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Traffic report: Hopper to the top An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
News and notes: Nine new arbitrators announced A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.
Technology report: Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new drop-down menu that contains all character formatting: bold, italics, subscript, superscript, strikethrough, computer code, underline, and the ability to remove all formatting from text.
For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read the user guide.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
Auto-numbered external links like [1] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally. To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name. For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor. This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.
Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
Fun Fact: The Mayan calendar (Q2012) did not correctly predict the end of the world nor the end of Q items as Wikidata (Q2013) went on to host Wikipedia links this year.
Development
Happy Holidays from the dev team! Have a great time and continue being awesome ;-)
Improved and added a lot of tests
Worked on displaying qualifiers in the non-JavaScript UI
No longer displaying the table of contents from item/property pages if there would be less than 3 entries in it
Caching and database improvements
Worked on preventing the import of wikitext into the main and property namespace
More work on quantities UI
Open Tasks for You
Update, expand and translate d:Wikidata:Introduction to make it easier for newcomers to understand what Wikidata is all about.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [2]
There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [3][4]
You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [5]
If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code. [6]
You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [7][8]
Add the file and translate namespaces to the list of namespaces excluded from Wikibase Client's linking functionality and enable the "Add links" dialog for pages without language links on commons. (#58903)
Recent research: Cross-language editors, election predictions, vandalism experiments Analyzing edits to the-then 46 largest Wikipedias between July 9 and August 8, 2013, a study identified a set of about 8,000 contributors with a global user account who have edited more than one of these language versions in that time frame.
Featured content: Drunken birds and treasonous kings Five articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia.
WikiProject report: More Great WikiProject Logos We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.
News and notes: IEG round 2 funding rewards diverse ambitions A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.
Technology report: OAuth: future of user designed tools Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
You can now see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [22][23]
With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [24]
CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their Beta Features options.
Fun Fact: According to Wikidata, this is the year of 2004 (Q2014)
DevelopmentWord from John
To give this section some life, since the development team had their holidays last week meaning nothing really got done (let them have one week off at least), I'll say a few words. 2014 is a new year and thus a new start, over the last year Wikidata celebrated its first birthday which brought reflection over what Wikidata had accomplish. Therefore I want to use the start of 2014 to reflect what Wikidata can do. For my personal over view see this page. For the summary, while it is meant to be a weekly simple update, I feel this can be used a lot more effective to put across not only what happened on Wikidata but things about Wikidata on other wikis, I am hoping to start a section over this within the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions for the summary, feel free to drop me a message at meta or Wikidata. Thanks.
Traffic report: A year stuck in traffic In fact, the majority are relatively evenly split between three themes: people of interest, television, and websites.
Arbitration report: Examining the Committee's year In 2013, the arbitration committee closed 10 cases, 9 amendment requests, and 26 clarification requests.
In the media: Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer? On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.
Book review: Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia Dariusz Jemielniak's book is the newest about Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014.
News and notes: The year in review This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.
WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Fifth Edition The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.
Featured content: 2013—the trends Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).
Technology report: Looking back on 2013 2013 saw a lot of changes to MediaWiki software and Wikimedia infrastructure.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (calendar).
On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.
Future software changes
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6. [34]
Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their Beta Features options. [35]
Plural form rules for some languages will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed. [36][37][38]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages. [39][40]
You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups. [43][44]
E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their From: line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing the MediaWiki:Emailsender page. [45][46]
Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.
Traffic report: Tragedy and television The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.
News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing" On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
Op-ed: WikiCup competition beginning a new year At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.
Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can read a recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (calendar).
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue. [49]
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13. [50]
You can now add and remove __NOTOC__, __FORCETOC__ and __NOEDITSECTION__ in the page metadata menu. [51][52][53]
Problems
For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error. [54][55]
For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14. [56]
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your Beta Features options.
To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter).
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
Traffic report: The Hours are Ours We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
As of January 16, you can make and use guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [62][63]
You can give comments on an idea to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [64]
You can watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla. [65]
VisualEditor news
In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
You can now edit <gallery /> tags with a very basic tool. [66]
You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu. [67]
When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page. [68]
When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*). [69][70]
The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers. [71]
There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results. [73]
There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem. [74]
On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours. [75]
Future software changes
Orange bar with new messages
If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again. [76][77]
You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. [78]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page. [79]
Bugzilla:57754 Die if wbeditentity tries to clear from an old revision id
Bugzilla:55795 Add API option to show snaks in a list rather than grouped by property
Refactor of ChangeOp remove functionality
Continued to move parsing and validating of values from the frontend into the backend to improve performance and make the non-JS user interface more useful
Finished the Wikidata build script (We use it to pull together code from various git repositories into a single one for deployment)
News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.
Special report: The few who write Wikipedia On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
Traffic report: No show for the Globes While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See video. [82]
The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please file a bug or tell User:Bawolff. [83]
The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow. [84]
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
Problems
On January 21, Universal Language Selector was turned off on all Wikimedia sites because it makes pages load slowly. If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your keyboard, you need to add it as an option in your preferences. It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved. [85]
For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
You can give comments about the new version of "Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [86]
Traffic report: Six strikes out There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links. [91]
There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [92]
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [93]
All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [94]
VisualEditor news
You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [95]
Future software changes
Edits and files hidden with the Oversight tool will be moved to the RevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis. [96][97][98]
For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (:ko:v, :v:ko, etc.). [99]
It will soon be possible to use the GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on Translatewiki.net. [100]
Traffic report: Six strikes out There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
