Wikipedia:Umnyango wamgwamanda/2017-2018
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Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process
Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.
This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.
The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.
Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.
Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:
- Update 1 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (15 December 2016)
- Introduction to process and information about budget spending resolution to support it
- Update 2 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (23 December 2016)
- Start of search for Lead Architect for movement strategy process
- Update 3 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (8 January 2017)
- Plans for strategy sessions at upcoming Wikimedia Conference 2017
- Update 4 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (11 January 2017)
- Introduction of williamsworks
- Update 5 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 February 2017)
- The core movement strategy team, team tracks being developed, introduction of the Community Process Steering Committee, discussions at WikiIndaba conference 2017 and the Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland
- Update 6 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (10 February 2017)
- Tracks A & B process prototypes and providing feedback, updates on development of all four Tracks
More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:31, 15 uNhlolanja 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help
Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process
Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.
Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.
Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:
- Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
- Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
- Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
- Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
- Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
- Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions
More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 uMbasa 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help
We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)
- This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes
Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:
Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.
There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:
Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).
Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.
This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?
We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.
- Find out more about the movement strategy process
- Learn more about volunteering to be a Discussion Coordinator
Sincerely,
Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams05:09, 18 uMbasa 2017 (UTC)
Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.
The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.
The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).
We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.
Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.
The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.
The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.
- April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
- April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
- April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
- May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
- May 15–19 – Board vote checking
- May 20 – Board result announcement goal
In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:
- Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
- There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
- Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
- One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.
More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections
wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May
Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
- You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:33, 11 uNdasa 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata description editing in the Wikipedia Android app
Wikidata description editing is a new experiment being rolled out on the Wikipedia app for Android. While this primarily impacts Wikidata, the changes are also addressing a concern about the mobile versions of Wikipedia, so that mobile users will be able to edit directly the descriptions shown under the title of the page and in the search results.
We began by rolling out this feature several weeks ago to a pilot group of Wikipedias (Russian, Hebrew, and Catalan), and have seen very positive results including numerous quality contributions in the form of new and updated descriptions, and a low rate of vandalism.
We are now ready for the next phase of rolling out this feature, which is to enable it in a few days for all Wikipedias except the top ten by usage within the app (i.e. except English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, and Chinese). We will enable the feature for those languages instead at some point in the future, as we closely monitor user engagement with our expanded set of pilot communities. As always, if have any concerns, please reach out to us on wiki at the talk page for this project or by email at reading@wikimedia.org. Thanks!
New Page previews feature
New Page previews feature
Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language
Hello,
The Reading web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working to enable Page previews, a beta feature known previously as Hovercards, as opt-in behavior for logged-in users and the default behavior for logged-out users across Wikipedia projects. Page previews provide a preview of any linked article, giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving the current page. For this project, we are expecting to collect feedback over the following few weeks and tentatively enable the feature in early May, 2017.
A quick note on the implementation:
- For logged-in users who are not currently testing out the beta feature, Page previews will be off by default. Users may turn them on from their user preferences page.
- For logged-out users, the feature will be on by default. Users may disable it at any time by selecting the setting cog available in each preview.
- For users of the Navigation popups gadget, you will not be able to turn on the Page previews feature while using navigational popups. If you would like to try out the Page preview feature, make sure to first turn Navigation popups off prior to turning Page previews on.
You can read more about the feature and the tests we used to evaluate performance, try it out by enabling it from the beta features page, and leave feedback or questions on the talk page.
Thank you, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 19 uNdasa 2017 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2017)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- American Psychiatric Association – Psychiatry books and journals
- Bloomsbury – Who's Who, Drama Online, Berg Fashion Library, and Whitaker's
- Gaudeamus – Finnish humanities and social sciences
- Ympäristö-lehti – The Finnish Environment Institute's Ympäristö-lehti magazine
Expansions
- Gale – Biography In Context database added
- Adam Matthew – all 53 databases now available
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, Taylor & Francis and Newspaperarchive.com.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:52, 2 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Aaron.
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2017 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.
The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 1 to 23:59 UTC May 14. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2017 Board of Trustees election page on Meta-Wiki.
On behalf of the Elections Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
19:15, 3 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View
Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:41, 8 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2017
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know that you can review your changes visually?
In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
- A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
- A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [1]
- The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The
<references />block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [2] - You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [3]
- The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [4]
- The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [5] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [6]
- You can now create
<chem>tags (sometimes used as<ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [7] - Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [8]
- The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [9]
- A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [10]
- There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:
Control+Shift+Kon a PC, orCommand+Shift+Kon a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which isControl+KorCommand+Krespectively. [11]
Future changes
- The team is working on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of
<ref>tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [12] - The kind of button used to Bukisa isibonakalo, Bukisa izinguquko, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding
&ooui=1to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [13] - The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [14]
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred 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!
18:07, 12 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
Prototype for editing Wikidata infoboxes on Wikipedia
Hello,
I’m sorry for writing in English. It’d be great if someone could translate this message if necessary.
One of the most requested features for Wikidata is to enable editing of Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia, so the editors can continue their workflow without switching websites.
The Wikidata development team has been working on a tool to achieve this goal: fill and edit the Wikipedia infoboxes with information from Wikidata, directly on Wikipedia, via the Visual Editor.
We already asked for feedback in 2015, and collected some interesting ideas which we shared with you in this thesis. Now we would like to present to you our first prototype and collect your feedback, in order to improve and continue the development of this feature.
We present this work to you very early, so we can include your feedback before and all along the development. You are the core users of this feature, so we want to make sure that it fits your needs and editing processes.
You will find the prototype, description of the features, and a demo video, on this page. Feel free to add any comment or feedback on the talk page. The page is currently not translated in every languages, but you can add your contribution by helping to translate it.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to follow all the discussions on Wikipedia, so if you want to be sure that your feedback is read, please add it on the Wikidata page, in your favorite language. Thanks for your understanding.
Thanks, Lea Lacroix (WMDE)
RevisionSlider
Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:44, 16 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.
You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.
Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:
- Healthy, Inclusive Communities
- The Augmented Age
- A Truly Global Movement
- The Most Respected Source of Knowledge
- Engaging in the Knowledge Ecosystem
On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation • Please help translate to your language • Get help21:09, 16 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, we are pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson elections. Please read the letter from the Wikimedia Foundation calling for candidates at on the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.
Funds Dissemination Committee
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson
The Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.
The candidacy submission phase will last until May 28 (23:59 UTC).
We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates until May 28. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki. Once the questions submission period has ended on May 28, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to.
The goal of this process is to fill the five community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and the community-selected ombudsperson. The election results will be used by the Board itself to make the appointments.
The full schedule for the FDC elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.
- May 15 (00:00 UTC) – May 28 (23:59 UTC) – Nominations
- May 15 – May 28 – Candidates questions submission period
- May 29 – June 2 – Candidates answer questions
- June 3 – June 11 – Voting period
- June 12–14 – Vote checking
- June 15 – Goal date for announcing election results
More information on this year's elections can be found at the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.
Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.
On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
21:06, 23 uNhlaba 2017 (UTC)
Accessible editing buttons
You can see and use the old and new versions now. Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors.
- Comparison of old and new styles
-
Buttons before the change -
Buttons after the change
However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.
This change will probably reach this wiki on Tuesday, 18 July 2017. Please leave a note at mw:Talk:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons if you need help.Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 10 uNtulikazi 2017 (UTC)
Page Previews (Hovercards) update
Hello,
A quick update on the progress of enabling Page Previews (previously named Hovercards) on this project. Page Previews provide a preview of any linked article, giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving the current page. As mentioned in December we're preparing to remove the feature from Beta and make it the default behavior for logged-out users. We have recently made a large update to the code which fixes most outstanding bugs.
Due to some issues with our instrumentation, we delayed our deployment by a few months. We are finally ready to deploy the feature. Page Previews will be off by default and available in the user preferences page for logged-in users the week of July 24th. The feature will be on by default for current beta users and logged-out users. If you would like to preview the feature, you can enable it as a beta feature. For more information see Page Previews. Questions can be left on the talk page in your preferred language.
Thank you again.
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 20 uNtulikazi 2017 (UTC)
RfC regarding "Interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing to decrease impersonation"
There is currently a RfC open on Meta regarding "requiring those involved with paid editing on Wikipedia to link on their user page to all other active accounts through which they advertise paid Wikipedia editing business."
Note this is to apply to Wikipedia and not necessarily other sister projects, this is only to apply to websites where people are specifically advertising that they will edit Wikipedia for pay and not any other personal, professional, or social media accounts a person may have.
Please comment on meta. Thanks. Send on behalf of User:Doc James.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:06, 17 uMandulo 2017 (UTC)
Discussion on synced reading lists
Discussion on synced reading lists
Hello,
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To create Reading Lists, app users will register an account and marked pages will be tied to that account. Reading List account preferences sync between devices. You can read the same pages on different mobile platforms (tablets, phones). This is the first time we are syncing preference data between devices in such a way. We want to hear and address concerns about privacy and data security. We also want to explain why the current watchlist system is not being adapted for this purpose.
Background
In 2016 the Android team replaced the simple Saved Pages feature with Reading Lists. Reading Lists allow users to bookmark pages into folders and for reading offline. The intent of this feature was to allow "syncing" of these lists for users with many devices. Due to overlap with the Gather feature and related community concerns, this part was put on hold.
The Android team has identified this lack of synching as a major area of complaint from users. They expect lists to sync. The iOS team has held off implementing Reading Lists, as syncing was seen as a "must have" for this feature. A recent technical RfC has allowed these user stories and needs to be unblocked. Initially for Android, then iOS, and with web to potentially follow.
Reading lists are private, stored as part of a user's account, not as a public wiki page. There is no sharing or publishing ability for reading lists. No planned work to make these public. The target audience are people that read Wikipedia and want to bookmark and organize that content in the app. There is a potential for the feature to be available on the web in the future.
Why not watchlists
Watchlists offer similar functionality to Reading Lists. The Reading Infrastructure team evaluated watchlist infrastructure before exploring other options. In general, the needs of watchlists differ from Reading Lists in a few key ways:
- Reading lists focus on Reading articles, not the monitoring of changes.
- Watchlists are focused on monitoring changes of pages/revisions.
- The Watchlist infrastructure is key to our contributor community for monitoring content changes manually and through the use of automated tools (bots). Because of these needs, expanding the scope of Watchlists to reading purposes will only make the project harder to maintain and add more constraints.
- By keeping the projects separate it is easier to scale resources. We can serve these two different audiences and prioritize the work accordingly. Reading Lists are, by their nature, less critical to the health of Wikipedia/MediaWiki.
- Multi-project support. Reading Lists are by design cross-wiki/project. Watchlists are tied to specific wikis. While there have been many discussion for making them cross-wiki, resolution is not in the near term.
More information can be found on MediaWiki.org where feedback and ideas are welcome.
Thank you
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 20 uMandulo 2017 (UTC)
presenting the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory and asking for a volunteer in isiZulu Wikipedia
Hello everyone, My name is Marc Miquel and I am a researcher from Barcelona (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). While I was doing my PhD I studied whether an identity-based motivation could be important for editor participation and I analyzed content representing the editors' cultural context in 40 Wikipedia language editions. Few months later, I propose creating the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory in order to raise awareness on Wikipedia’s current state of cultural diversity, providing datasets, visualizations and statistics, and pointing out solutions to improve intercultural coverage.
I am presenting this project to a grant and I expect that the site becomes a useful tool to help communities create more multicultural encyclopaedias and bridge the content culture gap that exists across language editions (one particular type of systemic bias). For instance, this would help spreading cultural content local to isiZulu Wikipedia into the rest of Wikipedia language editions, and viceversa, make isiZulu Wikipedia much more multicultural. Here is the link of the project proposal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Wikipedia_Cultural_Diversity_Observatory_(WCDO)
I am searching for a volunteer in each language community: I still need one for the isiZulu Wikipedia. If you feel like it, you can contact me at: marcmiquel *at* gmail.com I need a contact in your every community who can (1) check the quality of the cultural context article list I generate to be imported-exported to other language editions, (2) test the interface/data visualizations in their language, and (3) communicate the existence of the tool/site when ready to the language community and especially to those editors involved in projects which could use it or be aligned with it. Communicating it might not be a lot of work, but it will surely have a greater impact if done in native language! :). If you like the project, I'd ask you to endorse it in the page I provided. In any case, I will appreciate any feedback, comments,... Thanks in advance for your time! Best regards, --Marcmiquel (talk) 13:53, 10 uMfumfu 2017 (UTC) Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
- @Marcmiquel: I appreciate your considering the isiZulu Wikipedia (ZU WP) for inclusion in the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory project. Before proceeding, kindly review the present status of ZU WP: of its <1K pages, the great majority are stubs (some with only a single line of content), >10% topics of dubious relevance, and correspondingly few on the many aspects of Zulu culture. There is no Administrator. Members of the Small Wiki Monitoring Team (notably User:DARIO SEVERI who's presently on a month's Wikibreak) provide support in deleting vandalism, etc., but none are speakers of isiZulu - nor am I, contributing as a WikiGnome almost daily since late July. In that time, as a review of Recent Changes will show: two native speakers (User:Fiso.dlamini and User:Njabulo19) have contributed and engage in collaboration with my efforts (e.g. here, here, and here). Disposition:
- I'm willing to be the contact person for liaison purposes.
- I'm bringing this to the attention of the South African chapter, m:Wikimedia ZA, who will have the background and perspective I lack regarding the ZU WP's status and progress.
- Your (1) "cultural context article list" is likely to be useful to a future ZU WP project/user group targeting Missing Articles relevant to Zulu Culture.
- As you require 40 WPs for the WCDO project - if ZU WP is unsuitable now, might it join later if the time frame is revised?
- -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 21:05, 11 uMfumfu 2017 (UTC)
- EDITED TO ADD link: to my message to the Wikimedia South Africa chapter. -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:37, 11 uMfumfu 2017 (UTC)
New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers
New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers
The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website.
Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas from the research done by the New Readers team in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. The teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated by user research and community feedback. The prototype evaluation received positive feedback and results, so development continued.
For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.
The feature is available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 uLwezi 2017 (UTC)
Call for Wikimania 2018 Scholarships
Hi all,
We wanted to inform you that scholarship applications for Wikimania 2018 which is being held in Cape Town, South Africa on July 18–22, 2018 are now being accepted. Applications are open until Monday, 22 January 2018 23:59 UTC.
Applicants will be able to apply for a partial or full scholarship. A full scholarship will cover the cost of an individual's round-trip travel, shared accommodation, and conference registration fees as arranged by the Wikimedia Foundation. A partial scholarship will cover conference registration fees and shared accommodation. Applicants will be rated using a pre-determined selection process and selection criteria established by the Scholarship Committee and the Wikimedia Foundation, who will determine which applications are successful. To learn more about Wikimania 2018 scholarships, please visit: wm2018:Scholarships.
To apply for a scholarship, fill out the multi-language application form on: https://scholarships.wikimedia.org/apply
It is highly recommended that applicants review all the material on the Scholarships page and the associated FAQ before submitting an application. If you have any questions, please contact: wikimania-scholarships at wikimedia.org or leave a message at: wm2018:Talk:Scholarships. Please help us spread the word and translate pages!
Best regards, David Richfield and Martin Rulsch for the Scholarship Committee 19:24, 20 uZibandlela 2017 (UTC)
User group for Military Historians
Greetings,
"Military history" is one of the most important subjects when speak of sum of all human knowledge. To support contributors interested in the area over various language Wikipedias, we intend to form a user group. It also provides a platform to share the best practices between military historians, and various military related projects on Wikipedias. An initial discussion was has been done between the coordinators and members of WikiProject Military History on English Wikipedia. Now this discussion has been taken to Meta-Wiki. Contributors intrested in the area of military history are requested to share their feedback and give suggestions at Talk:Discussion to incubate a user group for Wikipedia Military Historians.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:46, 21 uZibandlela 2017 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2018
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Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?
Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.
If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
- The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
- The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [15]
- Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [16]
- The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be a bit tricky to set up. Your wiki can have this service. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.
Let's work together
- The team will talk about editing tools at an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
- Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
- The
<references />block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [17] - If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
20:56, 2 uMbasa 2018 (UTC)
Time to bring embedded maps (‘mapframe’) to most Wikipedias
Time to bring embedded maps (‘mapframe’) to most Wikipedias
Mapframe is a feature that enables users to easily display interactive maps right on wiki pages. Currently, most Wikipedias don’t have mapframe. But fifteen Wikipedias, along with all the other Wikimedia projects, are using mapframe today to display maps on thousands of pages.
A little background: over the last few months, the Foundation’s Collaboration team has been working to improve the stability and user experience of the maps service. In addition, a question about long-term support for the maps service was recently settled, and a small team has been assigned for routine maintenance. Given these developments, bringing the benefits of mapframe to Wikipedias that lack the feature seems both safe and supportable. Nine Wikipedias that use a stricter version of Flagged Revisions will not get mapframe in this release.
Maps are a valuable form of visual data that can improve readers’ understanding across a wide range of topics. If you know of any reasons why mapframe shouldn’t be implemented on your Wikipedia, let us know on the project talk page. Unless we hear from you, we plan to release mapframe to most Wikipedias in May, 2018. So, if you foresee an issue, please let us hear from you. Otherwise, happy mapping!
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 24 uNdasa 2018 (UTC)
AdvancedSearch
Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:53, 7 uNhlaba 2018 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2018)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to research and tools as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:
- Rock's Backpages – Music articles and interviews from the 1950s onwards - 50 accounts
- Invaluable – Database of more than 50 million auctions and over 500,000 artists - 15 accounts
- Termsoup – Translation tool
Update on page issues on mobile web
Update on page issues on mobile web
Hi everyone. The Readers web team has recently begun working on exposing issue templates on the mobile website. Currently, details about issues with page content are generally hidden on the mobile website. This leaves readers unaware of the reliability of the pages they are reading. The goal of this project is to improve awareness of particular issues within an article on the mobile web. We will do this by changing the visual styling of page issues.
So far, we have drafted a proposal on the design and implementation of the project. We were also able to run user testing on the proposed designs. The tests so far have positive results. Here is a quick summary of what we learned:
- The new treatment increases awareness of page issues among participants. This is true particularly when they are in a more evaluative/critical mode.
- Page issues make sense to readers and they understand how they work
- Readers care about page issues and consider them important
- Readers had overwhelmingly positive sentiments towards Wikipedia associated with learning about page issues
Our next step would be to start implementing these changes. We wanted to reach out to you for any concerns, thoughts, and suggestions you might have before beginning development. Please visit the project page where we have more information and mockups of how this may look. Please leave feedback on the talk page.
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 12 uNhlangulana 2018 (UTC)
Global preferences are available
Global preferences are now available, you can set them by visiting your new global preferences page. Visit mediawiki.org for information on how to use them and leave feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)
19:20, 10 uNtulikazi 2018 (UTC)
SandboxLink
Hi,
I received a request by email to enable SandboxLink on this wiki.
It's a very simple thing to do, but there is a semi-official policy that configuration changes of this kind are done after the editors of the wiki in question express their public support for it. So, for the sake of proper process I'd like to ask the editors on this wiki to reply here:
Do you want SandboxLink to be enabled here? This means that a link to the "Sandbox" will appear at the top of the page, between "Talk" and "Preferences" ("Ingxoxo yami" and "Amakhethelo ami"). Such a link already appears in the English Wikipedia, and you can see it there.
If you agree, please reply here and say that you support it.
If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
Thank you! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:18, 27 uNtulikazi 2018 (UTC)
- Shalom, Amir, and thank you for assisting this process. I'm a yearlong regular contributor to the ZU WP (though not a speaker of isiZulu), and I support the request for enabling SandboxLink. It's likely that new editors will emerge since Wikimania 2018 just wrapped up, and they'll be eager to create draft versions of new pages. -- 18:47, 28 uNtulikazi 2018 (UTC)
This would be a great feature, using Sandbox certainly makes things easier! Mtonihouse 08:07, 01 August 2018 (UTC)
New user group for editing sitewide CSS & JS
(Please help translate to your language)
Hi all!
To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.)
A new user group, interface-admin, has been created.
Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).
You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.
Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).
Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 18:30, 30 uNtulikazi 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)
Enabling a helpful feature for Template editors
Hello.
The team working on TemplateStyles at the Wikimedia Foundation would like to enable TemplateStyles on this wiki.
TemplateStyles is a feature to allow non-administrators to write and manage CSS styles for templates. It allows contributors who edit templates to separate content and presentation. A good web practice that makes it easier to manage the layout of templates. If you don't edit templates, this will not have any impact on your contributions.
TemplateStyles is useful for a few reasons.
- It makes it possible for templates to work better on mobile.
- It cuts out confusion on where to apply CSS rules.
- Editing CSS is currently limited to administrators, which is a major barrier to participation.
- All stylesheets must be loaded on all pages (whether they actually use the page or not), which wastes bandwidth and makes debugging style rules more difficult.
You can learn more about TemplateStyles on MediaWiki.org. Technical documentation is also available.
This is an optional feature and no one must use it, but template contributors are encouraged to do so! Please discuss and let us know if there are any concerns. If there are no concerns we will proceed to deploy the feature on the 9th of August.
Thank you.
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 6 uNcwaba 2018 (UTC)
Editing of sitewide CSS/JS is only possible for interface administrators from now
(Please help translate to your language)
Hi all,
as announced previously, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed: only members of the interface-admin (Interface administrators) group, and a few highly privileged global groups such as stewards, can edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage). This is done to improve the security of readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. More information is available at Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS. If you encounter any unexpected problems, please contact me or file a bug.
Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 12:40, 27 uNcwaba 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)
Read-only mode for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October
Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 12 September 2018. On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop when we switch. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
- You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday, 12 September and Wednesday, 10 October. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 13 September and Thursday 11 October).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the weeks of 10 September 2018 and 8 October 2018. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Johan(WMF) (talk)
13:33, 6 uMandulo 2018 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2018
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Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.
You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.
Remember to publish your changes when you're done.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [18]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
14:17, 2 uLwezi 2018 (UTC)
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Hello,
In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.
What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.
For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.
If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 13 uLwezi 2018 (UTC)
Advanced Search
Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:03, 26 uLwezi 2018 (UTC)
Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019
Please help translate to your language
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Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.
Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.
The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.
The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.
Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.
To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs
There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!
Kind regards,
Imagine... the sum of all love!
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:13, 27 uZibandlela 2018 (UTC)