User talk:Rich Smith/Archive35b
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The Signpost: 30 July 2014
- Book review: Knowledge or unreality?
In Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak discusses Wikipedia from the standpoint of an experienced editor and administrator who is also a university professor specializing in management and organizations. In Virtual Reality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Charles Seife presents a more broadly themed work reminding us to question the reliability of information found throughout the Internet.
- Recent research: Shifting values in the paid content debate
Kim Osman has performed a fascinating study on the three 2013 failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, Osman analyzed 573 posts from the three main votes on paid editing conducted in the community in November 2013.
- News and notes: How many more hoaxes will Wikipedia find?
Another hoax on the English Wikipedia was uncovered this week—not by any thorough investigation, but through the self-disclosure of an anonymous change made when the editors were in their sophomore year of college. The deliberate misinformation had been in the article for over five years with plenty of individuals noticing, but not one suspected its authenticity. This leads to one obvious question: how many more are there?
- Wikimedia in education: Success in Egypt and the Arab World
A "program of heroes" is leading the charge in Egypt.
- Traffic report: Doom and gloom vs. the power of Reddit
We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the top 10, with Gaza Strip, Israel, and Hamas. The top 25 also includes Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner, the American actor who died on July 19th, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and deaths in 2014.
- Featured content: Skeletons and Skeltons
Two articles, four lists, and seven pictures attained 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.
Tech News updates
- Tech News will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
- You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files.
- You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files.
- New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file.
VisualEditor news
- You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor.
- VisualEditor will no longer change underscores to spaces in category sort keys.
- Many bugs that resulted in inserting the pawn and snowman symbols were fixed last week.
- Several bugs related to the use of references were also fixed.
Future software changes
- You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits.
- All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, contact Toolserver administrators before August 31.
- Pages in the
Translations:namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines.
Problems
- Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem.
- Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 August 2014
- Technology report: A technologist's Wikimania preview
As the start of Wikimania proper on 8 August approaches, the Signpost looks ahead to what its dozens of presentations might offer the technologically-inclined, whether attending in person or taking advantage of what promises to be a strong digital offering.
- Traffic report: Ebola
Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with the Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19.
- Featured content: Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them
Eight articles, fifteen pictures, and two topics were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Wikimedia in education: Leading universities educate with Wikipedia in Mexico
"Major growth" expected in Mexican university after a Wikipedia program is formally accepted by the school's administration.
- News and notes: "History is a human right"—first-ever transparency report released as Europe begins hiding Wikipedia in search results
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its first transparency report, covering from July 2012 to June 2014. The move comes on the same day the organization announced that Google, in order to comply with a recent court order upholding the "right to be forgotten", has removed a number of Wikipedia articles from their European search results.
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
- Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
- Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one.
VisualEditor news
- Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14.
Future software changes
- Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser!
- If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning.
- You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension.
- An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 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.
07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 13 August 2014
- Special report: Twitter bots catalogue government edits to Wikipedia
Slate reports that Tom Scott, co-creator of the emoji social network Emojli, created a Twitter bot called Parliament WikiEdits to automatically tweet a link to any Wikipedia edits made from an IP address belonging to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scott's bot initially did not tweet any links to edits made from Parliament and, according to Scott, an "insider" reports that their IP addresses changed. Despite this, Scott's Twitter bot has inspired similar creations in numerous other countries.
- Traffic report: Disease, decimation and distraction
It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
- Wikimedia in education: Global Education: WMF's Perspective
"Education is at the core of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission."
- Wikimania: Promised the moon, settled for the stars
Wikimania 2014 was held last week in the Barbican Centre in London. Below, the Signpost's former "Technology report" writer Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) shares his thoughts on a bustling conference.
- News and notes: Media Viewer controversy spreads to German Wikipedia
Wikimedia Foundation staff members have now been granted superpowers that would allow them to override community consensus. The new protection level came as a response to attempts of German Wikipedia administrators to implement a community consensus on the new Media Viewer. "Superprotect" is a level above full protection, and prevents edits by administrators.
- Op-ed: Red links, blue links, and erythrophobia
Erythrophobia is the fear of, or sensitivity to, the colour red. Recently, I have seen more and more erythrophobic Wikipedians; specifically, Wikipedians who are scared of red links. In Wikipedia's early days, red links were encouraged and well-loved, and when I started editing in 2006, this was still mostly the case. Jump forward to 2014, and many editors now have an aversion to red links.
- In the media: Monkey selfie, net neutrality, and hoaxes
The Observer reported (August 2) that Google would "restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new 'right to be forgotten' legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."
- Featured content: Cambridge got a lot of attention this week
Eight article, six lists, and two topics were promoted to featured status 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 (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
- There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages.
- You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
- You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools.
- You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.
Wikidata
- After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews.
- After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote.
Problems
Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 August 2014
- Interview: Improving the visibility of digital archival assets using Wikipedia
Dorothy Howard interviews Michael Szajewski, archivist for digital development and university records at Ball State University.
- Traffic report: Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
Comedian Robin Williams' untimely death takes the top spot.
- WikiProject report: Bats and gloves
At the plate with WikiProject Baseball!
- Op-ed: A new metric for Wikimedia
Denny Vrandečić argues that "We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors."
- Featured content: English Wikipedia departs for Japan
Ten articles and three pictures were promoted to featured status last week.
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