This is an archive of past discussions with User:Fluffernutter. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile. [1]
The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [2]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
UploadWizard will remind users to add a category. [3]
UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [4]
A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [5]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta.
This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.
This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.
We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi! A summary of a Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. It mostly follows the lead section; how does it look? - Dank (push to talk) 02:04, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
@Dank: Thank you for for being interested in something I shined up! The blurb you've put together looks pretty comprehensive, but I am a little concerned about putting a BLP about a crime involving children on the main page, particularly when the article subject has contested the verdict(s) levied against her (which is why I avoided nominating it for TFA back when it passed FAC). I tend to fall on the cautious end of the BLP spectrum, so I may be worrying for nothing and it would actually be fine for the main page, but is there a way to get some community input beyond you and me on whether people feel it's appropriate to feature or whether putting it front and center may be unfair to or exploitative of Ms Green? I'm fairly ignorant of TFA practices/standards, so I may be overlooking some obvious discussion space there... A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 04:37, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll pull in Chris here ... I just write the summary; he selects the articles this month. Note that I removed the names of the children from the summary ... another thing we could do would be to remove the names from the lead section. The Main Page gets 10M hits a day, but the articles linked to rarely get more than 20K hits on their Main Page day, and only a small percentage of those readers will get to the third or fourth section of the article. - Dank (push to talk) 12:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Dan's right about the raw numbers, and if the privacy of the children is a concern their names could be removed from the lead. We have previously run crime articles related to minors: Disappearance of Natalee Holloway (which ran before she was legally declared dead), the Jena Six, Murder of Leigh Leigh (in which BLP still applies to the perpetrators and family of the victim). Admittedly in none of the cases was the person convicted of the crime still arguing their innocence, but there would still have been the possibility of BLP issues when they ran. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:12, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The database size lists have been updated. These control special page update frequency and which wikis use global abuse filters. [7]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 15 (calendar).
You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons using the visual editor. When the image is uploaded it will be added to the article you're editing. [8]
Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [9]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Tech News is trying to make reading the newsletter easier. The icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change.
Timestamps in the protection log will now be in the user's timezone. Previously they would show Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [10]
Problems
A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [11]
Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [12]
The deployment of the new MediaWiki version was stopped on October 14. No new code was deployed for the rest of week. This meant planned changes did not happen. [13]
Changes this week
Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [14]
Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [15][16][17][18]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hello, Fluffernutter. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
This month, we will also host a Newcomer's Wiki Workshop for those getting started on the encyclopedia project!
We will also include a look at our annual plan and budget ideas, to see if the chapter is able to fiscally sponsor more ongoing projects tied to our core mission of expanding and diversifying free knowledge.
We welcome the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza/chicken/vegetables and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
September drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 25 editors who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.
October blitz: The one-week October blitz, targeting requests, has just concluded. Of the nine editors who signed up, seven copyedited at least one request; check your talk page for your barnstar!
The month-long November drive, focusing on our oldest backlog articles (June, July, and August 2014) and the October requests, is just around the corner. Hope to see you there!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
The first time you use the visual editor, pop-ups will explain why and when you should use the citation and link tools. [19]
You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons from inside the wikitext editor by clicking "Upload" in the "Insert file" dialog. You will also be able to drag and drop them into an article when using the visual editor. [20][21]
When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [22][23]
Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in $wgContentNamespaces. [24]
You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.
Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheetmusic in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
You are not going to block Giano for making personal attacks against GorillaWarfare. He can get away after calling GorillaWarfare as Militant Female Editor here :
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
If you are using the mobile version of Wikipedia, you can now see Wikidata descriptions under article titles in search results. [26]
Editing conflicts are now detected when you edit on a mobile device. Before, this did not work properly on mobile. [27]
Problems
On October 26 the Wikimedia sites went down for ten minutes. [28]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join. You can also read the latest VisualEditor newsletter.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now switch between the wikitext editor and the visual editor without saving. You will not lose the changes you have made. [32]
JSON dumps of the production search indexes are now available. They can be imported to Elasticsearch. [33]
Problems
Some translations for the Thanks and Echo extensions were missing. Translators have been asked to help and this should be solved soon. [34]
Changes this week
Thumbnails of 16-bit TIFF files will be displayed properly. Before, this didn't work. [35]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
You can use TemplateData to indicate how you want a template to be displayed in wikitext. Tools like VisualEditor that edit templates will soon use this information. [38]
Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme. [39]
Wikis can make the welcome notification link to a specific page. [40]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. The change will happen in January 2016. [41][42]
Hello. It seems that you are also transcluding the Questions pages into a single userpage.
Since all these pages are poorly programmed, the categories also are transcluded. And your userpages are appearing in the Main:categories. This can be cured by protecting
the category by a pair noinclude.../noinclude in the original mainpage. I will do that for the current problem. Feel free to do the same if the problem reappears. Pldx1 (talk) 23:03, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Join at the Center for Jewish History (drop-in any time!), during which we will create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the American Soviet Jewry movement.
Join at the NY Academy of Sciences, during which we will create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives and works of women scientists. Note that seating is limited for the Women in Science event, as well as signing up on-wiki, please RSVP by email.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
A new Pageview API has been announced. Feedback is requested to help decide which data to add to it next.
Changes this week
There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Language Engineering team. The topic is: Content Translation updates and Questions & Answers. The meeting will be on 25 November at 13:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The symbol for advanced news items has been changed. This is because the symbols were too similar. If a news item is for more technical readers it now looks like this: . You can give feedback on this change.
Problems
On September 29 users' skin preferences were removed by mistake on small and medium-sized wikis. This changed preferences back to Vector. Restoring all data would cause even more problems. Affected users who want to have their preference changed back globally can ask for it as a comment on Phabricator task T119206 until December 21 2015. [44]
Some scheduled tasks were not working properly from September to recently. This meant some pages in the special pages namespace were not updated. It has now been fixed. [45]
Changes this week
Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [46][47]
There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Sorry to drag you into wiki-politics (context is [50] and my talk) but could you address claims that the oversight team would refuse to suppress an editor's a) a date of birth, or b) zip code posted onwiki without their consent? Thanks. NE Ent10:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi NE Ent. As you of course know, we can't discuss individual oversight cases publicly, so I can't go into detail about what may or may not have been oversighted in a specific case, but I will say that I can't remember the last time we declined to oversight either a DOB or a zip code. There are of course hypothetical cases I can think of where we might not have - mostly of the "I know it's sourced in my article, but I don't *like* it!" type - but assuming a good faith oversight request and a reasonable case for it being not-already-sourced-and-public, my sense is that it would be pretty unusual for the OS team to decline such a request. However, it is also true that the majority of oversight requests are actioned by individual oversighters based on their own judgment of how that case matches the criteria, and each oversighter interprets the criteria slightly differently. So I can't say that it's impossible that such a request was declined and I didn't see it go past, but if that happened I would be very interested in having the OS team review it so that we can attempt to standardize among ourselves (and I would urge anyone concerned about such a case to ask us to do that, because if we can't even present a coherent explanation to our users about what we can/can't do, they're going to find it very difficult to know if we can help them when they need us). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
This month, we will also host a Newcomer's Wiki Workshop for those getting started on the encyclopedia project!
We will also include a look at our annual plan and budget ideas, and welcome input from community members on the sorts of projects the chapter should support through both volunteer and budgetary efforts.
We welcome the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza/chicken/vegetables and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles gallery, 137 West 14th Street
We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! (One talk this month will be on use of Wikipedia press passes for photographers.) Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 13:38, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
Bonus events, RSVP now for our upcoming editathons:
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Revision scoring will help to automatically identify bad-faith and good-faith edits. The point is to make it easier to block vandals and welcome newcomers. It currently supports Wikidata and 14 Wikipedias. [51]
Problems
Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [52]
Changes this week
You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [53]
IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [54]
You will be able to edit the graph size in the visual editor. You can either specify the size in the graph dialog or drag it to be the size you want it to be. [55]
It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [56]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 10 December. (calendar).
New MediaWiki versions will now be on Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedia on Wednesdays. Other Wikipedias get the new MediaWiki version on Thursdays. [59]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [61]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 17 December. (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
