User talk:Bill william compton/Archive 25
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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 (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
- You can now use interwiki prefix
c:to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons.
VisualEditor news
- You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor.
- VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken
MediaWiki:Common.jspages (and similar) were fixed last week. - VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.
Future software changes
- CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
- MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome.
- The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations.
- CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings.
- You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome.
Problems
- For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load.
- On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Catalan Culture Challenge 5th position Winner
FELICITACIONS!!!! Hi, we congrat to inform you that you are the 5th position Winner of the Catalan Culture challenge, with 801 points. In order to proceed to send you the awards, it would be great if you can send us an email to glam®wikimedia.cat so we can proceed. Yours. Kippelboy. Amical Wikimedia.--Kippelboy (talk) 14:11, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 April 2014
- News and notes: WMF's draft annual plan turns indigestible as an FDC proposal
Like hammering a square peg into a round hole, the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted a draft annual plan for 2014–15 to its own Funds Dissemination Committee. Unlike the WMF's submission to the FDC's inaugural round in October 2012, the "proposal" does not seek funding.
- Traffic report: Going to the Doggs
Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.
- Breaking: The Foundation's new executive director
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that its new executive director will be Lila Tretikov, until now a chief product officer in Silicon Valley.
- WikiProject report: Genetics
This week, we unraveled the mysteries of WikiProject Genetics.
- Interview: Wikipedia in the Peabody Essex Museum
Ed Roley, Associate Director of Integrated Media at the Peabody Essex Museum, talks about GLAM engagement with Wikipedia.
- Featured content: Browsing behaviours
Four articles and sixteen featured pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Recent research: Wikipedia predicts flu more accurately than Google
Can you predict the number of seasonal influenza-like illness in the U.S. using data from Wikipedia?
WikiCup 2014 April newsletter
Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's 
Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's 
Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's 
ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included 
Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and 
Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from 
Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from 
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from 
Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to 
Czar (submissions) and 
Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.
192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 17:56, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
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 (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
- The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org.
- It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool.
VisualEditor news
- External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki.
- The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete.
- You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones.
- There is a new type for TemplateData parameters:
wiki-file-namefor file names. - Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users.
- You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language.
Future software changes
- MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome.
- You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
- If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself.
Problems
- For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Join the Umepedia Challenge!
Hi there,
I noticed your fantastic contributions to the Catalan Culture Challenge and wanted to invite you to a similar contest!
This month (1st-31st May) you are invited to take part in a writing contest about the northern city of Umeå, which currently is the European Capital of Culture. These 40 important articles are needed in your language as we hope to place QRpedia signs next to these landmarks in Umeå during 2014, making it easier for tourists and immigrants to enjoy the city's history and culture. This will make Umeå the first Wikipedia city in the Nordic countries! :-)
I hope that you will join the fun and take part in translating or improving these 40 articles and win great prizes!
Kind regards, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 15:30, 5 May 2014 (UTC) (project manager for Umepedia)
The Signpost: 07 May 2014
- News and notes: New system of discretionary sanctions; Buchenwald; is Pirelli 'Cracking Wikipedia'?
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. A new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.
- Traffic report: TMZedia
For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems the human race most wants is a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.
- In focus: Foundation announces long-awaited new executive director
In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.
- WikiCup: 2014 WikiCup enters round three
Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain.
- In the media: Google and the flu; Adrianne
Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.
- WikiProject report: Singing with Eurovision
Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went to the stage to talk with one of the project's members.
- Featured content: Wikipedia at the Rijksmuseum
Four articles, two lists, and five 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.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
- A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis.
- Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly.
Future software changes
- It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently.
- You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API.
- You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with
Special:Flow. - The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work.
- The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded.
- MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
- An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).
- Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
Problems
- There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Asian Tennis Fedration's official logo.png
Thanks for uploading File:Asian Tennis Fedration's official logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 19:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 May 2014
- Investigative report: Hong Kong's Wikimania 2013—failure to produce financial statement raises questions of probity
On 2 May 2012, the Wikimania jury announced that Hong Kong's bid to hold the 2013 event had beaten four other proposals. Moderator James Forrester wrote: "The Jury has confidence that the Hong Kong bidding team will pull off a magnificent Wikimania,"—and indeed there were positive comments about the event from most attendees.
- WikiProject report: Relaxing in Puerto Rico
This week, the Signpost jumped over the ocean to chat with the Puerto Rico WikiProject.
- News and notes: 'Ask a librarian'—connecting Wikimedians with the National Library of Australia
Editors of Australian-related topics on the English Wikipedia may have noticed an odd addition if they viewed the article's talk pages. For example, on Talk:Darwin, Northern Territory, they might be drawn in by the question mark, nested within what is often a sea of WikiProject templates: "Need help improving this article? Ask a librarian at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library." Just what is this?
- Featured content: On the rocks
Six articles, seven lists, and four pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Traffic report: Eurovision, Google Doodles, Mothers, and 5 May
Eurovision is known for being political, and it was a doozy this week.
- Technology report: Technology report needs editor, Media Viewer offers a new look
The Media Viewer is scheduled to launch on the English Wikipedia next 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.
Tech News updates
- Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
- The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work.
- MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome.
- VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences.
- You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.
VisualEditor news
- VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys.
- VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like
{{cite_web}}and not just{{Cite web}}. - VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it.
- VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit.
- The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor.
Future software changes
- User ID number will no longer be visible in preferences.
Problems
- For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Joan Miró Global Challenge — thank you!
Dear Bill william compton,
Thank you very much for your participation at Joan Miró Global Challenge last 10th May (and sorry for the delay in getting back in touch). With your help we achieved the goal to get the 10 key articles translated into at least 10 different languages and, as promised, we will send you a plush keyring as a reward. Please send me an email with the pysical address where you want the reward to be sent. Best regards! --ESM (talk) 21:01, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 21 May 2014
- News and notes: "Crisis" over Wikimedia Germany's palace revolution
Last Sunday the board of Wikimedia Germany passed 9–1 a vote of no confidence in the chapter's executive director, Pavel Richter, who has held the position since 2009. With more than 50 employees, an annual budget approaching $10 million, and the right to conduct its own fundraising through the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) site banners, Wikimedia Germany is the second-largest organisation in the movement after the WMF itself. The decision was announced on the Wikimedia mailing list by the chapter chair, Nikolas Becker.
- Featured content: Staggering number of featured articles
Thirteen articles, sixteen pictures, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Traffic report: Doodles' dawn
It's a relief to see Google Doodles having an impact again; their wide coverage means that they inspire curiosity on many subjects which, for reasons of nationality, ethnicity or gender, might not be known in the English-speaking world. It's a shame then, that Wikipedia so often fails to keep up; articles on Google Doodles are almost invariably C-class, and seldom do justice to their subjects. Still, interest in Google Doodles has been waning in recent months—Audrey Hepburn last week was the first to top the list since December—so any rise in popularity is worth celebrating.
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 (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
- MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
VisualEditor news
- VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them.
- A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the
File:namespace was fixed last week. - VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled.
- It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed.
- VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names.
Future software changes
- Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade.
- It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool.
- Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax
[[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]]will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. - You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 May 2014
- News and notes: The English Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion; wiki inventor interviewed on video
With the promotion to featured article of Grus (constellation) on 17 May, Casliber became Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion, following Wehwalt's groundbreaking achievement last December. Cas's first FA, Banksia integrifolia, a group effort, was promoted on 16 November 2006. His first solo project, Diplodocus, followed in January 2007; he has rarely been off the FAC since. In a second story, Ward Cunningham, an American computer programmer who invented the wiki, was interviewed by the WMF.
- Featured content: Zombie fight in the saloon
Wikipedia editor Sven Manguard's work is quite underappreciated a lot of the time, most likely because people haven't heard of it yet: He's developed good relationships with game companies, and is thus able to get full-resolution screenshots released under a Creative Commons license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. This week's trove of new featured items on the English Wikipedia comprises seven articles, three lists, and four pictures.
- Traffic report: Get fitted for flipflops and floppy hats
In the US, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and summer is definitely on people's minds this week, with summer films Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past, the apparently designated summer song "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea, and summer TV show, Game of Thrones.
- Recent research: Predicting which article you will edit next
Wikipedia in the eyes of its beholders; "Chinese-language time zones" favor Asian pop and IT topics on Wikipedia; and bipartite editing prediction in Wikipedia.
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 (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
- CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30.
VisualEditor news
- Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target.
- The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor.
- VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons.
- There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters:
datefor dates and times in the ISO 8601 format.
Future software changes
- MediaViewer will be enabled on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
- You will soon see a warning if you visit a contributions page for a user that does not exist.
- The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on Special:Search.
- You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin (screenshot).
Problems
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 6
The Wikipedia Library
- New donations from Oxford University Press and Royal Society (UK)
- TWL does Vegas: American Library Association Annual plans
- TWL welcomes a new coordinator, resources for library students and interns
- New portal on Meta, resources for starting TWL branches, donor call blitzes, Wikipedia Visiting Scholar news, and more
The Signpost: 04 June 2014
- Special report: IEG funding for women's stories: a new approach to the gender gap
Individual engagement grants (IEGs) are announced twice yearly by a volunteer WMF committee, the most recent of which we covered last December. The scheme, launched at the start of last year, awards funds to individuals or teams of up to four to produce high-impact outcomes for the WMF's online projects. It favours innovative approaches to solving critical issues in the movement.
- News and notes: Two new affiliate-selected trustees
New trustee Frieda Briosch from Italy: we face "a couple of headaches", she says: "how to boost editors, which includes the development of the next strategic plan, and how to keep our project always 'glamorous'."
- Op-ed: "Hospitality, jerks, and what I learned"—the amazing keynote at WikiConference USA
I never feel quite adequate trying to paraphrase Sumana's words: she is so articulate. I highly encourage every person who reads this article to directly watch her keynote—it directly speaks to a lot of Wikimedia's most significant issues, made with great eloquence. We have a serious issue with retaining editors, and parts of her speech could serve as a pretty good partial blueprint towards how we could begin to fix that problem.
- Featured content: Ye stately homes of England
David Iliff, or Diliff, as he is known on here outside of the file pages for his many, many, excellent photographs, is one of Wikipedia's longest-standing professional-standard photographers. This week, the Signpost salutes him.
- In the media: Reliable or not, doctors use Wikipedia
The month of May saw significant coverage concerning the reliability of Wikipedia's medical articles.
- Traffic report: Autumn in summer
The northern summer is a time when one is meant to celebrate the exuberance of life; instead, commemoration of the dead was a significant theme this 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.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
- You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla.
VisualEditor news
- You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor.
- The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content.
- You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor.
Future software changes
- MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome.
- You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10.
- On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system.
- You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly.
- Templates containing
<ref>or<references>tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. - You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it.
- Hovercards will no longer flicker.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 11 June 2014
- News and notes: PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
Eleven public relations agencies have declared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects.
- Traffic report: The week the wired went weird
It seems that, more than commemorating the great moments in our history, more than even anticipating great sporting events, what our audience wants is the weird.
- Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
William Beutler (WWB), author of the blog The Wikipedian, is a long-time editor and community-watcher. He is also a paid editor (WWB Too). Well—not anymore—because he gave up direct editing of articles in 2011. Instead, for the past three years he has followed Jimmy Wales' Bright Line rule in acting as a researcher and consultant for companies and clients that want to suggest changes to Wikipedia articles and engage on the Talk page.
- Special report: Questions raised over secret voting for WMF trustees
Last week we reported the announcement of two new affiliate-selected WMF trustees. The board of trustees is the most powerful and influential body in the movement, and chapters have been permitted to select two of the 10 seats since 2008, for two-year terms that start in even-numbered years.
- Featured content: Politics, ships, art, and cyclones
Five articles, one list, twelve pictures, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Reminder
- You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 (calendar).
- You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.
VisualEditor news
- You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu.
- When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference.
- You can now add and edit
{{DISPLAYTITLE}}and__DISAMBIG__in the page settings menu. - The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct.
Future software changes
- Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome.
- You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time.
- You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis.
- It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users.
- Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17.
- The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to
Special:MostTranscludedPages. - An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
- You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library: New Account Coordinators Needed
Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.
It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz
gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 June 2014
- News and notes: With paid advocacy in its sights, the Wikimedia Foundation amends their terms of use
The Wikimedia Foundation has amended its terms of use to ban editing for pay without disclosing an employer or affiliation on any of its websites. The broad scope of these changes will allow the WMF to selectively enforce their terms of use to avoid ensnaring well-meaning editors.
- Featured content: Worming our way to featured picture
Five articles, five lists, 22 pictures, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Special report: Wikimedia Bangladesh: a chapter's five-year journey
The Bangladesh chapter of the Wikimedia movement was formed in 2009. They received official local registration from the national authorities on 10 June 2014. The long road in between was subject to much persistence, patience, and luck—along with a good deal of worry.
- Traffic report: You can't dethrone Thrones
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the main draw this week, taking four slots. People appeared desperate to bone up on their trivia; checking not only this year's World Cup, but the last one. Even so, they still couldn't push Game of Thrones from the top ten. It will be interesting to see what happens come next week's season finale.
- WikiProject report: Visiting the city
This week, the Signpost came in from the hinterland to interview members of the Cities WikiProject.