User talk:Zhaofeng Li/Archive 7

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Please comment on WP:AN#Closure review: Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC to physically restrict access to the Helper Script

Hello! You have been selected to receive an invitation to participate in the closure review for the recent RfC regarding the AfC Helper script. You've been chosen because you participated in the original RfC. Should you wish to respond, your contribution to this discussion will be appreciated. This message is automated. Replies will not be noticed. --QEDK ♠ T ♥ C 14:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Two reflinks issues

Reflinks fails to fix refs that include a language icon e.g. (in French)

  • "Bundled" refs also remained unfilled e.g. [4]

--Catlemur (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Free West Papua[dead link]
  2. ^ Welcome to West Papua's War with Indonesia - Newsweek and The Daily Beast
  3. ^ Autonomy isn’t independence- Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
  4. ^ See [1][2][3]
@Catlemur: About {{fr icon}}, the tool takes a "conservative" approach when dealing with references. When it comes across anything more than a bare link in a reference (i.e. the template), it skips the reference altogether. Maybe it can try to reuse more information from the original reference. And the second error isn't caused by the #tag magic word but the <!-- Bot generated title --> comment as the parser is not very clever. However, the tool will still skip the first one in the bundled references because of the {{dead link}} template. I'm dealing with the parser thingy. Thanks for the report. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
@Catlemur: I've improved citation parsing, and now it should not be confused by comments within references. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
I tried it again and the bundled refs remained unfixed.--Catlemur (talk) 13:31, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Issue resolved, thanks a lot.--Catlemur (talk) 20:29, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 19

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Hasan Hazer Moshar, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Persian. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:59, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed You want some fuel? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:14, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-09

Read, thanks. GlobalUserPage rocks!

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

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 25. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 26 (calendar).
  • It is now easier to see template fields in VisualEditor. The fields are bigger. [5]
  • It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [6]
  • Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [7]
  • Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [8]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next 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 26 at 00:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • At the moment you need to log in to edit Wikimedia wikis on mobile devices. You can say if anyone should be allowed to edit on the mobile sites. The discussion ends on March 15.
  • Images in the interface will soon work better in Opera 12. [9]

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

16:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

toollabs:fengtools/reflinks/

Hi, Zhaofeng Li, just to let you know your server is down. Lotje (talk) 06:28, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

@Lotje: See [10]. It should be back up now. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:31, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

refs ignored

There are two refs in this article that Reflinks seems to ignore, neither converting nor listing them as being impossible to operate on. In this case, one is from Bloomberg and the other is China Worker. -- Ohc ¡digame! 06:43, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ohconfucius:  Confirmed The tool thought <ref name=wsj1412398431/> (before the ref) was the start tag of the Bloomberg reference. Fixing it. Thanks for the report. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 09:34, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, -- Ohc ¡digame! 08:43, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Somewhat fixed I've made a dirty patch, but it may cause the script to ignore references whose names contain /. Will try to find a better solution later. 03:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs]

It seems that there are two references in Pu Zhiqiang that are not resolved by reFill. -- Ohc ¡digame! 08:43, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ohconfucius: Looking into it. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 03:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
@Ohconfucius: Apologies for forgetting this thread. If you mean the nybooks.com and bbc.com references, the tool seems to be able to pick them up just fine. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 13:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Ref removed outright

Tech News: 2015-10

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

  • A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [11]
  • You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
  • You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [12] [13]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
  • You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
  • Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [14] [15] [16] [17]
  • The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [18]
  • The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [19]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [20]

Future changes

  • You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [21]

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

16:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Reflinks for Portuguese wikipedia missing

Hey there! I just tried using Reflinks for the Portuguese Wikipedia but the "pt" option is missing from the list of projects... Victão Lopes Fala! 00:24, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

@Victor Lopes:  Fixed Thanks for the note. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 04:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Nice, thank you very much. Victão Lopes Fala! 17:34, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-11

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 now create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [22] [23]
  • VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [24] [25] [26]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
  • In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [27] [28]
  • The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [29] [30]
  • You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [31] [32]
  • You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [33] [34]
  • If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [35]

Future changes

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15:19, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-12

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 servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [38]
  • You can now see lists of bugs about Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary. [39]
  • It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [40] [41]

Problems

  • Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
  • A puzzle piece icon (icon) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [42] [43]
  • You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [44] [45]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [46] [47]
  • You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [48]
  • The final steps of single user login (SUL) will happen in April. You can see the rules to rename accounts. [49]

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

15:16, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

reFill

Hi, Zhaofeng Li, just to let you know reFill is down. Lotje (talk) 07:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

@Lotje: Appears to be working for me. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 07:07, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: Strange... very strange, now it is prepared to follow me again. Thank you for your time and have ha great day. Lotje (talk) 07:15, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-13

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.

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
  • The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [50]
  • VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [51] [52] [53]
  • When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [54]

Meetings

  • You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [55]

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

15:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-14

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 now hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [56]
  • You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [57] [58] [59]
  • All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [60]
  • You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [61]
  • VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [62]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
  • VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [63]
  • You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [64]
  • You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [65]
  • You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [66]
  • VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [67] [68] [69] [70]

Meetings

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15:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Checklinks

Hello,
I'd like to ask if there's any tool that can replace User:Dispenser/Checklinks. If no, can you help migrating it to wmflab? (Ik it's a hard work but Checklink's really a nice tool)
~Alexanderlimetalk~ 15:04, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alexanderlime: I don't think there is one, and unfortunately the source code of the tool isn't available, making migrating impossible. Someone can rewrite the tool from scratch like what I've done with the original Reflinks, but that's a different story. It'll require much more work and no one has volunteered to do that. The tool is online on a third-party server, anyway. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 15:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Read, thanks.
Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:


Screenshot of Citoid's first dialog


Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:


Screenshot of Citoid's initial results


After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.


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 VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. 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 improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
  • The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
  • File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-15

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

Problems

  • The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [77]
  • Labs was broken several times this week. [78] [79] [80] [81]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
  • You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [82]
  • Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [83] [84]
  • You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [85]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [86]

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

15:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Reflinks not currently serviced

Hi Zhaofeng Li. Your reflinks tool seems to be unavailable. The error message is "is not currently serviced." Do you know what might be going on? (also pinging Technical 13) Many thanks.- MrX 21:47, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Never mind [87].- MrX 22:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Seems to be happening again. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:10, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Never mind - seems to be fixed after all. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

String repetition?

Could you have a look at this, please? Seems to be some string or field being repeated, particularly China Digital Time and China Daily refs. Don't know if it's the metadata or Refill doing that... I think it would not do any harm if these repeated strings were removed. Then there is a small issue of the "(CDT)" suffix that can probably be removed outright. Thanks, -- Ohc ¡digame! 05:16, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Ohconfucius: It's the metadata. If you look closely at the browser's title bar, you'll notice that sites often add their names to the end of the title. The tool can intelligently remove the trailing names in many cases, but it can still fail at times. I'll improve the routine later. Thanks for the note. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 13:48, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-16

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

Problems

  • Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [91] [92]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
  • Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [93] [94]
  • All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [95]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

untitled

Hi MR.Zhaofeng Li I have done the edit by the name User:Palem Srikanth Reddy to Palem Srikanth Reddy and i ask to move that one,but your team has deleted eveerything what z there in the Palem Srikanth Reddy and the entire content is unable to see and it seems we are unable to edit in the page of Palem Srikanth Reddy,Would you please help me out how to done with all the pages again and to update everything in the page,i just need the content again in the page os Palem Srikanth Reddy.Please help me out from this problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Palem Srikanth Reddy (talk • contribs)

reFill

Hi Zhaofeng Li, do you have any idea why this occurs when using the tool? I also came accross it on this article as you may have noticed. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 07:51, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Zhaofeng Li, sorry to trouble you again, but how and where can I find out if this wonderful reFill tool of yours is ready/accepted by the Dutch Wikipedia community? Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 05:19, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
As the tool itself is hosted on the WMFserver, it should be available across all projects. You need to create the vector.js page in the relevant wiki userspace by following the instructions at User:Zhaofeng Li/reFill#Toolbox_link to use the tool. Regards, -- Ohc ¡digame! 09:24, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-17

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

  • There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [96]
  • VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [97]
  • You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [98]
  • If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [99]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [100]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
  • Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [101] [102] [103]
  • If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [104]
  • You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [105]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

15:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-18

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

  • All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [108] [109]
  • You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [110]
  • There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [111]
  • You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [112]

Problems

  • Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [113]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
  • It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [114]
  • You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [115]
  • You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [116]
  • You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [117]

Meetings

  • You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.

Tech News: 2015-19

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 now chat with other users in Phabricator. [118]
  • There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [119] [120]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
  • It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [121]

Meetings

  • You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [122]
  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [123]

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

15:18, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-20

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 now make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [124] [125] [126]
  • You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [127]
  • The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [128] [129]

Problems

  • There was a problem that caused slow editing. [130]
  • Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [131]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
  • You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [132] [133]
  • You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [134]
  • When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [135]
  • When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [136]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-21

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
  • References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [137]
  • You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [138]
  • The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [139]
  • You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [140] [141]
  • UploadWizard now shows better matches when you add a category to your file. [142]
  • A test about VisualEditor will start on the English Wikipedia on Thursday. [143]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join a technical meeting in France this week.

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

15:32, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-22

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

  • VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [144]
  • Some Labs tools had issues last week. [145] [146]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

16:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-23

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

  • Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [148]
  • Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [149]
  • Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [150] [151]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
  • You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [152]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:42, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

Screenshot showing the link tool's context menu


The link tool has been re-designed:

Screenshot of the link inspector


There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

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

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
  • If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
  • If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

toollabs:refill

Hi, Zhaofeng Li, just to inform you the Refill tool is still not working. Thanks for looking into it if you have a spare minute. Lotje (talk) 03:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-24

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [153] [154]
  • If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [155]
  • When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [156]
  • The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [157]

Meetings

Future changes

  • If you have a bot, you may need to fix it. The default continuation mode of the API for action=query will change at the end of June. [159]

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

18:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-25

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

  • Users have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [160]
  • Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [161]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Developers are working on a new tool to get and send newsletters. If you read or write a newsletter, share your ideas about it. [163]
  • If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [164] [165] [166]

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

15:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

refill

Hi, Zhaofeng Li, toollabs:refill is down, just wanted to inform you. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-26

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

  • Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [167] [168]
  • You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [169]

Problems

  • On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [170] [171] [172]
  • On June 16, images were broken for several hours on wikis that use InstantCommons. [173] [174] [175]
  • Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [176] [177] [178]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:24, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

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

  • Long lines in code blocks now look better. [179]
  • You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [180]
  • When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [181]
  • The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [182] [183] [184]
  • You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [185]

Problems

  • JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [186]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
  • You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [187]
  • When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [188]
  • If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [189]
  • Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [190]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

  • When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [191]

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

15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-28

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

  • On the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [192]

Problems

  • The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [193]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
  • The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [194] [195]
  • You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [196]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-29

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

Problems

  • There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [198]
  • There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [199]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [200]

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

15:06, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-30

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

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
  • You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [201]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [202]

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

03:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-31

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

Problems

  • There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
  • There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [208]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
  • JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [209]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-32

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 ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
    • You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [210]
    • Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [211] [212] [213] [214]
  • The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [215]
  • MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [216]
  • Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [217]

Problems

  • There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [218]
  • We can't search by file type on Wikimedia wikis now. [219]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #4—2015

Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition

Did you know?

You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.

Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).

Screenshot showing the special character tool, selected text, and the special character that will be inserted


Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.

Screenshot showing the special character tool and the same text after the special character has been inserted


You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.

Wikimania

The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.

Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.

For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).

For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%).  There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).

We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. 

In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.  

Future changes

The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.

On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
  • If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
  • Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
  • The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
  • The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-33

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

  • MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [220]
  • The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [221]
  • You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [222]
  • You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [223]
  • It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [224]
  • JavaScript authors:
  • The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [229]

Problems

  • More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [230]
  • Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [231]
  • Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [232]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
  • UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [233]
  • You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [234]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [235]

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

14:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-34

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

  • Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [236] [237] [238]
  • Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [239]

Problems

  • Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [240] [241]
  • On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [242]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
  • You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [243]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

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