguements for its deletion are a little light on. Given your extensive knowledge on the Australian music scene in the 1980s I thought you might be aware of the band and/or have some thoughts as to where I might find some additional references/sources on information pertaining to the band. In order to determine whether its worth retaining.Dan arndt (talk) 01:55, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:D.A.F. (band)

Template:D.A.F. (band) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. The Banner talk 11:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for March 2

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Gabi Delgado-López, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Córdoba (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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Minny Pops

Hello David... how kind of you to thank me for my very tiny edit to the Minny Pops page. I was astonished to see your note this morning - what a nice thing to do. I went to a Wikipedia edit-a-thon last night and met some wonderful Wikimedia UK folks, and it's inspired me to try to learn more and contribute more. Thanks for making me feel so welcome. When I remember how to send you a kitten, I will! 9frm (talk) 09:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I feel those of us working on the obscure post-punk that approximately nobody cares about need all the encouragement available :-) And I think the "thank" function is a FANTASTIC idea - David Gerard (talk) 10:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor RFC

I undid your comment at the VisualEditor RFC, as the discussion is not yet opened. We are currently working on improving the format of the discussion, so we will hopefully arrive at a meaningful conversation and consensus. If you'd like, I can contact you directly when the RFC does open. Thank you for your interest. - Ypnypn (talk) 21:11, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sorry for jumping the gun :-) - David Gerard (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IP address block

David, it seems you blocked a corporate network probably years ago now based at 12.145.184.6, with the reason "{{blocked proxy}}: Appears to be compromised corporate network machine - could the sysadmin please email me for unblock". I don't have an email address for you, so this is the next best option. Someone was trying to create a new account from one of our PCs and the block prevented this. If you prefer email, that's perfectly fine by me; just let me know where to send stuff to. --Jemiller226 (talk) 20:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you can link to the block, I'll unblock it - David Gerard (talk) 20:22, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Found it! Unblocked. Be good now ;-) - David Gerard (talk) 20:23, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Natural News

Hello David Gerard! Just wondering if you’ve seen my most recent comment on the Natural News talk page, I was hoping you could help me clear up some confusion regarding some of the concerns I’ve been having. Thanks for the help! Adamh4 (talk) 20:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

ANI Notice

FYI, I didn't mention you by name, but I listed a few diffs involving you at ANI here. Just wanted to let you know. Thanks.   — Jess· Δ♥ 20:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SaaS Sub-list Request in "List of Content Management Systems"

Hello, David. Thank you for policing the List of Content Management Systems. I'm writing to ask if you're comfortable taking an additional editing step: in the SaaS subsection you'll notice the "Huddle" editor has ignored alphabetical order and placed that system first, ahead of all of the other systems. As a contributor myself I'm loathe to start an edit war, but am hoping that with your experience in policing the list you might feel comfortable moving Huddle to its rightful place in the list. All the other contributors have played nicely in the sandbox, the lone exception should be brought into line. Thanks -- Snoddoggy (talk) 19:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't call it a big deal, MediaWiki table syntax is horrible and confusing :-) Will shift it shortly - David Gerard (talk) 19:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brendan Eich

Thank you for your comments on the Talk page for Brendan Eich. I am concerned that one editor seems to be risking an edit war for political reasons, and if you have time I would appreciate any further attention you might spare.TVC 15 (talk) 01:47, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ian McFarlane

Hi. I know you created this article almost a decade ago now, but an editor at the Teahouse has questioned the notability of the article Ian McFarlane, among other concerns. If you want, you can give your thoughts on the matter there. Regards, Mz7 (talk) 05:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An Unbelievable Embarrassment for Wikipedia

Hey, I've never really talked to you but am a big fan of Rational Wiki and last night, as I took a break from my schoolwork still (legally) wired by pharmaceuticals to learn, I read the whole of the Arbitration Committee drama from your bold and just action to the end. I don't know why I'm writing to you other than to say that I kept reading hoping to find the part of the story where the ridiculous policies and actions end- and they never did. I honestly think that the best thing that could happen for Wikipedia as a whole in regards to the Arbitration Committee would be for the next elected committee to abolish themselves.

Right or wrong, I do know that I have to compare you to thinkers such as Frank Knight. He was a man who, his own ideas put aside, had no issue being harsh and to the point when critiquing other academics who he felt could not defend their position or lacked any real reasoning. You did not act like a coward when treated like garbage for doing the right thing, and for reasons like that I feel confident that my upcoming donation (after I finish this post) to RationalWiki's legal/booze fund will be in good hands. Yuppie Puppy (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. Cheers :-) - David Gerard (talk) 22:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Jeyênne

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Jeyênne requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Epeefleche (talk) 06:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy rules

Hi -- you just stated that you don't speedy things that have been around for years. Can you point me to the support for that in our policies or guidelines? Also, are you the creator of the page? Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:05, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Epeefleche, I think you've been around here long enough to know how to check the page history. If you do you'll see that the article content was not contributed by David. (He originally created a redirect at that title, but the article currently located there is entirely the work of others.) So I hope your question wasn't a prelude to making some specious accusation about him removing a speedy deletion tag from his own article. —Psychonaut (talk) 09:01, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A creation of a redirect is, to my knowledge, a creation. And as to the edit summary explaining the redirect, it appears to be a made-up rule. The two together, coming from a sysop, seem not to satisfy our goal that admins act as we would like editors in general to act.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:57, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, it's almost worthless and I turned it back into a redirect. The target article XPQ-21 is also currently worthless, even though they're actually notable, but we do have to show it - in its present state I'd have been tempted to PROD it if I didn't know they were noteworthy. I've put out a call for help on my Twitter/FB - David Gerard (talk) 09:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have zero problem with the result. Just with the two points I made; I think the process was less than I would hope for from an admin -- unless you can demonstrated that your "we don't" comment was something other than a made-up rule, being addressed to me by a sysop whom I should believe. But I had no problem with the result.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:57, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry, I was wrong - old-timer's memory. It used to be one, but you're quite right it isn't one now. Think of me as "old Wikipedian yells at cloud" - David Gerard (talk) 21:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks -- do me a favor ... next time you're yelling, think twice. You might drive away an editor, without good reason.Epeefleche (talk) 21:04, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I know, I'll try to be good. DON'T SEND ME TO THAT HOME - David Gerard (talk) 21:08, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I won't. I'm there now, and using their only computer.Epeefleche (talk) 21:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of XPQ-21 for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article XPQ-21 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/XPQ-21 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.  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:09, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to call that unfair in its present condition - David Gerard (talk) 09:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

April 2014

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Deletion of Simple Scale link

What's the reason you delete the link to the simple scale open source framework on the embarrassingly parallel page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.103.29.153 (talk) 09:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of an article, lack of evidence of noteworthiness - David Gerard (talk) 09:17, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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.

The drop-down menu is on the right, next to the search box.

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)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	I heard your interview on the radio and was impressed by your clear, simple explanations and reasonably good humour. Thanks for helping to improve public understanding of Wikipedia! BethNaught (talk) 22:11, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They ran my bit? I thought they didn't! About when in the programme was it? Are you sure you didn't hear Seddon's piece on Radio 4? Cheers :-) - David Gerard (talk) 00:00, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You were on in the last ten minutes of the show. They mentioned Wikipedia several times which may be why you thought they cut you. They used about four minutes of you in the end. :) BethNaught (talk) 07:31, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There I am! 2:51:00 on. Thank you :-D - David Gerard (talk) 23:02, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Molyneux article slow revert war

I appreciate your efforts to point out the flaws in the Molyneux article, but several people over many months have worked to improve it. The sources are far better than when the tags were placed on it. Since your only edits on the page are to continually re-insert the tags, I can only assume you're continuing this slow revert war in order to shame the subject of the article. Please describe your specific complaints on the talk page, not in edit summaries of your reverts. -- Netoholic @ 18:06, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's because the sources are still terrible, per past discussion on the talk page - the problems haven't been remedied. If that article suffered a proper BLP blowtorching back to solid RSes, there'd be almost nothing left. Perhaps it needs one. I have reiterated my concerns on the talk page - David Gerard (talk) 18:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a discussion you need to have on the pages Talk page, not here. Describe which sources are poor. Also, your last revert removed a source, which you didn't mention in your edit summary. This is getting careless. All you seem to want is to keep the tag spam on top of the page at all costs. You've not made any effort to either improve the page or communicate specific problems. If the article is not notable at this point, this long after... then submit it for deletion and we'll see how far that gets. You are warned that your slow revert war for the tags is unacceptable now at this point. -- Netoholic @ 18:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have noted it on the talk page just now. Please discuss there rather than removing tags that really just have not been addressed - David Gerard (talk) 18:50, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hoping against hope, I have responded to Netoholic's rejection of the tags on Molyneux talk. I forget all of the various ones that he has removed, but if you have the time and energy, perhaps now is a propitious time to restore all the erased tags. I hope they will generate increased participation and also attract some new editors to see whether this article can be salvaged. SPECIFICO talk 20:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hillsborough

Hello, I've no idea if it's appropriate for you to get involved, but there's some discussion about whether the recent events regarding vandalism should be mentioned in the Hillsborough article itself (current consensus: no) Talk:Hillsborough disaster#Removal of the section about the government IP edits. 2.25.112.149 (talk) 13:50, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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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)[reply]

warning re: notability tag

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Stefan Molyneux, you may be blocked from editing.

Your participation in vote on the talk page RFC is tacit acceptance that the article is about a notable subject. As such, repeated misuse of the {{notability}} tag has now fallen under the realm of WP:VANDTYPES "Abuse of tags" because that tag is specifically designed for an "article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted." If you believe in good faith that one of those options is necessary, then you need to take action on those options... not re-insertion of the tag. -- Netoholic @ 20:13, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Considering you were just blocked for 48 hours for personal attacks on the talk page ... - David Gerard (talk) 20:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Philosopher Molyneux

I suggest you request an Admin close, per SNOW, rather than change the article text without a declared consensus. Given the recent history of the article, I'm afraid that the issue will recur. As to 'cyberphilosopher' -- I think it's kind of an undefined and maybe even tongue in cheek term and I'd suggest we just remove the "philosopher" name after the close and leave him described as a podcaster and writer, both indisputable, who discusses this and that. SPECIFICO talk 23:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I felt removing "philosopher" was justified on sourcing grounds. I'm pretty sure "cyberphilosopher" doesn't stand - David Gerard (talk) 23:32, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

please be advised

Due to circumstances, this is the most convenient way for me to inform you of [1] which i suspect may be of some interest with regards to your satirical efforts. 223.104.5.8 (talk) 09:29, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Britain First protection

Did you mean to fully protect Britain First? The semi it already had seems sufficient, as the user who rolled back made a mistake (see their contribs) GedUK  12:34, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is still a pending indefinite semi-protection for Britain First, which I believe is best as it is IPs who are vandalising the page more than a content dispute '''tAD''' (talk) 12:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not worried either way, I thought it was logged-in editors then warring after the semi. If others want to take it back to semi, I have no objection at all - David Gerard (talk) 15:18, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geoff Collinson (2nd nomination)

How is this a keep close? At best a no consensus. LibStar (talk) 14:01, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I notice you made both delete nominations and needed subject-area jargon explained to you along the way; it's possible you're a bit wedded to this one - David Gerard (talk) 14:03, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

so whilst not a vote, a limited participation afd comes out as keep? Why did you not use this reasoning when closing? LibStar (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this make a difference to you? What different effect do you anticipate in the world? - David Gerard (talk) 14:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because procedures need to be followed, on face value it looked like you applied a super! vote LibStar (talk) 14:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That precisely does not answer the question I asked - David Gerard (talk) 14:41, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So why did you not explain your keep conclusion when it appeared no clear consensus for keep especially due to lack of participants. LibStar (talk) 14:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC) I also question why you closed it when it was only relisted 3 hours earlier. LibStar (talk) 14:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because it was the second relisting and should have been a close in some direction. I was actually going to close it today anyway - David Gerard (talk) 14:24, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

2 relistings are permitted as per WP:RELIST. LibStar (talk) 14:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"can be" and "should" are different matters. Again, what difference do you expect in the wider world? What actual substantive difference are you anticipating? - David Gerard (talk) 14:41, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Again, you should explain why you have performed an early close. Cutting corners on procedure does matter, other editors cannot read your mind. LibStar (talk) 14:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not early, it's a week late. Now, for the third time: What difference do you expect in the wider world? What actual substantive difference are you anticipating? Please answer this question before you ask any more questions - David Gerard (talk) 14:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

for the 2nd time, please answer "So why did you not explain your keep conclusion when it appeared no clear consensus for keep especially due to lack of participants" ? LibStar (talk) 14:53, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The nomination was to delete it and there was no consensus to do so. The status quo thus maintained is to keep it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion review for Geoff Collinson

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Geoff Collinson. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. LibStar (talk) 14:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Control (2005 film)

The article Control (2005 film) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Non-notable movie

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JayJay^What did I do? 19:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

July 2014

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• [[Linux kernel]].]]

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Kay Sievers

Hi, is there a reason why you reverted my edits on the Kay Sievers page? Was I violating a guideline? Thx! 59.182.251.53 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 09:53, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One argument with Linus Torvalds is not a defining event in someone's life - in a biography of a living person, every incident needs to be noteworthy. This got some news reports, but kernel arguments happen lots and lots (and are easy fodder for a ZDnet writeup). I think it wouldn't help if we got lots of kernel devs' bios and added "and was flamed by Linus Torvalds [1][2][3]". YMMV and I could be wrong, of course. The problem is really that Kay Sievers is a minorly-notable person who does a lot of important things in the world but hasn't had a lot of third-party coverage as a personality - David Gerard (talk) 10:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. Fair enough. Your reasoning is hard to find fault with. :) OTOH I still feel that this page needs to cover more about the controversial aspects of Kay's work. I'm not sure all his work is important but some might think it is more notorious or a nuscience. 59.182.255.187 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:25, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Might be worth a mention in the systemd article, maybe. There should be enough substance that the software is controversial (which it is) without seeming to get personal - David Gerard (talk) 21:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm..Ok. But you reverted my edits on the systemd article too? Same reason? 59.182.252.107 (talk) 12:59, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In case this is of interest to you:

I believe you have a long historical perspective and have tried to be helpful with some of the concerns. [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by SPECIFICO (talk • contribs)

[3] - David Gerard (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

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)[reply]

Rationalwiki

Odd place - for a while they had a real hit piece on me, more or less copied from Metapedia. Dougweller (talk) 16:01, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Really? Can't find it. Which is probably good - David Gerard (talk) 16:08, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

September 2014

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Special Beat Service may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"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.

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HHVM

Your recent contribs to ANI are tagged with HHVM, but when I look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/HHVM I don't see anything there that is a tool one would turn on. Do you know why your contribs are tagged that way? Are you using some special browser or gadget? Gaijin42 (talk) 19:52, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I sure am! There's an option in "Beta" to switch on use of HHVM rather than Zend PHP. It's way faster, though still being betaed (so if you get new weirdness, report a bug). Here's how to switch it on: http://people.wikimedia.org/~ori/hhvm_beta.gif It seems faster on some pages (really fat and reference-laden ones in particular, like OpenOffice.org). Doesn't speed up Visual Editor as yet - David Gerard (talk) 20:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have turned it on. We shall see what happens! Gaijin42 (talk) 21:19, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

FYI: [4]. CC.

VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014

Did you know?

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!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014

Did you know?

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 [5] 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!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Errors on 15 November

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Technological singularity page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Precious again

"scrupulous fairness"
Thank you, experienced "fairly logical and smart" editor, for adding precision, helping with categories and fighting spam, and for good answers to questions in ACE 2004 (deep breath, "scrupulous fairness, ... just because someone is annoying and difficult doesn't mean they're actually wrong in a given case.") and ACE 2013, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A year ago, you were the 673rd recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, and I just published ACE 2014, much simpler, learning, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:17, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

December 2014

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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) 2ar3:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)