User talk:Anoopan/Archive 3
Latest comment: 12 years ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic The Signpost: 09 April 2014
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (calendar).
- The old note-taking site (Etherpad) was removed on December 30, 2013. You can see most of the documents on the new site.
Problems
- On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
- On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.
Future software changes
- The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6.
- Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their Beta Features options.
- Plural form rules for some languages will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed.
- You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages.
- You will be able to hide redirect pages on the list of protected pages.
- You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups.
- E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their
From:line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing theMediaWiki:Emailsenderpage. - Images viewed in the Beta Features media viewer will load faster.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:35, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 08 January 2014
- Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant
Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.
- Traffic report: Tragedy and television
The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
- Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit
MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.
- News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
- Op-ed: WikiCup competition beginning a new year
At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.
- WikiProject report: Jumping into the television universe
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Television.
- Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology
Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can read a recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (calendar).
- Searching in the
File:namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue.
VisualEditor news
- VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13.
- You can now add and remove
__NOTOC__,__FORCETOC__and__NOEDITSECTION__in the page metadata menu.
Problems
- For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error.
- For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
- Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14.
- The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your Beta Features options.
- You will soon be able to export page collections into other formats than PDF.
- It will soon be possible to upload groups of photos from Flickr using UploadWizard.
- The Wikimedia Foundation has shared a multimedia vision for 2016. You are invited to comment.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 January 2014
- News and notes: German chapter asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites?
Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.
- Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published
The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
- Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles
It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
- In the media: Is Google hurting Wikipedia traffic?; "Wikipedia-Mania" in the New York Times
Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"
- Traffic report: The Hours are Ours
We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology
This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
- You can now see relatively recent results on special pages like Special:DoubleRedirects, Special:UncategorizedPages or Special:WantedCategories. They were disabled before because they were very slow. The results are now updated once a month.
- As of January 16, you can make and use guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla.
- You can give comments on an idea to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
- You can watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla.
VisualEditor news
- In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (
). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little. - You can now edit
<gallery />tags with a very basic tool. - You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu.
- When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page.
- When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*).
- The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers.
- Your wiki can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData.
Problems
- There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results.
- There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem.
- On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours.
Future software changes
- If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again.
- You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis.
- You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page.
- You will so longer see disambiguation pages in Special:LonelyPages.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 January 2014
- Book review: Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse
A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."
- News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
- Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume
Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.
- Special report: The few who write Wikipedia
On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
- Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki
This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
- In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager
An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
- Traffic report: No show for the Globes
While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See video.
- The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please file a bug or tell User:Bawolff.
- The
Special:ActiveUserspage will be removed because it's too slow. - The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
Problems
- On January 21, Universal Language Selector was turned off on all Wikimedia sites because it makes pages load slowly. If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your keyboard, you need to add it as an option in your preferences. It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved.
- For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
- You can give comments about the new version of "Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 January 2014
- Traffic report: Six strikes out
There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
- WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
- News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
- Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
- Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
- Global AbuseFilter rules are now active on all small wikis.
- The buttons used in pages like log-in, account creation and search are now using the same colors and styles.
- You can now link to diffs using
[[Special:Diff/12345]]and similar links. - There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages.
- Searching in the
File:namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. - All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons.
VisualEditor news
Future software changes
- Edits and files hidden with the Oversight tool will be moved to the RevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis.
- For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (
:ko:v,:v:ko, etc.). - It will soon be possible to use the GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on Translatewiki.net.
- You will soon be able to include the Special:Contributions page into other pages.
- You will be able to see where a file is used inside MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files.
- It will soon be possible to send MassMessage messages using the API.
- You will soon see audio statistics on the Special:TimedMediaHandler page.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 January 2014
- Traffic report: Six strikes out
There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
- WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
- News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
- Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
- Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
- The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed.
- You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese).
VisualEditor news
- You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool.
- The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed.
Problems
- On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue.
- On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.
Future software changes
- Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break.
- You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th.
- You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch).
- The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster.
- Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged.
- It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences.
- You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API.
- You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option.
- If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode.
- Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas.
- bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest.
- The
<poem>tag will be renamed to<lines>. The old tag will still work.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 12 February 2014
- In the media: WikiVIP; Art Feminism; Medical articles; PR manipulation; Azerbaijani Wikipedia
As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.
- Technology report: Left with no choice
Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.
- News and notes: WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups
In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is
- Featured content: Space selfie
Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.
- Traffic report: Sports Day
Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.
- WikiProject report: Game Time in Russia
In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
- You can now use the list of active users again.
- The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces.
- You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files.
- You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014.
Problems
- On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem.
- On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue.
- On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
- There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
- On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.
VisualEditor news
- The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page.
- You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor.
- Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing.
- You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor.
08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 February 2014
- News and notes: Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.
- Technology report: ULS Comeback
Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.
- WikiProject report: Countering Systemic Bias
WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.
- Featured content: Holotype
Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
- Traffic report: Chilly Valentines
Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (calendar).
- The new search tool (CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their Beta options.
- The Universal Language Selector was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis again. You can enable web fonts in your ULS options (see how).
VisualEditor news
- You will soon be able to add and edit
__STATICREDIRECT__,__[NO]INDEX__and__[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__in the page settings menu. - You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor.
- You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
Future software changes
- You will soon be able to use the
<categorytree>tag again. - You will soon be able to post messages with the MassMessage tool in all talk namespaces.
- Notifications will soon work in all namespaces.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 February 2014
- Forum: Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.
- Featured content: Odin salutes you
Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- WikiProject report: Racking brains with neuroscience
This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.
- Special report: Diary of a protester: Wikimedian perishes in Ukrainian unrest
Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.
- News and notes: Wikimedia chapters and communities challenge Commons' URAA policy
Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.
- Traffic report: Snow big deal
The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.
- Recent research: CSCW '14 retrospective; the impact of SOPA on deletionism
The monthly roundup of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
- When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts.
- You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla.
- You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis.
- The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list.
VisualEditor news
- You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size.
- If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
- Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing.
- VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla.
Future software changes
- The new tool for viewing media files will soon show a progress bar and a thumbnail while loading full images.
- You will soon be able to make user contributions show only page creations.
- Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki.
- Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6.
Problems
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014
- Traffic report: Brinksmen on the brink
There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.
- Discussion report: Four paragraph lead, indefinitely blocked IPs, editor reviews broken?
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
- News and notes: Wikipedia Library finding success in matching contributors with sources
This week, the Signpost caught up with the Wikipedia Library (TWL), which aims to connect reference resources with Wikipedia editors who can use them to improve articles. Funded through the Wikimedia Foundation's Individual Engagement Grants program, TWL has a new "visiting scholars" initiative and a microgrants program in the works.
- Featured content: Full speed ahead for the WikiCup
The WikiCup competition is ongoing, while six articles, three lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status of the English Wikipedia this week.
- WikiProject report: Article Rescue Squadron
This week, the Signpost delved into the English Wikipedia's Article Rescue Squadron.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
- You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options.
VisualEditor news
- It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode.
- It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better.
- VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines.
- We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming.
- You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window.
Future software changes
- You will soon be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages.
- CirrusSearch will soon automatically index newly imported pages.
- It will soon be possible to use CSS to style buttons in templates on all Wikimedia wikis, without needing JavaScript.
- An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team will take place on March 12 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 12 March 2014
- News and notes: Wikimedians celebrate International Women's Day, Women's History Month
Wikimedians around the world gathered to celebrate Women's History Month and the associated International Women's Day by holding editathons. If you lived in the United Kingdom, you had the opportunity to attend Wikimedia UK's event at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of University College London and host to one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts in the world.
- Traffic report: War and awards
An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.
- Featured content: Ukraine burns
Five articles, two lists, and 52 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- WikiProject report: Russian WikiProject Entomology
This week, we interviewed Anaxibia from the Russian-language Entomology WikiProject.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
- You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels.
- You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all small wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options.
- You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014.
VisualEditor news
- Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive.
- Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes.
- Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording.
Future software changes
- You will soon see an error message if you try to log-in or register with an invalid or taken username.
- You can now test first version of a tool that includes OpenStreetMap maps inside the UploadWizard. Comments are welcome.
- You will soon be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature.
Problems
- VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 March 2014
- Forum: Wikimedia Commons mission: free media for the world or only Wikimedia projects?
Non-US editors and chapters have taken issue with a multitude of image deletions done on the Wikimedia Commons to comply with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a US law that brought the country into compliance with the Berne Convention.
- WikiProject report: We have history
This week, we visited WikiProject History, an ancient project with roots dating back to 2001. The project is home to 196 pieces of Featured material and 483 Good and A-class articles independent of the vast accomplishments of its various child projects. WikiProject History maintains a lengthy list of tasks, oversees the history portal, and continues to build Wikipedia's outline of history.
- Interview: Nate Ott: the writer behind 71 articles in the largest-ever good topic
In a record-breaker, the English Wikipedia has a new largest good topic: the 71-article Light cruisers of Germany, which concerns the light cruisers used by Germany during the 20th century.
- Featured content: Spot the bulldozer
Twelve articles, fourteen lists, and six pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- News and notes: Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny
One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.
- Traffic report: Into thin air
The utterly mystifying events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has not fallen from the sky so much as vanished from it entirely, has left an information-starved public scrambling for precedents, some logical, some... not.
- Technology report: Wikimedia engineering report
The Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014 has been published. A summarized version is also available. Major news include
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
- You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings.
- Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode.
- You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation.
- You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor.
Future software changes
- Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
- You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
- You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 March 2014
- Comment: A foolish request
April Fools' Day is rapidly approaching. Every year, members of the community pull pranks and make (or attempt to make) humorous edits to pages across the project. Every year, the community follows April Fools' Day with a contentious debate about whether or not it is necessary to impose limits on April Fools' Day jokes for future years. It is a polarizing issue.
- Traffic report: Down to a simmer
Topics like the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 eased down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.
- Recent research: Wikipedians' "encyclopedic identity" dominates even in Kosovo debates
Have you wondered about differences in the articles on Crimea in the Russian, Ukrainian, and English versions of Wikipedia? A newly published article entitled "Lost in Translation: Contexts, Computing, Disputing on Wikipedia" doesn't address Crimea, but nonetheless offers insight into the editing of contentious articles in multiple language editions through a heavy qualitative examination of Wikipedia articles about the Kosovo in the Serbian, Croatian, and English editions.
- News and notes: Commons Picture of the Year—winners announced
Results for the two-stage 2013 Commons Picture of the Year have been announced. This year's winning photograph (above) shows a lightbulb that has been cracked, allowing inert gas to escape—and oxygen to enter, so that the tungsten filament burns. From the flames rise elegant curls of blue smoke.
- Featured content: Winter hath a beauty that is all his own
Four articles, two lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Op-ed: Why we're updating the default typography for Wikipedia
On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing, four major iterations, and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we’ve arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.
- Technology report: Why will Wikipedia look like the Signpost?
As you have probably read on this weeks op-ed, or via various other channels of announcement, 3 April will see the introduction of the Typography refresh (or update) for the Vector skin on all Wikipedias. Other projects like Commons will have this update rolled out a few days prior.
- WikiProject report: From the peak
This week, the Signpost interviewed the English Wikipedia's Mountains WikiProject.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
- Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
- CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27.
VisualEditor news
- Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor.
- The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use.
- New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor.
- VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images.
Future software changes
- You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change.
- CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
- You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files.
- Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 02 April 2014
- News and notes: Wikimedia conferences—soul-searching about costs, attendance, and future
The run-up to the conference has seen the unfolding of two fractious threads on the Wikimedia public mailing list, both of which may serve as background for the last session at Berlin: "Future of the Wikimedia Conference".
- WikiProject report: Deutschland in English
This week, we visited with WikiProject Germany.
- Special report: On the cusp of the Wikimedia Conference
The annual Wikimedia Conference is about to start in Berlin, hosted by Wikimedia Germany, which won the bid to hold the event over three others. This will be the fifth time the chapter has hosted the Wikimedia Conference—it did so from 2009 to 2012, with attendance ranging from 100 to 180 Wikimedians. This year 160 people are expected at the four-day event, which is mainly for representatives of affiliated Wikimedia organisations. The conference has been built around two themes: Organisation, structures, and grants and Success and impact.
- Featured content: April Fools
The Signpost's "Featured content" writers had a bit of fun this week.
- Traffic report: Regressing to the mean
The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
- Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
- CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2.
Future software changes
- A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki.
- All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8.
- The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages.
- You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool.
- MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
- You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 09 April 2014
- News and notes: Round 2 of FDC funding open to public comments
Community review is open for the four applications in the second and final round of applications to the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013–14. Three eligible organisations have applied for funding under the newly named "annual program grants": Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Norway, and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which last November was recognised as eligible to apply for FDC funding purposes.
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Law
This week, we interviewed the Law WikiProject.
- Special report: Community mourns passing of Adrianne Wadewitz
"I remember laughing and talking and laughing and talking at Wikimania 2012. I took this picture of her that she used for a long while as a profile pic. Someone on Facebook said it looked 'skepchickal', which she loved."
- Traffic report: Conquest of the Couch Potatoes
Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.
- Featured content: Snow heater and Ash sweep
Five article, five lists, and ten pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
- MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome.
- Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7.
VisualEditor news
- You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click.
- The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
- The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen.
Future software changes
- The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17.
- Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot).
- You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key.
- Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list.
- You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category.
- The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab.
- An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).
Problems
- Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)