User talk:Zhaofeng Li/Archive 6

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Reflinks helpful in fixing reference in History of writing

Reflinks was helpful in fixing this reference in History of writing. The web page had the author in the title and the publisher as the author, so the reflinks-generated template needed some additional changes. FYI, I used the "Enter wikitext" interface under "Show advanced input". Thanks for the good work. --50.53.53.192 (talk) 19:48, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Clarification: Reflinks did not make any changes to the wikitext as it was in the article:
  • <ref>[Geometric Signs – A New Understanding http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.php]</ref>
so I changed the reference to a bare link:
  • <ref>http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.php</ref>
--50.53.53.192 (talk) 20:30, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
The tool can only parse author and publisher information from the microdata on the pages, which the webpage in question does not include. And the second reference in your clarification isn't valid wikitext even (The correct syntax is [url title]). Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:32, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
"The correct syntax is ..."
Right, but the tool would not recognize the incorrect syntax in the first reference, so I was forced to convert the reference to a bare link before running the tool on it. Isn't the tool robust enough to recognize that the URL and the text are reversed in the first reference? Reversing the URL and the text seems like an error an inexperienced editor would make. Can't the tool recognize that "[TEXT URL]" is invalid, but meaningful?
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 11:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014

Newsletter read. Thanks.
Screenshot on an iPad, showing how to switch from one editor to the other
Did you know?

VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.

It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.

Recent improvements

The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.

The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.

VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.

The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)

Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [1] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.

TemplateData

The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November.  This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation.  When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top.  Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.

In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.

Looking ahead

Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.

The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.

You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!

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

Suggest displaying the Reflinks version number and release date

There is no Reflinks version number or release date on the Reflinks web page. --50.53.241.188 (talk) 04:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

The tool is being actively developed, and is not stable enough to have numeric version numbers. However, every single change to the software is identified with a commit ID (much like the diff IDs here), see the commit log. The main version always follows the "labs-stable" branch, and the test version always follows the "master" branch. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:32, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Why can't software "being actively developed" have a version number? How about "0.0.1", "0.0.3", etc. for "the test version" and "0.0.2", "0.0.4", etc. for the "labs-stable" branch? That's the odd-even version numbering that was used for Linux kernel kernel releases. And a commit id is not a substitute for a version number. A timestamp would be better than nothing. --50.53.48.227 (talk) 12:13, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Well, I still find numeric version numbers redundant. It's hard to decide when to release a new version, and they are of no use for end-users (They don't need to download anything, or regularly check if they have the latest version). If you think releasing a new fancy version makes you feel good, sadly it's not for me. Rather, I find setting a permanent version number for my incomplete, bug-ridden code really uncomfortable. Timestamps are no good for marking versions, either, since it's inconvenient to locate a specific commit with one. For now, having commit IDs is enough for me. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Why don't you need a version number for bug reporting? --50.53.48.227 (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. I've added the current commit ID to the default edit summary. It's way more useful than any version number. But anyway, it's not really that difficult to find out which version the user's using without it. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 14:26, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. That's a good idea. Could you put the commit ID and a link to the commit on the web page too? I have been using the text entry tool "Show advanced input/Enter wikitext" interface, so there is no edit summary in that case. There is already a row of links along the bottom of the page, so that might be a good place for it. --50.53.48.227 (talk) 14:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
A link to the commit would be sufficient for bug reporting. Striking myself. --50.53.48.227 (talk) 14:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
The Reflinks test version shows the commit ID even when using the "Show advanced input/Enter wikitext" interface:
  • "Last commit: 4405d3f UserOptions.php: Enable all default options if 'defaults' is set"
Thanks ... and striking myself, again.
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 15:15, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks does not recognize some references

Reflinks does not recognize these references:

A bare link preceded by text that is the intended title:

  • <ref>The Khipu Database Project, http://khipukamayuq.fas.harvard.edu/index.html</ref>(edit 1) (edit 2)
(Edit 1 was done manually. Edit 2 was done with the assistance of Reflinks.)

A named external link followed by text annotation:

  • <ref>[http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/management/councils/ Regional Fishery Management Councils] (with map)</ref> (edit)
(The "(with map)" text annotation was manually removed before running Reflinks and then replaced.)

NB: I am using the Reflinks web page.

--50.53.241.188 (talk) 04:36, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

The tool changed references with additional information before, but the functionality was removed since it did more harm than good. There was no reliable way to integrate the (possibly badly formatted) additional information into the citation template, so the additional information was lost during the process. The user is responsible for expanding those references manually. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:32, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Couldn't the tool convert the bare URL or the named external link to a "cite web" template, without attempting to interpret surrounding text?
  • <ref>The Khipu Database Project, http://khipukamayuq.fas.harvard.edu/index.html</ref>
  • <ref>[http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/management/councils/ Regional Fishery Management Councils] (with map)</ref>
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 12:39, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
That will result in even worse formatted references. Maybe I can try, but editors will be required to manually move the additional information into the citation templates. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:21, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
"... editors will be required to manually move the additional information into the citation templates."
That is fine with me. AFAICT, the tool silently ignores references it cannot parse, so a simpler alternative would be to list those references along with the ones that resulted in HTTP errors.
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 13:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
... the tool silently ignores references it cannot parse, ...
Confirmed. Reflinks silently ignores the "Geometric Signs" reference in the wikitext of this version of History of writing.
I apologize for not providing a Reflinks version number in this bug report, but I don't know where to find it.
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 14:22, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Um, good finding. The wikilinks are quite useful too, as if I had zero idea of what they meant. Anyway, you don't need to give a version number in this case :) But actually, there may be many well-formatted plain references that do not need fixing (and not parsed by Reflinks), so it's not really a good idea to list them all. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 14:59, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Reporting external links with invalid syntax would be sufficient. BTW, your user page doesn't say you are a software engineer ... --50.53.48.227 (talk) 15:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It's really not worth the trouble determining if a plain reference is using "valid formatting" or not. There are so many citation styles out there. However, only listing those with "syntax errors" (e.g. swapping the two parameters in an external link) will catch neither of the above examples. By the way, I'm a bit surprised to learn that only "software engineers" are supposed to know those terms. I'm not one, so I must rock. :) Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 15:47, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

The first example above is an annotated bare link.
The second example above is an annotated, named external link.
The software documentation should clearly state whether or not Reflinks recognizes those.
This external link, as you already pointed out, has invalid syntax, because the order of the URL and the text are reversed:
  • <ref>[Geometric Signs – A New Understanding http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.php]</ref>
Is Reflinks supposed to recognize that or not?
What are the software requirements for Reflinks?
--50.53.48.227 (talk) 16:49, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the documentation probably needs some work. I'm working on that "invalid syntax" thing, will post updates in the section above. The software requirements along with the instructions are available here. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:39, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks

When I tried to do reflinks on Blink (U.V.U.K. song), my internet explorer ended up with a blank page. Now it is taking forever to GET TO reflinks at all. --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:35, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-46

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [2] [3]
  • The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net. [4]

File information cleanup

Problems

  • Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [5]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
  • You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [6] [7]
  • The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [8]
  • The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [9]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
For maintaining Reflinks, a tool that truly can not be missed! Randykitty (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

No webservice for Reflinks

Unfortunately, I am missing Reflinks at this moment. tools.wmflabs.org/fengtools/reflinks/ currently yields this message:

No webservice
The URI you have requested, /fengtools/reflinks/, is not currently serviced.
If you have reached this page from somewhere else...
This URI is part of the fengtools tool, maintained by Zhaofeng Li.
That tool might not have a web interface, or it may currently be disabled.
If you're pretty sure this shouldn't be an error, you may wish to notify the tool's maintainers (above) about the error and how you ended up here.
If you maintain this tool
You have not enabled a web service for your tool, or it has stopped working because of a fatal error. You may wish to check your logs or common causes for errors in the help documentation.

Peaceray (talk) 17:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Same error here. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 21:58, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
I am also having the same error. The reflinks tool has been down for a few days now.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:21, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
Same result for me, too. I want to express my thanks for your work, and hope you can stick with it.DThomsen8 (talk) 00:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Li has not done a contribution since 9 November, perhaps something has happened to him in 3D. Meanwhile, PATIENCE--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Same here, Infact every tool I use seems to be down more than up - I'm beginning to wonder if Toolserver's haunting me !. –Davey2010 • (talk) 00:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
@Davey2010, Dthomsen8, BabbaQ, K6ka, and Peaceray: Really, really sorry for the recent outages. Long story short, the tool's webservice keeps being shutted down abruptly at the moment. I don't know what caused it, and sadly I don't have enough time to diagnose it now (I'm now on my phone). Will work on it as soon as I get home tomorrow afternoon. Sorry again for all the troubles. I hope everything gets back on track soon. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 14:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Zhaofeng Li, thank you for attending to this. Please take all of our comments as a testament for the utility of Reftool instead of a criticism for a system problem. I typically use it every time that I encounter a page with a bare URL, excepting PDFs. Peaceray (talk) 15:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
No worries Zhaofeng Li these things happen, I don't mean this in a funny way but we all have lives and can't be on here 24/7 so no worries :) –Davey2010 • (talk) 15:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Don't worry, the tool is very useful and we all appreciate your assistance with keeping it going :)--BabbaQ (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks error

I got an error trying to run reflinks for History_of_the_Poles_in_the_United_States ([10]). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks Archive

I saw reflinks run here, where it converted all the references very well! It did a really good job. It's just that when it converts the archived links, it thought the archived link was the original url. Is it possible for Reflinks to do something different when it sees "web.archive.org" because it is thinking that web.archive is the publisher. Thanks,  ΤheQ Editor  Talk? 20:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the major limiting factor here at the moment is that Zhaofeng Li is really busy with life at the moment. But it should be possible to look at the URL to determine if it is web.archive.org. After that, it is a matter of parsing the URL for the archiveurl & archivedate, since they are contained in the URL, then adding |deadurl=yes.
Zhaofeng Li, I am dabbling in PHP & Python as of late. I have been doing UNIX shell scripting for a couple dozen years & Perl scripting for a couple of decades. Immediately, my life is also busy for at least this month, but perhaps after that I could get a copy of your script & add the algorithm. I am going to get an introduction to the Wiki[mp]edia APIs this weekend.
Peaceray (talk) 21:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
@Peaceray: Many thanks for offering to help. The code is available on GitHub, and you can contribute by submitting a pull request. For a quick introduction to the code, metadata parsing is handled by a chain of MetadataParsers. This feature can be implemented by creating a metadata parser which looks for "archive.org" URLs, change the url to the original one and fill in the archiveurl and archivedate fields (Some regex magic will do the work). src/Reflinks/MetadataParsers/FixerMetadataParser.php is an example of a parser that changes already-parsed metadata from previous parsers in the chain. Afterwards, the CitationGenerators should be modified to include the info in the generated {{Cite web}} templates and plain CS1 citations. I'm going to write some in-depth documentations this afternoon. Good luck! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I've written a quick tutorial to explain this. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:18, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
@TheQ Editor and Peaceray:  Done Just had some free time, so I've implemented it ([11][12][13]). The feature is now available on the test version, and here is an example of what it does. Any thoughts on this? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:32, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
Wow! That was impressive (from a non-programmer's POV). That would work great! Cheers,  ΤheQ Editor  Talk? 17:55, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks overdose

Reflinks crashes when it tries to fix some heavy duty articles (400-500 bare links).

P.S.Thank you for the great tool you created.--Catlemur (talk) 12:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

@Catlemur: I've now extended the execution time limit to 10 minutes. Anyway, I think there are better approaches, like stopping the program shortly before the limit is reached (generating an incomplete result) or setting a maximum processing time for each reference. Will work on it later. By the way, what's the page you were trying to use the tool on? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 14:16, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Deaths in 2014,Deaths in May 2013 e.t.c.--Catlemur (talk) 14:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-47

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
  • The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19. [14]

Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator

  • The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
  • You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
  • You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
  • Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
  • You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC. [15]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Copyright checks when performing AfC reviews

Hello Zhaofeng Li. This message is part of a mass mailing to people who appear active in reviewing articles for creation submissions. First of all, thank you for taking part in this important work! I'm sorry this message is a form letter – it really was the only way I could think of to covey the issue economically. Of course, this also means that I have not looked to see whether the matter is applicable to you in particular.

The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.

If you don't do so already, I'd like to ask for your to help with this problem by taking on the practice of performing a copyvio check as the first step in any AfC review. The most basic method is to simply copy a unique but small portion of text from the draft body and run it through a search engine in quotation marks. Trying this from two different paragraphs is recommended. (If you have any question about whether the text was copied from the draft, rather than the other way around (a "backwards copyvio"), the Wayback Machine is very useful for sussing that out.)

If you do find a copyright violation, please do not decline the draft on that basis. Copyright violations need to be dealt with immediately as they may harm those whose content is being used and expose Wikipedia to potential legal liability. If the draft is substantially a copyvio, and there's no non-infringing version to revert to, please mark the page for speedy deletion right away using {{db-g12|url=URL of source}}. If there is an assertion of permission, please replace the draft article's content with {{subst:copyvio|url=URL of source}}.

Some of the more obvious indicia of a copyvio are use of the first person ("we/our/us..."), phrases like "this site", or apparent artifacts of content written for somewhere else ("top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", use of smartquotes, etc.); inappropriate tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone or a very slanted marketing voice with weasel words; including intellectual property symbols (™,®); and blocks of text being added all at once in a finished form with no misspellings or other errors.

I hope this message finds you well and thanks again you for your efforts in this area. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC).

       Sent via--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thank you for fixing a lot of my empty references. Arbustum (talk) 00:49, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks on Akhil (actor)

Hi Zhaofeng. Thank you so much for this version of Reflinks. Would you try to run it on Akhil (actor) and see if there is any issues? I did and Reflinks for reasons I have no clue about stuck in a lot of HTML code. I intended to save the page and undo, just to show you the result, but as the edit contained a blacklisted URL was not allowed to do so. Best, Sam Sing! 14:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC) (please Reply to icon mention me on reply)

 Confirmed Looks like it's a bug in the HTML5 parser. Since I'm not familiar with all those DOM parsing stuff, I've filed a bug for that. Let's see what we can do... Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 05:05, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
@Sam Sailor: I've done some dirty fixes to remove the trailing HTML. It should work for now while I'm waiting for the parser bug to be fixed. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:42, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
Sounds good, thank you again. Best, Sam Sing! 09:56, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-48

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [16]

Problems

  • There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [17]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
  • You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [18]
  • VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [19]
  • You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [20]
  • VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [21] [22]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks suggestion

Thank you so much for providing a free (free copyright, and propaganda-free) replacement for the old reflinks. It works better, too -- especially with the ability to paste wikicode as input. I hope that you will collaborate with citoid on a forward-moving basis, to integrate these concepts directly into Wikipedia.

I have an important request, if you please. It needs to have an option to set the date format (DMY or MDY). It needs to have "do not add access dates" and "Use the base domain name as work when this information cannot be parsed" *not* checked by default, or it needs to remember my settings perhaps with a cookie. Those options are automatically presumptive, and rarely desirable besides that (often resulting in the creation of junk data), and so they need to be deliberately opted in. It would be great to have an additional option to update all accessdates, whether the citation is bare or not, especially to clean up after the tool's own aforementioned problem like this.

Thank you very much. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 17:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

@Smuckola: I agree that different people have different requirements, so it'd be a good idea to let people customize their default options. I'll re-consider the global default options and work on your suggestions. About Citoid, it's certainly a better way to integrate Reflinks-like functionality to the wiki. Will look into it. Thanks for your suggestions. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:21, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li:I'll suggest another idea, if I may. A progress indicator would be great. You know it can take a while! Maybe a list of URLs which are being processed, one by one, which is collapsed by default. And a little animated spinner, or just a text saying "Processing. Please wait." Thank you. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 07:06, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
@Smuckola: Nice suggestion! Added to the (rather lengthy) todo list. I'm somewhat busy recently, so you may have to wait for some time for this. I'll try my best. Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:18, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Hello! I would like to add to your suggestion list please. Can you make it like the old reflinks, in terms of having a "Preview on Wikipedia" button? I'd like to take the improvements straight back to the article, and I'd definitely like to have your tool credited in the edit summary. I always go hunt down your URL and paste it in, and I'd like it to be auto-formatted there, out of respect for you and your tool, and for the community that deserves to spread it. Also, I found your testing version but I haven't gotten it to work most of the time. The page just goes blank, most of the time when I make a submission. Thanks! — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 04:32, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
@Smuckola: First, really sorry for the late reply. Echo combines talk page notifications together, which is why I overlooked your message. What exactly do mean by a "Preview on Wikipedia" button? A button which takes you to the article preview instead of a diff (which is what the button does currently)? And the tool is already credited in the default edit summary. If it's not, could you explain what have you tried? Regarding the test version, it's unstable by nature and thus may not always work. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you and Reflinks!

The Technical Barnstar
Thank you for Reflinks! — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 05:11, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:31, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-50

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [23]
  • You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [24]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [25]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [26]
  • You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [27]
  • It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [28] [29]
  • The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [30] [31] [32]
  • (Lua) You can no longer use mw.text.unstrip to get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix. [33] [34]

Future changes

  • Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate. [35]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks tool

Hi, Zhaofeng Li, is your reflinks tool down? Lotje (talk) 08:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Lotje: Fixed I've restarted the server. Thanks for the note. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...]

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
Wonderful. Reflinks is an excellent tool. Tradereddy (talk) 14:11, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 01:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks request

Hi Zhaofeng Li, Thank you so much for providing Reflinks tool. I'm bengali wikipedia user. On the past, i used this tool & i was able to fixed any page. but using your tool, i can't fix any page on bn wikipedia. Please add bn wikipedia here (on dropdown box). Thank you --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 15:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC).

(talk page stalker) @Aftabuzzaman: Note that Dispenser's tool is now at http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/view/Reflinks - hope this helps in the meantime! GoingBatty (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: But Dispenser's tool doesn't work. it gives "A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred." see this exemple --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 23:54, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@Aftabuzzaman: Oops, you're right! A lot of Dispenser's tools work at the new URLs, but not this one. Sorry! GoingBatty (talk) 00:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
@Aftabuzzaman:  Done It's now added. Enjoy! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:46, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you :) --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 00:58, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-51

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [36]
  • You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [37]
  • You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [38]
  • You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [39]
  • VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [40]
  • The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [41]

Future changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Combine duplicate references?

Dear Zhaofeng Li: First, I would like to say how much I am enjoying using your Reflinks rewrite. It saves me a lot of time.

I remember that the old Reflinks used to combine duplicate references if the same bare URL was cited in more than one spot in an article. Do you have any plans to implement that feature? Or, do you know of another gadget that does it? —Anne Delong (talk) 18:06, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: I've written some dirty code to do this on the the test version. It currently names the references like VE (":1", ":2", etc). Will polish it when I get home this weekend. What do you think? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Here's an example edit. As for the plan, I'd like an option to disable the functionality, as well as the ability to name citations meaningfully (e.g. the domain name of the link), before it's moved to the stable version. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Zhaofeng Li, I tried it out out this page, admittedly not a very strenuous test, and it worked fine. Did you mean that your software would examine the URL and pick a meaningful name, or did you mean that the user would do that? If the user, I would suggest adding a more distinctive and easily identifiable default name to the combined references. The old Reflinks used "Autogenerated1", etc., but the main thing is that it is a searchable piece of text that is not a common word. Likely a lot of people will not bother to replace default name, but if they are identifiable and reasonably unique, another user could use a tool such as AWB to find these later and replace them with more sensible names. If you don't like "augtogenerated", something like "dupfref", "multiref", "defaultname", or anything like that would do. Programming the software to pick out a sensible name would be great if it's practical. You might also run across ones where someone has already given one of the duplicate refs a name - tricky, since it may not be the first instance. Anyway, thanks for working on this. It will be very helpful. Should I use this version now, or are you still experimenting with this version of the code? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
@Anne Delong: Thanks for the comments. The tool will be able to name the citations after their domain names automatically. If a sensible name cannot be found, "autogenerated" or similar according to your suggestion may be used instead. This version is still experimental, but can be used. However, please be extra careful and examine the diff before saving the edit. Thanks! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 22:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Zhaofeng Li, will it be clever enough to properly name references where there are multiple distinct URLs with the same domain name? An example might be a long running story on some occurrence with //foxnews.com/stories/2014/October/Article_A_is_a_comprehensive_article_about_foo.html and //foxnews.com/stories/2014/October/Article_B_is_a_comprehensive_article_about_bar.html and //foxnews.com/stories/2014/October/Article_C_is_a_comprehensive_article_about_baz.html. How would it name the refs in situations like that? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 05:00, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
@Technical 13: Good point, and will take that into account. It will add some numbers at the end of the names. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 07:50, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

In this edit, the 2nd change was to change 'name=smhlindt1' to 'name=":2"'. I realise the same ref occurred later in the article, and it consolidated the two, which is good, but it would be better if it retained the existing name, which was far more meaningful than ":2". Nurg (talk) 10:00, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

@Nurg: Duplicated references with names are a bit tricky, but I'll try my best to solve it. Anyway, there will be an option to disable the feature. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

@BabbaQ, Guy1890, and David O. Johnson: Hi, you are being pinged as you had asked for the functionality of combining duplicated references before. The feature is now implemented on the test version. Could you try it out and share what you think? Thanks a lot. A few planned improvements are mentioned above. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Zhaofeng Li, I used the test version on the Opinion polling for the Israeli legislative election, 2015 article [46]. It looks like it worked just fine. Maybe using something more descriptive than the current ref name could be automatically generated? David O. Johnson (talk) 01:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
@David O. Johnson: Yes, that's a planned feature. Sadly I don't have enough time at the moment, so it'll be a while before I can implement it. Sorry about that! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
It's no problem at all; thank you.David O. Johnson (talk) 05:02, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
@David O. Johnson, Nurg, Technical 13, and Anne Delong: I've improved the feature, and it now adds more descriptive names for references and follows existing names if available. See this example edit. Convenience link to the test version: toollabs:fengtools/reflinkstest/ Happy New Year! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 12:22, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
The merging happens after the metadata has been extracted. As a result, it's possible to use any obtained metadata as the names of the citations to make them easier to reuse (The tool currently only makes use of the author and URL fields, but it can be easily extended). There's also a side-benefit: For archive.org URLs, it uses the source site's domain name, not "archive.org". Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 12:31, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
It's now on the main version. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
Dear Zhaofeng Li, thank you for the reflinks tool. As a matter of fact, if dates need to be checked, I prefer using the tool instead of trying to figure it out on my own. It saves a lot of time. I also make use of this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a prosperous 2015! Lotje (talk) 13:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Lotje: Hi, If you mean deselecting Do not add access dates, I'm working on a feature that will let you customize your own default options. Happy New Year to you, too! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 01:09, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for adding the feature to combine duplicate references. This was one of these most frustrating tasks in repairing citations and seemingly the one many editors did not perhaps understand how to create. Kindest regards, Fylbecatulous talk 17:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
My thanks, also, for the combining duplicate references feature! It certainly saves a lot of time and headaches, particularly for the comprehensive articles I work on. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:22, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Newsletter read. Thanks.
Screenshot showing how to add or remove columns from a table

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "*  " will make the line a bullet list; "1.  " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.

Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-52

Newsletter read. Thanks.
Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 23:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [47]

Software changes this week

  • There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [48]

Future changes

  • The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [49]
  • A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [50]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Citation Barnstar
Surely you deserve this. Your service is beyond price. Thank you for your great work. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:16, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 23:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Seasonal Greets!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Zhaofeng Li, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
--L235-Talk Ping when replying 15:29, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

@Lixxx235: Thanks, and the same to you! Happy editing! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 06:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Rv on WP China

This edit was only meant for removing WP:SOCK edit. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 09:24, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

@OccultZone: Ah, sorry about that. Thought it was a mistaken revert. I think User:Callanecc should have make it clearer in the edit summary, though. Anyway, Happy New Year to both of you! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
You too! OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 10:09, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 Hebei tractor rampage

Hi there. Not sure what happened with the above discussion but your edit deleted my comment. I've put it back.  Philg88 ♦talk 08:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

@Philg88: Oops, sorry. I made the edit with the Android app, and it didn't warn me about the edit conflict before saving, overwriting your comment. A bug, probably? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 11:01, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
A bug in the illustrious Mediawiki framework? Surely not!  Philg88 ♦talk 09:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
@Philg88: It's probably a bug in the Android app I think, not MediaWiki. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:29, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
@Philg88: Turns out it's already reported at phab:T66281. Gonna switch to the clumsy web interface... :/ Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-01

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Software changes

  • There are no technical changes this week.

Feedback about Tech News in 2014

  • The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Dear Zhaofeng Li,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! A new year has come! How times flies! 2015 will be a new year, and it is also a chance for you to start afresh! Thank you for your contributions!
From a fellow editor,
--Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook) 09:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

This message promotes WikiLove. Created by Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook). To use this template, leave {{subst:User:Nahnah4/Happy New Year}} on someone else's talk page.

@Nahnah4: Thanks, and the same to you! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks - intermittent performance

I note the facility is working on some articles, but not on others. Some were it crashes include Margaret Anne Cargill, Amber Kole, Nazareno Malegarie, Naye Prese, Oxelytrum and Steve Schofield. In due course, as I am well aware of the time of the seasons, could you please investigate. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 17:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I am completely unable to use the tool at all, unlucky me. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 22:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
@Derek R Bullamore and K6ka:  Fixed Sorry about that. That's caused by broken error handling. Happy New Year! /me is wondering how many mistakes he's made recently :/ Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:55, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year Zhaofeng Li!

Happy New Year!

Zhaofeng Li,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. NorthAmerica1000 14:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.
@Northamerica1000: Thank you! Have a enjoyable New Year, too! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 15:18, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi

Hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! I just wanted to stop by and say that the reflinks tool is working great and now combines references at ease :) It is really helpful. Thanks!--BabbaQ (talk) 11:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@BabbaQ: Glad it helped! Have a wonderful 2015! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 12:28, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Refinks: Graffiti

When attempting to run {{Reflinks|Graffiti}}, a blank page is returned. I'm guessing this is an issue with the PHP and it not knowing what to do. I'm wondering a few things: Do you know what is causing the specific error? Does the tool log errors someplace? Are you interested in adding another maintainer to the script? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 03:47, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

@Technical 13:  Fixed It was caused by yet another mistake the monstrous piece of mess in the script which has been there for a long time. If you have time, please help! The server by default logs all errors at ~/error.log, and I'm considering making it display the errors at runtime as they are not really confidential. By the way, two heads are better than one. Maybe you can help being the tool back up when it's down and tweak the configurations. I'll add you when I have time (I'm on my phone). Thank you. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:38, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
@Technical 13: plus Added I've added you to the group. You may want to take a look at the README in the tool's home for some tips. Thanks! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:37, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

By the way...

I hope your "en-2" userbox is just modesty. If you're really only intermediate in English, I'll have to downgrade my Chinese and Spanish abilities! Λυδαcιτγ 06:09, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

@Audacity: Well, as I often make mistakes and can't use English naturally enough, I think "intermediate" suits me. Maybe there should be "en-2.5"? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:51, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I agree with Audacity. Don't be so modest—up it to 4—and you can't argue with admins, we know everything. .  Philg88 ♦talk 11:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, I've changed it to en-3. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 Fixed Fixed! Λυδαcιτγ 09:19, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Pandora

I've found a bug with your excellent reflinks tool. When I tried to use it to automatically change a page which is archived by the Pandora Archive, (in Draft:Bail Act 1978) the automated tool copied the text of the entire page I was citing. Of course, I deleted it all before saving the page, but I thought you'd like to know so that you could try it for yourself. Thanks again for the tool! --110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:43, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed It was a known bug (#Reflinks on Akhil (actor)), but the new version of the parser which contains the fix isn't being used. I've fixed that. Thanks for reporting. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:11, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing it! --110.20.234.69 (talk) 03:44, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Lixxx235 has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

--L235 (talk) Ping when replying 04:50, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Bug in reflink

At first, thanks for your great tool. However when using it, it makes '#' from every '[', see here. Or do I something wrong? Sander.v.Ginkel (talk) 14:49, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

It occurs in Internet Explorer, not in Chrome. Sander.v.Ginkel (talk) 15:02, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
@Sander.v.Ginkel: This is caused by the Anti-XSS filter in IE. For now, I'd advise against using the tool on IE, or you can copy-and-paste the resulting text manually into the editing interface. I'll add a notice for those using IE. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 11:31, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. Great work. Sander.v.Ginkel (Je suis Charlie) 11:33, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-03

Read, thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [51]
  • You can now use the {{!}} magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [52]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
  • A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [53]
  • The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [54]
  • The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [55] [56] [57]
  • The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [58]

Future changes

  • You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [59]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Bug

[60][61], title is wrong.--GZWDer (talk) 06:38, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@GZWDer:  Fixed I've changed the character set detection routine a bit, and the fix is available on the test version. Could you confirm? Example diff Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 11:52, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the update

The update looks super great, man. Much like a kitten, the UI update and the promise of a URL-generated instant citation was a delightful surprise. I have another request. Can we get a UI that embeds into the toolbar side of the page like this one or something like that? 

— Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 11:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)


@Smuckola: Thanks! In fact, the toolbox script is already available. Just insert {{subst:iusc|User:Zhaofeng Li/Reflinks.js}} to your common.js and it'll work. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 11:59, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: Stupendous! Maybe you'll mention that on the tool's page! Is it possible that you're going to make it replace garbage citations, anything that's not a {{cite template, like this? <ref>Szczepaniak, John. ''[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dezaemon/dezaemon3.htm Dezaemon]''. Hardcore Gamer 101. Pg.3. April 2011.</ref>
Well, those references are perfectly fine, and some editors prefer using plain formatting. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: Those references are infinitely beyond not fine; they're total junk, and those editors are totally wrong. :) There is absolutely no way that chickenscratch will survive into the future. It's the antithesis of data normalization. And a lot of them are worse, such as just a URL with a description next to it or something like that, so it's too dumb to be a reference and it's too much for current automation to fix. Or, they've got all kinds of miscellaneous advanced metadata like issue number, volume number, and more--except with no labels. It's intricately indecipherable. Because if the editor was going to actually make the citations fit even for human reading, they'd just as easily have used correct templates. Anyway, So I need help in forensic reconstruction of this junk. Whatever citation tool that performs this data normalization the most correctly, will ultimately win. Thank you! — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 19:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
@Smuckola: As you have said, it's very difficult to parse information from those references programmatically, so I doubt if we would ever find a way to do that properly. Maybe I can give it a try, though. I'm not removing the functionality of generating plain references from the tool, as it's relied upon by many editors and those references are acceptable per the current guidelines. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:09, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: That is very succinctly and correctly stated, sir. Policy is the way to go, while accommodating change. And I would expect that your app's manual-style output is relatively normalized enough to be mostly autoconverted in the inevitable future. My common case that I'm asking about is just a bare URL with description or dates. But further, it would be helpful if reflinks could just parse what it can, and leave the rest for me. These adventurous modes could be checkboxes. I hate to sound presumptuous over your workload, as I'm sure that it's quite a challenge to keep existing functionality correct. I'm just making suggestions in response to your generosity. In the big picture, there is something of a catch 22 situation. Someday, Wikipedia and Wikidata will have sufficiently unified infrastructure that the policy will adapt to deprecate the simulation of paper-based chaos in the digital world. Thank you. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 11:38, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: Are you sure you didn't mean this? What you said didn't work and this does: importScript('User:Zhaofeng Li/Reflinks.js'); — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 14:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
@Smuckola: The substituted template should do exactly the same thing. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: I don't know how the subst works, but the system wouldn't let me insert that into common.js. Anyway here's another feature request. Can we sneak some Wayback magic in there? I'd like a checkbox for Wayback, which retrieves the Wayback URL and sets deadurl=[yes or no]. To expand upon the idea, I wonder if someone's written a general Wayback browser, because it really is a huge hardship to find the last *good* archive amongst a long line of unarchived pages or archived vintage 404s! I didn't know if it's possible for that to be automated. If it was, then I'd guess maybe Internet Archive would have implemented it, but who knows? Are there any utilities to assist with Wayback as reflinks is to Wikipedia? Thank you, sir! — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 19:20, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Um, the code editor checks for JS errors and prevents you from saving the page, even though the template code will eventually turn into valid JS. You can turn it off by clicking the /* icon on the top left. Regarding the Wayback Machine, I'm aware that there is an API for it. Will dig into it. Thanks for the comments. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:09, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-04

Newsletter read. Thanks.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[62] [63]
  • Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.

Problems

  • All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [64]

Software changes this week

  • There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [65]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-05

Looking forward to seeing ContentTranslation here!

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

This week

  • There are no software changes this week due to annual meetings. [67]

Future changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Problems running Reflinks on sites with Arabic titles

I ran Reflinks on the Hazzm Movement article to fix some bare URLs that were in Arabic. As you can see here [70], the titles aren't in Arabic; one of them is even in Chinese.David O. Johnson (talk) 02:00, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

 Confirmed Will deal with that later. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
@David O. Johnson: I've made the fix. Could you try it out against some Arabic pages on the test version? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 10:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
I tested it [71] and it seems to work fine.David O. Johnson (talk) 05:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Portuguese Wikipedia?

Hello, Zhaofeng Li! First of all, let me congratulate you for your work at Reflinks. Is there any possibility that this tool is made available for the Portuguese Wikipedia, where I'm also an active editor? Victão Lopes Fala! 15:35, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

@Victor Lopes: Of course yes! I've added that. By the way, are you interested in helping translate the tool into Portuguese? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 23:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Sure thing! How do I do it? Victão Lopes Fala! 00:20, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
@Victor Lopes: Oops, the localisation file hasn't been merged into the Intuition framework yet. It will allow you to translate it on Translatewiki. I think it'll be done in a day or two, depending the workload of the staffers. Meanwhile, you can copy the message file and do the translation in a text editor if you wish, but you will need to copy it over to Translatewiki later. Thanks for your help! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:37, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Btw, I've just tested it. It worked just fine, except that it didn't automatically remove the Portuguese version of {{Cleanup-bare URLs}} (I removed it manually) and the edit summary is in English, but I guess the latter will be fixed once I translate it. It also failed to recognize the "ã" character, replacing it with "茫". Victão Lopes Fala! 00:33, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
It's related to the character set detection problem described in the section above. I've improved the detection routine a bit, and you can test it out on the test version. Does it work? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:37, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
About the link rot tag removal, it's not very flexible at the moment. I'll work on that later. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:44, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Funny, I just noticed that the tool did recognize one "ã" character in that first test of mine. It seems it recognizes the character for the "work" parameter, but not for the "title" parameter. I made another test, this time using the test version of the tool (the edit summary was manually translated by me). None of the titles contained the "ã" character for me to check how it performed, but one thing I noticed is that the edit summary originally said it filled 10 bare references, when it actually filled just 3. Victão Lopes Fala! 17:54, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

About the message file: what should I do with the Chinese characters? And there are lots of codes that I'm unsure about. For example, "heading-fetchfromwiki" - should I keep it as it is or should I translate it too? Victão Lopes Fala! 18:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
@Victor Lopes: Oops, I should have explained this earlier. You only need to translate the English messages. The Chinese part is my incomplete translation which can be used as an example. Just copy the highlighted parts here to your on-wiki sandbox (You can also do it offline, but rich-text editors like Word may damage the formatting), change the metadata so it becomes:
/**
 * Portuguese
 * @author Victor Lopes
 */
$messages['pt'] = array(
The messages themselves are formatted as (name) => (actual message). That said, you only need to change the (actual message) part after the arrow. For the edit summary you translated, use:
	'summary' => 'Formatando $1 referências com $3',
Regarding the counter, that's a silly mistake. I've fixed the broken logic. Thanks! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:14, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Should I translate the terms coming after "//", such as "// Headings", "// Labels", etc.? And does the word "fetch" means "search" in the case of "Fetch content from a wiki"? Victão Lopes Fala! 17:39, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Victor Lopes: They are optional. And "fetch content from a wiki" means getting wikitext from a wiki. Thanks for the help! Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:03, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Translation's  Done at my sandbox. Mind the article I'm developing below the translation. Victão Lopes Fala! 23:02, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Victor Lopes: Sweet! Many thanks for the hard work. It's now on the test version. Could you confirm that everything works fine? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
If it doesn't use Portuguese by default, use the "Languages" link on the top-right. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:45, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I've been testing it and everything seems to be working alright. Victão Lopes Fala! 03:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-06

Thanks for the newsletter.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • There was a security issue on Wikimedia Labs. Many Labs tools were down after the issue was fixed. [72]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 4 (calendar).
  • The "Save page" button in the VisualEditor toolbar is now blue rather than green. This is the same as on the mobile site. [73]
  • You can now edit pages on the draft namespace with VisualEditor on the Russian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia. You can ask to get VisualEditor for a namespace on your wiki. When your community agrees, ask in Phabricator. [74] [75]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

It's just getting better!

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. 

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

  • starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog:  blue ,
  • takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation:  green ,
  • might remove or lose your work, like removing a link:  red , or
  • is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window:  gray.

The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-07

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

Problems

  • MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [77]
  • UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [78]
  • All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [79]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
  • You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [80] [81] [82]
  • You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [83] [84]
  • It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [85]
  • You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).

Future changes

  • Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [86]
  • In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [87]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:27, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-08

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
  • On Wednesday your Meta user page will be shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. [88] [89] [90]
  • You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [91]
  • In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [92]
  • The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first.​ [93]

Meetings

  • The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [94]
  • You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [95]
  • You can join a meeting with the developers of the Content Translation tool. It will be on February 18 at 13:00 (UTC). [96]

Future changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:57, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

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