User talk:Mistbreeze/Archive 3
| This is an archive of past discussions with User:Mistbreeze. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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The Signpost: 10 July 2013
- Op-ed: It's time to stop pretending the English-language Wikinews is a viable project
This is Wikinews' fundamental problem: it can neither do a good job providing a summary of world news, nor does it have any special focus that it does well. It's a collection of random articles, with only the occasional, passing resemblance to important current events.
- WikiProject report: Not Jimbo: WikiProject Wales
This week, we traveled to Cymru with the folks at WikiProject Wales.
- Traffic report: Inflated view counts here, there, and everywhere
The most-viewed articles on the English Wikipedia last week include...
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation Board appoints world expert in women's issues, global south
In apparent acknowledgment of the urgency of two issues facing the Wikimedia movement—the need to engage both women and the global south—the WMF Board has appointed Ana Toni as one of its four expert members. Toni will bring rare expertise to the movement, and the Signpost understands that her skills in advocacy and her key roles in international NGOs are likely to be a natural match with the WMF as the hub of disseminating free knowledge around the world.
- Dispatches: Infoboxes: time for a fresh look?
The fundamental idea of an infobox is clear: keep it simple and limited to essentials. At some point, however, these basic principles seem to have been abandoned, in favour of an approach akin to "the more the merrier".
- Featured content: The week of the birds
Five articles, six lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Discussion report: Featured article process governance, signature templates, and more
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
Read. Signalizing (talk) 15:15, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
VE newsletter
Hey Signalizing! Another set of patches :). Today we have:
- Required template parameters are now automatically added to new templates (50747)
- Templates with piped links now display correctly when you alter them (50801)
- If your edit token expires, you're now informed of it (50424).
- You still won't be able to save - that's due to be fixed on Monday :).
More on Monday, I suspect. Hope you have a good weekend :). I should also have some news about the IP launch pretty soon. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
(if you're seeing this and aren't the newsletter recipient - please do sign up here)
Read. Signalizing (talk) 15:15, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Hans Klok article
How dare you accuse me of vandalism simply because I'm a new editor and edited an article (Hans Klok) that has, in its current form, already been criticized by others as being "like a commercial" in its current form! What I did was take this article, criticized by others, and move it back to an earlier version that reads more like all of the other biographical articles on Wikipedia. My edits are not vandalism, but legitimate edits to an article already considered by other editors to be of poor quality, which I believe improve its quality and bring it more into line with other similar articles. I do not appreciate your unfounded accusations, and will resist all of your misguided efforts to maintain this article in its current poor-quality state, so please do not simply revert my edits again - If you have some constructive edits to make to the article, I will heartily welcome them, as this article badly needs improving, but don't simply revert for the sake of reverting! (And please check out the article's talk page, where I have asked for others to comment on which version they think is best - maybe you should make your views known there?) 2.31.5.175 (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Replied at User talk:2.31.5.175. Signalizing (talk) 15:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Edit warring
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Hi Signalizing Thank you for your constructive criticism. I did not mean to blank the page on Michael Tonkin. I am new to Wikipedia. I was trying to say he was a major league player now. He made his debut.
I just like to update baseball data. Not vandalize. Where can I learn simply?
Thank you
CRussG (talk) 03:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Replied at User talk:CRussG. Signalizing (talk) 13:50, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf10) was added to test wikis on July 11. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 15, and on all Wikipedias on July 18. [1]
- The Disambiguator extension was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis on July 9 (bug #50174). To use it, add the
__DISAMBIG__code to disambiguation templates (see example). [2] - The Universal Language Selector was added to all remaining wikis on July 9, finishing the process of replacing the Narayam and WebFonts extensions. [3]
- The CommonsDelinker bot is now on-line and operating again, after a password problem was fixed (bug #51016).
- VisualEditor news:
- According to the schedule, VisualEditor will be available to all users on the English Wikipedia on July 15.
- Users should add TemplateData to templates to prepare for VisualEditor. A tutorial is available.
- Parameters marked as "required" in TemplateData are now auto-added when you add a template (bug #50747).
- Warnings are now displayed in VisualEditor when users edit pages that are protected or have edit notices (bug #50415).
- Many other bugs have been fixed in VisualEditor during the past two weeks.
- The Wikimedia technical report for June has been published, with a summary that can be translated.
Future software changes
- A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos. [4]
- The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed. [5]
- Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them. [6] [7]
- Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later. [8]
- Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22. [9]
- A new image gallery design has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
- An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [10]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Will read later... Signalizing (talk) 19:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Read. Signalizing (talk) 00:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Indic)
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Not done. Signalizing (talk) 00:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
VE newsletter
Hey Signalizing; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:
- If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
- If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
- If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
- sub tags are no longer removed ((49873)
- If you type at the end of links, they now extend
- Templates now only take a single click to insert
- Clear annotations clears links (50461)
- The link inspector stays open when you click to another item (50895)
- Typing after multi-byte characters no longer creats pawn icons (51140)
- Resizing thumbnails that have a default size set now works (50645)
- References made by tag:ref now display properly (bugzilla:50978)
- The VE is integrated with the spam blacklist (50826)
- Feedbacl link goes to the right language (bugzilla:47730)
There are a lot more improvements coming, but that's it for Monday and Tuesday. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese)
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The Signpost: 17 July 2013
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Square Enix
This week, we explored the fantasy worlds of video game developer Square Enix by interviewing WikiProject Square Enix. The project began in September 2006 as a spin-off of WikiProject Final Fantasy, but today covers that, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and a variety of other game series, with exceptions explained in the interview below. The project is home to 32 pieces of Featured material and 104 Good and A-class articles.
- Traffic report: Most-viewed articles of the week
The most-viewed articles on the English Wikipedia last week include...
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation's new plans announced
Last week the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual plan for July 2013 to June 2014. It provides a surprisingly frank view—of past achievements and failures, and future goals and risks—that could be afforded only by a non-profit that is confident and beholden to no commercial or political interests.
- Featured content: Documents and sports
Four articles, five lists, and sixteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case opens; July 22 deadline for checkuser and oversight applications
The case Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds was opened. Voting on the Tea Party movement case continued, after a failed attempt at moderated discussion. A group tasked with deciding the content of the lead section of the Jerusalem article has reported back to the committee. Applications for checkuser and oversight permissions close on 22 July.
Please comment on Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC 2013
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Read, but
Won't participate. Signalizing (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 18. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 25. [11]
- A new version of the Flow Prototype can be tested on Wikimedia Labs. [12]
- VisualEditor news:
- The schedule to add VisualEditor to non-English Wikipedias has been changed: the new editor will be available for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias on July 24, and for all users on those wikis on July 29. [13]
- A warning is now displayed if an edit made with VisualEditor matches an edit filter (bug #50472).
- SpamBlacklist messages are also supported (bug #50826).
- Users can now edit
<nowiki>...</nowiki>blocks (bug #47678). - When a user types text at the end of a link, the link now expands to that text. [14]
- Freely-licensed fonts for the Cree, Inuktitut and Urdu languages were added to Universal Language Selector, fixing bug #42421 and bug #46693.
- A Wikidata search plugin for the Firefox web browser was released by Jeroen De Dauw and can be downloaded from the Mozilla add-ons website.
Future software changes
- The change of the Wikimedia image scaling system from ImageMagick to VipsScaler (announced in the previous issue) has been postponed until bug #51370 is fixed. [15]
- Administrators will no longer see an unblock link for autoblocked IP addresses on the contributions page (bug #46457). [16]
- A request for comments on site-wide CSS was started on MediaWiki.org. [17]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:02, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
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Read, but
Won't participate. Signalizing (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Congreve - a match as well as a rocket
82.32.148.172 (talk) 03:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
I rarely add anything to wiki.
The reason I specifically a note about Congreve being a name for a match to a page about Congreve rockets was because I was in a genealogical discussion where an ancestor was described as a "Congreve maker". The term Congreve seemed to lead only to Congreve rockets leading to the ancestor being given an occupation in making weapons. Fortunately someone happened to know this archaic term, and thus the error was corrected
In that context I thought a one liner noting that a Congreve was a term for a match as well as rocket was worthwhile and justified, to hopefully avoid others misunderstanding the context of references to congreves.
The thread (which started out as Borgure maker due to mistranscription) is below:
http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.occupations.occupations/1967/mb.ashx
Regards
Neil Axe
Acknowledged... I will write a reply later in the day, after I'm finished at work. Signalizing (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Template talk:PD-signature
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VE newsletter
Hey Signalizing. The newest updates:
- Links now don't extend over space/punctuation/workbreaks when you type (bugzilla:51463)
- Users with the "minoredit" preference set get working functionality (bugzilla:51515)
- You can tab to buttons in dialogs, including the save dialog (bugzilla:50047)
- We now show the <newarticletext> (or <newarticletextanon>) message as an edit notice (bugzilla:51459)
- You can scroll dialog panels like in transclusions' templates' parameter listings (bugzilla:51739)
- Templates that only create meta-data and no display content at all (like Template:Use dmy dates) now can't be deleted accidentally or deliberately, but still don't show up (bugzilla:51322)
- FlaggedRevisions integration (bugzilla:49699)
- Edit summary will get the section title pre-added if you launched from a section edit link (bugzilla:50872)
Along with some miscellaneous language support fixes. That's all for today; as always, let us know if you spot more bugs. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 July 2013
- In the media: Wikipedia flamewars
The Washington Post reported Tuesday on the most controversial articles on various language Wikipedias as determined by a cross-continental research group.
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Religion
This week, the Signpost delved into the vast and complex areas of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that make up religion. WikiProject Religion has been around since 2005 and has a complex scope, in that it only takes articles that deal with religion in a non-sectarian sense, along with any articles that do not have a dedicated daughter project.
- Discussion report: Partially disambiguated page names, page protection policy, and more
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
- News and notes: Wikivoyage turns ten, but where to now?; Wikipedia Zero expands into India
Contributors to Wikivoyage, the sister project adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, are celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. ... The Wikimedia Foundation has announced via press release that it has partnered with Aircel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia.
- Traffic report: Gleeless
Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.
- Featured content: Engineering and the arts
Twelve articles, seven lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Arbitration report: Infoboxes case opens
The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Closing discussions
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes; not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 25. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 29, and on all Wikipedias on August 1. [18]
- Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24. [19]
- Pywikipediabot moved their code from SVN to git; bot owners need to update their tools. [20]
- The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon. [21]
- It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon. [22]
- The software that resizes large PNG images on all wikis was changed on July 25. Resizing of PNG files bigger than 35 megapixels should be faster and more reliable now. [23]
- Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector. [24], [25], [26]
- Special:MIMESearch, which gives a list of files by type, will be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis with MediaWiki version 1.22/wmf12 (bug #13438). [27]
- A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
- VisualEditor news:
- On July 24, VisualEditor was added for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias; it will be added for all users on those wikis on July 29. [28]
- A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24. [29]
- Many bugs were fixed in right-to-left languages. [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]
- It is possible again to scroll down in the template editing window (bug #51739).
- VisualEditor now works with the FlaggedRevisions extension. (bug #49699)
- If the user opens VisualEditor using a section edit link, the title of the section is added to the edit summary (bug #50872).
- Invisible templates now can't be deleted by accident or on purpose (bug #51322).
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:42, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Default State RFC
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The Signpost: 18 September 2013
- News and notes: Third time's the charm: the FDC's newest round of funding requests
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the volunteer-led body that evaluates chapter and (for the first time) thematic organizational annual plan grant requests to the Wikimedia Foundation, is preparing for its third round of public proceedings to deliberate on the distribution of several million US dollars of Wikimedia movement funds.
- WikiProject report: 18,464 Good Articles on the wall
This week, the Signpost headed to WikiProject Good Articles. As of publishing time, out of the 4,331,477 articles on Wikipedia, only 18,464 are rated as "good" (about 1 in 235).
- Featured content: Hurricane Diane and Van Gogh
Thirteen articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status last week on the English Wikipedia.
- Technology report: What can Wikidata do for Wikipedia?
In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia.
- Traffic report: Twerking, tragedy and TV
The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.
Wikidata weekly summary #76

- Events/Press/Blogs
- upcoming: UK Wikidata Training
- Magnus blogged about the Wikidata Query tool
- Gerard did an interview with Emw about the heady stuff of Wikidata
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- 30 percent of all items are categorized in 6 large groups (main type (GND) (P107)). Most are items about geographic features (1.7 million items), some of these already have coordinates (0.5 million). Items about persons are fairly frequent too (1.3 million), many already with gender (0.9 million), a few with DOB (0.05 million) or DOD (0.04 million). Other groups include: creative works (305,000), terms, organizations, and events.
- The first 2 Wikidata oversighters are elected, Ajraddatz and Rschen7754. Please contact the email at the above page, and do not post requests onwiki. Two more candidates are running: Stryn and Sven Manguard.
- Neat new gadget to semi-automatically import labels, aliases and descriptions based on Wikipedia article introductions
- New search backend on testwikidata needs testing
- Commons is still scheduled to get interwiki links via Wikidata on Monday and can also be tested on test.wikidata.org
- Did you know?
- Development
- Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for a software developer with a focus on frontend development with Java Script to work on Wikidata among other things. Apply!
- Paper Cut: Display the ID of an item or property page next to the label (bugzilla:53462)
- Paper Cut: Fix value field not loading for some properties (bugzilla:53157)
- Paper Cut: Work on supporting non-earth globes in the UI (bugzilla:54097)
- Worked on quantity data type implementation in backend and frontend
- Work on a build and release tool for the Wikidata software
- More work on sorting of references and qualifiers
- Work on database schema modification functionality to be used by the query store
- Prepare deployment for Wikimedia Commons (including improving script for populating sites table, adding support for Wikimedia Commons)
- Work on making entity data available in the Mobile Wikibase skin
- new Cirrus Search (Elastic Search) backend enabled on test.wikidata.org
- Finished up cucumber tests for sitelinks
- Hotfixes for coordinates autosummaries
- Worked on simplifying process of defining wb.fetchedEntities
- Finished working on wbeditentity
- Worked on MySQL and SQLite table definition readers
- Open Tasks for You
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Respond to a "Request for Comment".
- Hack on one of these.
Please comment on User talk:L'Origine du monde
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Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
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Please comment on Template talk:MOS-TW
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The Signpost: 25 September 2013
- Op-ed: Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia
Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed.
- Traffic report: Look on Walter's works
The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.
- In the media: Fox News: Wikipedia abandons efforts to purge porn from online encyclopedia
Fox News writer Perry Chiaramonte published an article detailing Wikipedia's alleged abandonment of its fight to remove pornography.
- News and notes: Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor
On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach to the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes ... Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.
- WikiProject report: Babel Series: GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!
This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football).
- Featured content: Wikipedia takes the stage
Twelve articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
- Recent research: Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins; Wiki, or 'pedia?
A conference paper makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status."
Wikidata weekly summary #77

- Events/Press/Blogs
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Denny's last day on the development team was today. He has a few closing remarks in this blog post.
- Wikimedia Commons now gets language links via Wikidata
- Stryn's request for oversight flag
- Individual Engagement Grants Proposal: Understanding Wikidata
- Terminator now also has most linked-to items with no label in language X
- Draft for Wikidata support of Wikiquote
- Open position for a JavaScript developer to work on Wikidata - please spread the word
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: KSH code, FishBase species identifier, work location, Commons gallery, heritagefoundation.ca ID, PMCID, city served, type of electrification, color space, activating neurotransmitter, anatomical location, postsynaptic connection, presynaptic connection, possible treatments, possible examinations, magnetic ordering, main topic of creative work, Spanish subject headings for public libraries, SOC Occupation Code, NOC Occupation Code, GRAU index
- Development
- Said Good Bye to Denny - *sob*
- Improved layout for commons sitelink table
- More work on sorting
- Worked on statements UI tests
- Fixed failing QUnit tests
- Deployed new code and updated sites for Commons deployment
- Fixed a number of small bugs
- Code review for Google Summer of Code student projects
- Work to automate creating deployment branches and builds of Wikibase with its dependencies
- Open Tasks for You
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Build a bot for one of the "bot requests".
- Respond to a "Request for Comment".
- Hack on one of these.
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries
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Wikimedia NYC Meetup! Saturday October 5
| Please join the Wikimedia NYC Meetup on October 5, 2013! Everyone gather at Jefferson Market Library to further Wikipedia's local outreach for education, museums, libraries and planning WikiConference USA. --Pharos (talk) 21:44, 1 October 2013 (UTC) |
Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
- Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
- There is now an Android application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [36]
VisualEditor news
- VisualEditor now has a new toolbar with drop-down menus for advanced tools. [37]
- Many bugs were fixed, some related to copy-and-paste. [38]
- You can now move references, list of references, templates and other elements with the mouse ("drag-and-drop"). [39]
- You are invited to comment on designs for the interface to add references in VisualEditor.
Future
- Developers are looking for ideas of small technical projects that new developers could work on. Please add your ideas. [40]
- Developers are looking for wikis who would accept to try using secure links (HTTPS) for all users. [41]
- You can join an IRC discussion about "Beta features", a tool to try new features, on October 3. [42]
- You can join an IRC discussion about Flow, the new wiki discussion tool, on October 17.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:59, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #78

- Discussions
- 3 Individual Engagement Grants related to Wikidata are looking for feedback and endorsements: Understanding Wikidata, Wikidata Toolkit and Wikintelligence
- Request for Comments on linking Wikimedia Commons
- Events/Press/Blogs
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Tempo-spatial display (events in Wikidata on a map)
- Canned queries (for queries that help find missing information)
- Wikidata Browse (pretty slideshow of random Wikidata items, their pictures, labels in various languages and statements)
- Wikidata generic tree (displays a tree of data in Wikidata)
- We've crossed ID 15000000: d:Q15000000 (Category:Sternorsidis)
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: Code of nomenclature, programmer, theme music, inspired by, GHS precautionary statements
- Development
- Finished initial version of the build tool (= tool that creates one tarball/git repository from all our extensions and their dependencies for deployment)
- Continued work on numbers data type
- Continued work on Formatters (for autosummaries, diffs, etc)
- Fixed RDF serialization issue
- Merged merge API module
- Finished up database schema updating code
- Added validation for precision in globe coordinate value
- Finished and released Diff extension version 0.9
- Polishing work on Wikibase QueryEngine
- Some cleanup of EntityView
- Open Tasks for You
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Hack on one of these.
- Note from Lydia about the future of the weekly summaries
- I've been compiling the weekly summaries for Wikidata for the past 1.5 years. It is time to give this into the hands of a few capable community members now that I have moved on to product management. Starting next week I will not be compiling the weekly summaries anymore. I am happy to help anyone who wants to take over get up to speed of course. Please contact me if you'd like to take this over.
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons
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The Signpost: 02 October 2013
- Op-ed: Commons medical diagnostic images under threat from unresolved ownership
Medical images have transformed many aspects of modern medicine. Over the past two decades the increasing sophistication of MRI, CT-scanning, and X-ray techniques has made these technologies the cornerstone of diagnosing a range of conditions, replacing what used to be largely guesswork by doctors. They can be the difference between life and death for a patient, and their importance is underlined by the tens of billions of dollars spent on them annually just in North America. For Wikimedia Foundation projects, advanced images are now a powerful tool for describing and explaining, and educating our worldwide readership of medical articles.
- Discussion report: References to individuals and groups, merging wikiprojects, portals on the Main page, and more
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
- News and notes: WMF signals new grantmaking priorities
In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding.
- Featured content: Bobby, Ben, Roger and a fantasia
Six articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Arbitration report: Infoboxes: After the war
Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.
- WikiProject report: U2 Too
This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at WikiProject U2. Started in June 2007, the project has grown in spurts, resulting in a collection of 8 Featured Articles and 24 Good Articles. The project maintains a to do list, portal, and a list of references.
Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:06, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 09 October 2013
- Traffic report: Shutdown shenanigans
If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.
- WikiProject report: Australian Roads
This week, we moved to the esoteric world of Australian roads.
- Featured content: Under the sea
Seven articles, six lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- News and notes: Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
An investigation by the English Wikipedia community into suspicious edits and sockpuppet activity has led to astonishing revelations that Wiki-PR, a multi-million-dollar US-based company, has created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts.
- In the media: College credit for editing Wikipedia
The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine.
- Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute and Ebionites 3 cases continue; third arbitrator resigns
A proposed decision has been posted in the Manning naming dispute. The workshop phase of the Ebionites 3 case closes 13 October. Arbitrator NuclearWarfare has resigned.
Wikidata weekly summary #79

- Discussions
- Events/Press/Blogs
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: Wikivoyage banner, RSL identifier, ISIN
- Development
- Added index removal and addition support to Wikibase Database
- Improved initialization code of Wikibase Query
- Added database setup code to Wikibase Query
- Added schema updating support to Wikibase QueryEngine
- Added SimpleQuery special page to Wikibase Query. This page allows users to find entities by a property value pair
- Formatters for snaks/values are now used throughtout Wikibase
- Some progress on DecimalValues and QuantitiyValues
- Started work to include the data type of snaks in the JSON dumps
- Worked on cleaning up inconsistent handling of Claim GUIDs vs hashes.
- Implemented more convenient user interface for Special:SimpleQuery.
- MergeAPI module and claim editing from wbeditentity to be deployed
- Further work on a build step to make deployment easier
- Open Tasks for You
- Update, expand and translate Wikidata:Introduction to make it easier for newcomers to understand what Wikidata is all about.
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Build a bot for one of the "bot requests".
- Respond to a "Request for Comment".
- Hack on one of these.
VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".
The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).
There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).
Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #80

- Discussions
- Events/Press/Blogs
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- This week the 80 millionth edit was made to Wikidata
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: street address, e-mail, guest of honor, MusicBrainz label ID, burial plot reference, Austrian municipality key, streaming media URL, MycoBank taxon name identifier, IPNI taxon name identifier, Tropicos taxon name identifier, MSW species identifier, section, verse, or paragraph, ISBN-10, IBNR identifier, full text available at, ISCO code, NSZL identifier, BNE identifier, NLI (Israel) identifier
- Newest task forces: International relations task force
- Development
- Open Tasks for You
- Update, expand and translate Wikidata:Introduction to make it easier for newcomers to understand what Wikidata is all about.
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Build a bot for one of the "bot requests".
- Respond to a "Request for Comment".
- Hack on one of these.
The Signpost: 16 October 2013
- News and notes: Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
Media coverage on Wiki-PR, the multi-million-dollar US-based company that has broken several policies and guidelines on the English Wikipedia in its quest to create and maintain thousands of articles for paying clients, continued this week with a feature story by Martin Robbins in the British edition of Vice magazine.
- Traffic report: Peaceful potpourri
A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.
- WikiProject report: Heraldry and Vexillology
This week, we studied coats of arms and flags with the folks at WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Started in September 2006, the project has grown to include 20 Featured Articles and nearly 50 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, and a variety of images and templates.
- Featured content: That's a lot of pictures
Six articles, two lists, and thirty-three pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
- Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case closes
The Manning naming dispute case has closed, with a strong and unanimous statement by the Committee against disparaging references to transgendered persons. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.
- Discussion report: Ada Lovelace Day, paid advocacy on Wikipedia, sidebar update, and more
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
- You can now choose which language to show for SVG files that contain several languages, using the "lang" option, like
[[File:Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg|lang=de]]for the German layer of File:Gerrit patchset 25838 test.svg. - Developers are looking for wiki communities to try the new search system. [43]
VisualEditor news
- You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [44]
- You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content. [45]
- When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [46] [47]
Future
- The new notifications system ("Echo") will be added to almost all wikis that don't already have it on October 22. It will notify you of changes and events that affect you. [48]
- MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 was added to test wikis on October 17. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 21 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 24 (calendar).
- The interface to reset your password will soon be changed. [49]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:14, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #81

- Discussions
- Events/Press/Blogs
- Gerard wrote about Wikipedia's place as a source within Wikidata
- Semantic MediaWiki Conference (SMWCon) will be held next week, Monday to Wednesday, in Berlin.
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Echo has been enabled on Wikidata
- Magnus created some queries for Wikidata
- Wikidata is 1 year on October 29th! Stay tuned for some 'surprises'
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: Philippine Standard Geographic Code, IOC country code, MusicBrainz area ID, BAG-code for Dutch villages, code for weekend and holiday homes (Sweden), Pastoratkod (Sweden), code for parishes in the Church of Sweden, Civil parish code/ATA-code in Sweden, Minor urban area code in Sweden, Urban area code in Sweden, tributary, described in URL, catalogue, category combines topics, neurological function
- Development
- Lazowik worked on API support for editing badges
- Bene added a keyboard shortcut to get from an article to the item it is connected to on Wikidata (bugzilla:46538)
- Bene worked on a table of content for items (bugzilla:44876)
- Bene improved Special:ItemDisambiguation (bugzilla:55466)
- Bene added ftp as an allowed protocol for the URL datatype (bugzilla:54103)
- Linked sitelinks in diffs (bugzilla:53471)
- Cleaned up and added tests in client that are necessary for improving the recent changes integration and for supporting enhanced changes
- Worked on the user interface for simple queries
- Worked on the user interface for the numbers datatype
- Continued work on ordering statement groups in the user interface
- Open Tasks for You
- Update, expand and translate d:Wikidata:Introduction to make it easier for newcomers to understand what Wikidata is all about.
- Improve some road items in your country by adding some statements to them.
- Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
- Build a bot for one of the "bot requests".
- Hack on one of these.
