User talk:Billinghurst/2017

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2017, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion.

Mein Kampf

Please unprotect Mein Kampf. There is a public domain English translation of Author:James Vincent Murphy. See this. United Kingdom is now in 2017. [1] --Abelium (talk) 00:13, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Undeletion requests should be made to WS:PD. Unprotection requests belong at WS:AN — billinghurst sDrewth 01:09, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Moves

Thanks I have all of them in my browser and am doing them now. Feel free to do them if you want but I'm mostly done anyway. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:42, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Soft redirect for titles referring to persons

Hi, Billinghurst. "Edmund Clarence Stedman" is a title with several versions. Considering the reference (link) to the poem in this letter (see the word "sonnet"), it would seem that a direct link to a versions page (rather than searching for a reference at an author page which—considering the length of some author pages—would be daunting) would be more logical in such cases. See also: What links here. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It is an interesting conundrum as we have many works about authors, looking for consistency, and in how many places should we be linking them. And then it needs to be considered with all other works that we have about people. I have started a conversation earlier today at WS:S#Disambiguation: merge these? and its subpart as I am stepping through maintenance, your input into that would be great. Re links, they will be fixed, and we can tighten the redirect to a specific anchor on the author page. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:48, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll think through this. Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:09, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource:Works

Me again. For changes/updates to titles, do we manually change Wikisource:Works pages? I am not familiar with their nature. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:08, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: At this point of time, yes, manual it is. You could try to speaking to Sanbeg to see what he did way back in 2013 and doing it again, though his activity is not high anymore. I also note that we only have A-C, so maybe there is no point and it was a big task. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikisource:Works

Page views doesn't show much viewing of the A-C, though shows light viewing of the 2016 page. So maybe it is a rethink that is required before putting lots of effort into manual pages.

I would love to move to an automated system, however, our information push to wikidata is poor for works/main namespace, though good for authors. <shrug /> — billinghurst sDrewth 06:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Wikidata is also something I do not yet fully understand the workings of. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Wikisource:Wikidata It is basically a store of the metadata of our pages, and the same for other sites. So there is one page at wikidata that collects information on Coates. At this stage it is provides us interwiki links and image data, so if someone uploads an image about Coates then it will display here. due to how we set things up. If we move a (linked) page here, it updates the link so any site using wikidata to maintain links would get the updated url automatically, etc. Ultimately much of the metadata can be stored there in the one place, and we leverage that source. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:47, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-02

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

Recent changes

• You can now use datasets on Commons. You can see an example that is using this source. [2]
• There is a new opt-in beta feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. You can try it out.
• When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
• MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [4]
• The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [5]

Problems

• Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [6]

Changes this week

• There is no new version of MediaWiki this week because of the Wikimedia Developer Summit.

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

19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Validation assistance

Note: I've also posted this request to Akme, who is usually fast, but has not been sround much the past few days.

Would you be able and willing to assist me by validating a work? I've just finished proofreading, and wouldn't normally be so rushed to have it validated, but I started this work in order to feature it this February.

The work is The Clandestine Marriage, and co-author David Garrick (the Laurence Olivier of his age) has his 300th birthday this February. It's also a comedy play on a topic suitable for Valentine's, so it seemed a good choice when I started it, but serious health issues have delayed my proofreading, and now only three weeks remain to have the work validated, nominated, and approved in order to feature it as originally planned.

Would you be able to assist? --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:32, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I am not the greatest fan of the long s character, and unfortunately at this moment I don't have the necessary patience to wade my way through such texts. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:34, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

works in portal namespace

Why move The West Australian times to portal namespace? It's a work, isn't it? If works now belong in portal namespace not main namespace, then I've missed a memo.... Hesperian 02:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

It is moribund, there is no project, nor evidence of any transcriptions, no scans, and that makes the alternatives to move it, or submit it for deletion. From the portal namespace we can do some more freestyle work to point to components. It also frees up the main namespace to only present the works that we (will) have, not put forward works we do not. It also allows for for presentation of parts of newspapers as we have done for many others. Any transcription, if they ever come, will clearly be in the main namespace, not the Portal: ns. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Import from Commons

Can you please import from Commons this file? It was deleted as per this discussion. Hrishikes (talk) 02:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Hrishikes: Done please mark it with {{do not move to commons}} and with an expiry =; and any other maintenance it requires. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Done, and thanks. By the way, about this author. The birth year is not available in the usual authority control sites (Viaf, Lccn etc). So if you have got it from some special source, I think it should be mentioned in the author talk page. Regards, Hrishikes (talk) 04:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

My point was not about Bradley Birt. And there is no element of challenge. :-) Hrishikes (talk) 05:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh in the hidden text. Overt is so much better, or new headings or subheadings. FWIW I referenced it at Wikidata. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Index:FirstFolioInquiry.djvu

Another file deleted at Commons, the parallel discussions being:-

• Wikisource:Copyright_discussions#Index:FirstFolioInquiry.djvu and
• Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:FirstFolioInquiry.djvu

The issue here was an incompatible license on what appeared to be a 2005 work.

I've marked the pages here for speedy, if they should be blanked as per other suspected copyvios, let me know. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks you ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:18, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-03

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

Recent changes

• You can now upload WebP files to Commons. [7]

Problems

• video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [8]

Changes this week

• There is a new magic word called {{PAGELANGUAGE}}. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [9]
• When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [10]
• You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [11]
• You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. [12]
• The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. [13]
• Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [14]
• When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [15]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-01

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Our goal to add filters to the Recent Changes page is going well. We will contact soon some communities - the ones where ORES is available as a Beta feature - to plan a possible trial.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Edit Review Improvements' Glossary is ready for translation.

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

• Revert notifications were not received on Wikidata. This is now fixed. [16]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

• We plan to change Flow's URLs to make them more human readable. Your feedback is welcome.
• Communities which have allowed Flow trials with manual enabling (Hebrew Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia) will be asked if they want to switch to Beta feature activation. [17]
• A small maintenance on Flow database will happen during week 4. No impact is expected. [18]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:16, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-04

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

Recent changes

• You can see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [19]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).

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

20:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-05

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

Recent changes

• The OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [20]

Changes this week

• ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [21]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [22][23]
• The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.

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

18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Populate

Are we deprecating the {{populate}} template? [24] --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:36, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Nope. There was a work, and the purpose is to get rid of a listless section. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of Index

Hello, Billinghurst. I have uploaded a File to Commons that has duplicate pages and missing pages. I created the Index here, but wish to delete it (as well as the File at Commons). No proofreading has been done. Is all that is required to delete an un-proofread Index is to perform the single deletion of the Index itself? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:24, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: presumably you are going to find alternate versions, if that is the case and the same book data applies, you can just upload a new file version at Commons, and then purge and regenerate the local index. If that is not the case and they do need deleting, you can just label at commons with {{delete}} and here {{sdelete}}. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I requested deletion of the bad file at Commons, and uploaded a new file. Can I not delete the Index here myself without requesting a speedy delete? If not, where do I place a {{sdelete}} tag on an Index in edit mode? Thanks again, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:50, 1 February 2017 (UTC) P.S. The ping did not work for some reason. Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:51, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to update you, EncycloPetey is guiding me through this matter. Thanks for your help! Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:03, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Messed up!

Hello again. I've just realised that someone else has already started on another edition of the book I've been working on!

I started Index:Round the Yule Log.djvu (1881, 1st ed.), and transcluded the story I was working on at Peter Gynt, but then found this later edition republished under another title Index:Christmas Fireside Stories.djvu (1923) which is typeset exactly page-for-page, line-for-line (the only difference is that it actually corrects the one typo I noticed, which makes me want to use the later edition for the mainspace if at all possible).

Would you recommend I move the pages to the new title (only 5 pages: Page:Round the Yule Log.djvu/169 to 174), and delete the new index I made, or should I copy and paste to the new one, or start again on the 1923 edition from scratch? I'd be happy to double check my proofreading against the other edition to make sure it matches word for word.

Sorry for the hassle! --Yodin^T 13:26, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

@Yodin: Umm .... We work on authoritative editions, and each edition is pertinent and usually different. So we wouldn't normally delete an index of a work. So you can choose whichever you wish to work upon, and the criteria is yours, though there can be guiding factors like English vs American spelling, art work, first edition, etc., It is neither right nor wrong for either edition, and we have scope for managing multiple editions of works, there are multiple examples of this. Each edition gets its own wikidata entry, so that isn't a hurdle. So whichever is your preference is my response. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Smith v. United States (508 U.S. 223)

Hi Billinghurst. I made the changes you suggested. Feel free to edit further. Thanks for the feedback. - Wesboson (talk) 00:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your guidance. --V.narsikar (talk) 14:05, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I am bothering you. Please see this page now, which is finalised after proofreading. Should I proceed this way? After your nodding, I will continue.--V.narsikar (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@V.narsikar: Please excuse the delay in replying. Generally in our community we would utilise Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help, it allows for a broader commentary, and usually something more time-responsive. Personally, I look to simplify formatting, rather than more complex. I have had a hack at the page, though it is only in the context of the page. Sometimes one can only make a good assessment when you finally transclude the work. With that in mind I have found that you can add some complexity to the formatting then if you need to, and somewhat easily. Undoing a lot of complex formatting is a PITA. Another pointer to remember is that while we are starting on a page, we transclude to a work/chapter/... so we need to have that a way of thinking as we attack a page. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-06

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

Problems

• The block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. [25]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. [26]
• There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. [27]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. [28][29]

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

19:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Need some help with sidenotes

I'm having an issue with "left sidenotes" being displayed on the right hand side of the page in the Main namespace. Can you help me out? See these two texts: The Consumer Protection (Amendment) Act, 1991 and The Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 1991. Ciridae (talk) 12:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Ugh. It is way to late for me to start fiddling with whatever f-up has gone on with the styles. @Samwilson: how is your css? GOIII has left us with a spaghetti pile of configurations that I find hard to unpick. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:14, 13 February 2017 (UTC)~

I've managed it somehow. I'm using the "outside L" template for Left sidenotes and it works fine in Mainspace (and Pagespace). Ciridae (talk) 13:22, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ciridae: Okay, I knew that it would, but making that change would have needed explaining. The "outside" templates have all their css code internal, whereas "sidenotes" have had their css moved into our global styles (well that and other places), and as such have morphed into a more complex beast which does my head in! <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 21:56, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-07

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

Recent changes

• EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. [30]

Problems

• The Firefox add-on Firefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. [31]
• Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. [32]

Changes this week

• The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. [33]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring. [34]
• The Developer Wishlist is a list where developers prioritize tools they need. The voting closes at 14 February 23:59 (UTC). This process is only for developers.

Review

• You can read the 2016 product summary from the Wikimedia Foundation Product group to see what they did with things they said they would work on in the annual plan.

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

18:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-02

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Flow satisfaction survey’s results are available. The survey provides useful data on what users like and don't like about Flow. This information will be helpful in discussions recently begun as part of the editing team's Annual Plan process. As the editing team investigates its priorities for next fiscal year (which begins in July), many ideas for improvements have been suggested, including projects to research the future of wiki discussions and to fix Flow's shortcomings.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• Huggle users are asked to share their feedback concerning proposed improvements for Huggle.

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

• Flow notifications category in the Notification Preferences page will be changed from (in English) "Flow" to "Flow Discussion". Messages that have to be updated on TranslateWiki are echo-category-title-flow-discussion and echo-pref-tooltip-flow-discussion. [35]
• Mentions were not recognized when more than one section is added during the same edit or when an new section was added and a change (new message or deletion) was done in another section. This is now solved. [36]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

• Rich text mode is now the default in Flow replies. Some inconsistencies used to exist. Now the preference between visual mode and wikitext mode is updated when a content change is made in the selected editor, literally when it is typed in, not when it is saved or when the editor is switched. [37]
• We plan to change Flow's URLs to make them more human readable. Your feedback is still welcome, the conversation will be closed on February 28th.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism question

Re: recent activity at Author:Abraham Lincoln: The anon user used two related ip addresses; if you were to block the user (I chose not to in this case), would you block both addresses, or is there another way of handling it? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:22, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Wonderful and the wonder of IP addresses. In this situation you can block them either individually or with a range statement 64.254.67.30/31 (two adjacent numbers from an even number upwards). If they come back where the variation is in the last set of numbers then you would block the range 64.254.67.0/24. There is logic and information about IP addresses and ranges (with which I will not bore you unless you ask), so feel able to block a xxx.xxx.xxx.0/24 for a short period, its likely impact on other users will be slim and will manage someone hopping around the range. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:39, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-08

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

Recent changes

• The edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide. [38]

Changes this week

• Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards. [39]
• There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options: type and peers. The type option solves this problem. You can use peers to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [40]
• OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [41]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-09

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

Problems

• On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [42]

Changes this week

• You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [43]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [44]
• The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [45][46]

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

19:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I blew it :(

Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help#Aligned_table_can.27t_be_spanned_over_pages... for the background.

I managed to ask about something which I am sure based on the response WAS previously raised (and most likely by myself.) The logic of the solution is obvious, and I am considering adding a note to the relevant templates documentation, unless you can think of a better location, for helpful approaches like that suggested.

I think that as I've been working rather hard on one specific item recently, I've blown a fuse, or forgotten certain techniques I used elsewhere. This is not a good sign given that I have something of maverick reputation on English Wikisource.

I'm considering scaling back on my involvement, if I am not able to meet the exacting standards, I'd like to think people here would support. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 01:41, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I personally find your solutions bigger than the problem. The amount of effort to work how a template like that would work is harder than doing tables, and if one gets something wrong it is just next to impossible to identify where is the problem. You get into trouble as your proofreading can lack thoroughness and go off on tangents to create things like these templates which no one understands or thinks that they should have to fix. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Are there any performance comparisons for {{aligned table}} vs multiple {{ts}} calls? The performance concerns were the only reason I was using aligned table recently anyway. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:34, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I also appreciate English Wikisource doesn't have the same resources as million dollar paid projects do, but it would sometimes be nice to see progress towards long-term rectification of some of the shortcomings as opposed to the "bigger problem in the solution" approaches you've specfically called me out on. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:34, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

User:ShakespeareFan00/Sandbox/tables2, In the process of trying to simplify something down properly, I'm using the DOCUMENTED approach here Help:Page_breaks#Tables_across_page_breaks if this is incorrect then the documentation needs someone else to update it, as at this point my wikistress is very high, and I don't want to break even more pages, unintentionallyShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:07, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

To look at the differences in how the system manages the transclusions, you will need to look at a produced page through the show code of your browser, there is a html remarked summary towards the bottom of each page.

I didn't call you out on anything. You asked and I commented on what I saw, and how I don't wish to spend my time here sorting through your issues (philosophical difference on approach). BTDT, it caused a ruckus, I now leave it alone. I do a whole lot of onwiki work across numerous wikis, I don't particularly have the time and patience to resolve issues where I do not agree with the approach. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:26, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I got a little heated. If you didn't call me out on anything then I am (as is typical) over-reacting. I will note that in simplifying down one of the templates I found a LOT of logic errors, which meant it would NEVER have worked quite the way it was intended to, I also found quite a few issues with the pages I thought I'd proofread (sigh). I a agree with you about not having the time to "defuse exploding users", sometimes the best approach is stand well back and wait for the fireworks to stop :( ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Archaic spelling in titles...

In giving something a second look I thought it might be worth noting some things in regard to older titles. - Page:Public General Statutes 1896.djvu/34

However {{SIC}} to me would seem to be more for printer errors, which isn't what's happening here. There did not seem to be an {{archaic}} to mark titles/spellings which whilst correct are not necessarily modern usage.

Would it be reasonable to consider forking {{SIC}} so that an additional note can be added in the popup?

The thought was to write some like {{oldspell}} or something. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:38, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

These are matters that you should submit to the community rather than posed here. — billinghurst sDrewth 19:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource:Requested texts and SpBot

Looks like SpBot's inaugural run on Wikisource:Requested texts didn't go so well. Are you familiar enough with the template that summons it to debug it? Prosody (talk) 04:06, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Prosody. I have reverted that and will look at it prior to SpBot's next run. It will probably be my error. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Done btw and now working — billinghurst sDrewth 22:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Public Domain

Hi, how can I find works in the public domain to add to Wikisource? I herd you liek mudkips (talk) 21:58, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@I herd you liek mudkips: Numbers of sites have works that are able to be imported, you can have a look from Wikisource:Sources, all depends on your interests. You will still need to work out whether they are definitely public domain and able to be uploaded. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:05, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Just checked, and Project Gutenburg was listed. Can I then upload books from there? I herd you liek mudkips (talk) 22:08, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@I herd you liek mudkips: (hesitantly) Yes. While books can be transferred from Project Gutenberg it is not our preference, as they cannot be further validated, and often they don't have edition information +++. As part of our aim is to broaden the range of works available most of us prefer to import a scanned version and work from there from first principles. If you are looking for something upon which to work which are already here, then look at Category:Index Not-Proofread for 6000+ from which to choose. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. And if you have time, check out my post at Author_talk:Jules_Verne, as I found another source for a work I would like to have on Wikisource. I herd you liek mudkips (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-10

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

Recent changes

• You can now search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [47]
• When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [48]

Problems

• Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [49]
• Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [50]

Changes this week

• The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [51]
• The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [52]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Clarification

• The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.

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

23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

An email sent

An email sent to your email ID through talk page.

Warm Regards

Mahitgar (talk) 11:55, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I have forwarded your email to the provided email address with an explanation of the easier choices and will see what their advice will be. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:30, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mahitgar: FYI I have yet to receive a response. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:54, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I missed your response. Temporarilly problem got sorted out after few phone calls students got used to the situation and managed it; When their next new batch will come up then a support may be required. Besides I reuest is forwarded to User:Titodutta who is working with CIS and is an admin on en:wp too for support in this regards.

Thanks for your prompt support. and warm regards

Mahitgar (talk) 14:06, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Unarmoured ships

Please see the Thomas Brassey page, which shows that Unarmoured Ships was his work, not that of his son, Thomas Allnutt Brassey, who was 12 at the time of publication. (Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey married Anna Allnutt, and her maiden name appeared as their son's middle name). - The Bounder (talk) 11:25, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. If you make changes like that you can see the importance of utilising the edit summary.

True, but it's a salutory lesson in not just knee-jerk reverting too. - The Bounder (talk) 11:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Considerations on the state of Ireland

I have validated this work, except that the overhanging footnote on pp. 18–19 is not fully transcluding. I'm not sure how to fix this; perhaps you could have a second look? Thanks, BethNaught (talk) 19:57, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@BethNaught: Thanks, Done forced it with html.

(long saga) For what it is worth there is a phabricator ticket in place as mw:Extension:Cite doesn't play well in the transclusions with <includeonly> and some other wiki-created tags, and when we wanted rows from a table even more problematic. I had prodded them again and had used it as an example, so I had left it unresolved. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Good job there, thanks. I've now finished the validation. BethNaught (talk) 22:01, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-11

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

Changes this week

• You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [53][54]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [55]
• CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [56][57]

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

15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

WD error?

Something happened at WD (I think) to cause WD-linked image error messages on author pages (see Author:Florence Earle Coates). I only contacted you because you were last(?) to edit this page, which may be involved? 12:33, 16 March 2017 (UTC)Londonjackbooks (talk)

@Londonjackbooks: Thanks. The pages that I checked when it I updated the modules didn't have the right combinations of pulled image with trying to edit. Weirdly when I reverted it didn't return to normal. I have had to change the way that the author template works, so I am not sure what is happening there. (I dare not play more at this hour, and in fact would have preferred to not play now! <deskthunk>) @Samwilson: I had to change from getValue to getRawValue. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 13:50, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Friendly advice

Recently when looking over some of your proofreads, e.g. at POTM, I noticed a consistent error you make which I wish to politely point out: namely, that you often render "per cent." as "per cent,". This has happened in multiple works so I wanted to make you aware of it for the future. Thanks, BethNaught (talk) 12:03, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

On reconsideration I realise that might have sounded rather passive-aggressive. Sorry if so, it wasn't meant in that way. BethNaught (talk) 14:52, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-03

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

We have focused all our efforts on the New filters for edit review. You will discover these filters on your wiki soon (see below).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The documentation concerning the new filters for recent changes has been written and marked for translation.

Future changes

• We will release the ⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽ beta option on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias March 28. This beta option adds powerful filtering and other tools as well as an improved filtering interface to the Recent Changes page (and Recent Changes Linked). To try out these new tools on these two wikis, go to the Beta tab of the Preferences page (after the 28th) and select ⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽.
• In the weeks following the initial release to Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias, the New Filters for Edit Review beta will go out to the following list of Wikipedias in waves (schedule to be done):
  • Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech Wikipedias and Wikidata. [58]
  • English Wikipedia. [59]
  • All other wikis. [60]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• <math> <hiero> <score> <syntax> <source> <ref> shortcuts are now working on Flow visual editing mode. Type a shortcut in the visual editing mode will open the control panel for the chosen option. [61]
  • Concerning <ref>, footnotes will be automatically included at the end of the message, unless if they are displayed elsewhere in the message by the appropriate template.
• Flow has been removed from Metawiki. [62]

Future changes

• The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It will be a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [63]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:02, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-12

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

Recent changes

• The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [64]
• DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage. [65]
• You can see monthly page views when you click on Page information in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [66]
• The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [67]
• The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [68]

Problems

• On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [69]

Changes this week

• When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [70]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

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

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

22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Author:Gaius Valerius Flaccus

Hello Billinghurst, how're you? Two questions: 1) in Author:Gaius Valerius Flaccus, what category should I use for his "deathyear" ("c. 90 AD" doesn't exist)? 2) Is it okay to create pages for authors like that, i.e. of which Wikisource currently has no texts, except for "Works about" them (e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica articles)? Thanks ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:25, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

If they are authors, and they have works present or referenced at enWS, or one of the sisters, then by all means create an author page and add it to wikidata. Re death year, there is no requirement to do anything now, when you link it to WD it will import the death date from there. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:29, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I see. I've never edited Wikidata, but will look into it. Thanks again. ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

In regard to some recent issues...

A quick question, Do you have the ability to transwiki content to Commons?

Someone mentioned in the relevant Commons discussion, that some form of disclaimer template would be appropriate ( on a work that the rest of the world considers public domain..) about the quasi/non copyright distribution restriction in the UK.

There was already a template here {{PD-nonUK}} that I've boldly reworded earlier ( You are free to revert this editing!).

Having expressed my concerns at Commons and locally, I am not going to comment further, other than to possibly mention the local template in the relevant Commons discussion. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:41, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Pages can be transwiki'd; files cannot, which is why we use the tools. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:19, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I said I would not comment further. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:57, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13

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

Recent changes

• When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [71]

Problems

• Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [72][73]

Changes this week

• New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).

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

14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

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

Recent changes

• The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [74]
• The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [75]
• English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [76]

Problems

• Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [77]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [78]

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

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource:WikiProject Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition

FYI I have created a project page "Wikisource:WikiProject Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition", it is a copy with modification of WS:EB1911. -- PBS (talk) 09:39, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

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

Recent changes

• Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [79]

Changes this week

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [80]
• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [81]
• The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [82]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings

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

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
• RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

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

18:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Alumni Oxonienses (1715-1886)

Now 5% done, and I want to continue to open up the work. Today the typo "Oxoniensis" leapt out at me. It's on the Index pages of the four volumes, and in Page: space; so also in the transclusions. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:44, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Yep. Old mistakes, fortunately doesn't impose. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Offputting, in its way. A heads up: volume 3, I'm finding, has many more OCR mistake that switch numerals, than the first two. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:57, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the reminder

I'm learning so much, yet forgetting to sign. I need to set up automatic signing. Thank you for the welcome!A ri gi bod (talk) 13:00, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Request for help re Matthew Henry

Hello, I wonder whether you or anyone else known to you can comment on my request for help at Scriptorium#An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) (Matthew Henry)--PeterR2 (talk) 08:50, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Answered at WS:S — billinghurst sDrewth 09:32, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The 'Table of Contents' field in Index pages and main namespace transclusion

In the past I've used the Table of Contents field in indices for the front matter and tables of contents which are meant to appear in the 'main' page of a work in the main namespace. Using the <pages /> tag with no prev or next parameters pulls this in automatically, and in the proofreading progress ribbon it displays the progress for the entire index rather than just the pages transcluded. You can look at A Leaf in the Storm; A Dog of Flanders and Other Stories for an example. A while ago for The Book of Tea you changed the main namespace page to a more typical transclusion right after you added {{index transcluded}} to the Index page's ToC field, I suppose you had in mind that template's categorization and whatever else it does would be improperly transcluded into main. And just recently you zeroed out the one in Index:Atharva-Veda samhita volume 2.djvu, which is/was transcluded at Atharva-Veda Samhita/Volume 2 (there's an argument to be made about this work's organization, I'll freely admit, both volumes have somewhat interesting front matter that I wanted to capture, but the 'main' main namespace page is already unruly).

Do you think this practice is fundamentally a bad idea or does it just happen to conflict with processes that you're applying but could potentially be made to be compatible? I do really like being able to see the progress of the complete work on the title page, but it's something I can be persuaded on. Happy Easter! Prosody (talk) 06:07, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Numbers of stories to answer. 1) {{Page}} is throwing errors due to it breaking html protocols, and that flows through to other pages, like the index page, which is what I was addressing, it wasn't evident that it went from the Index to that page; and 2) For "Book of Tea" there was two issues, the red links which some people have been following to create pages, plus the issue of the transcluding tracking template. It is all a kludge where ThomasV was looking to allow a built ToC in that section, which we have now used for notes, or used doubling up with the use of {{Page}} — which was meant to be retired. Probably something that we need the community to review. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:56, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

The main issue sounds decisive, given that IIRC <pages /> doesn't work in the index ToC, thus the use of that template. I'll replace the pages I've made with this technique. Thanks. Prosody (talk) 23:06, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Requesting go-ahead

Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2017-01#The meaning of hosting

"... the discussion is that we can encourage people to add works to the page, it did not mean that we have to have the works onsite, though that is obviously our preference. To note that author pages here can link to full text works at any sites/domains, with Wikilivres being our prime example, though we have {{ext scan link}} for Google Books and IA as appropriate. ..."

Do you really mean this? If so, I can think of two more sites, although they are in Canada, as is Wikilivres. One is w:Project Gutenberg Canada and the other is the archive site for the efforts of w:Distributed Proofreaders Canada volunteers. I'm asking before adding links as I was almost blocked at Wikipedia for adding external links which were all deleted. Humbug26 (talk) 19:02, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

That was the community discussion and how we link to Wikilivres. Naturally, it should be used wisely and in sync with community expectations of a library. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

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

Recent changes

• You can add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [83]
• You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [84]
• The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [85]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

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

Future changes

• stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
• Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [86]
• From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [87][88]

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

19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-04

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The fourth fiscal quarter began the first of this month, and Collaboration Team has begun work on our new quarterly goals. In the coming months, we'll be working to release the New Filters for Edit Review beta on all wikis and then to improve the beta as much as possible based on user feedback. On that score, we're planning a round of user interviews on the new tools in May to get detailed information about usability and usefulness. If you've tried the new features and have thoughts, please share them with us in any language.

Our other focus right now is to look at what changes will be needed to spread the new filtering interface to other review pages, especially Watchlist. We're also exploring how to incorporate the tools we didn't include in the new interface in this round, like the Tag Filters, time-frame selector and Namespace filter.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• New Filters for Edit review are now available on Polish, Portuguese, Persian, Russian and Turkish Wikipedias as a Beta feature. French Wikipedia and Mediawikiwiki have the filters as a Beta feature too, but without the quality and intent filters. [89]
• Special:RecentChangesLinked now displays a message when no results are found for a given combination of filters. [90]

Problems

• Polish Wikipedia is experiencing an issue with predictions (quality and intent filters using ORES). The different predictions are in conflict. An edit can be considered as "good" and "bad" at the same time, and the filter levels are somewhat redundant. We have formulated a plan to address this and are working on a fix, which is deployed progressively on Polish Wikipedia. [91]
• The issue on Polish Wikipedia is shared by a few other wikis: Dutch, Czech and Hebrew, and Wikidata. The deployment for those wikis has been postponed to Tuesday, May 9. Wikis without this predictions problem have been deployed or will be deployed with no change on the schedule. [92]
• Interestingly, the "problem" with those wikis is that they perform better than we anticipated. Once the fix is in place, the tools will work with particular simplicity on these wikis.

Future changes

• English Wikipedia and all wikis without ORES prediction services will get the New Filters for Edit review on Monday, April 24. [93]
• All remaining wikis will get the New Filters for Edit review on Tuesday, May 9. [94]
• Wikidata edits will be added as a type of change on New Filters for Edit review. [95]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

• Notifications badges were overlapping other tabs on Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox 3.6, using MonoBook skin. This is now fixed. [96]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

• Flow is now available as a Beta feature on French Wikiversity. [97]
• All Flow documentation is now available on one page gathering all information, to help users to search for an information.
• Flow's AbuseFilter integration now allows blocking a particular user from participating on a talk page, or any topic within it. [98]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:04, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

File:An American Girl in India.djvu-7.png

This is not suitable for Commons. Hesperian's bot added it, from a local file: File:An American Girl in India.djvu, which is not suitable for Commons for copyright issues. Hrishikes (talk) 15:48, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

It is the publishers mark, not the work, it will be suitable for Commons. @Ineuw:— billinghurst sDrewth 15:50, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Done, and categorized in commons:Category:Logos of publishing houses. — Ineuw talk 19:34, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

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

Recent changes

• New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [99]
• When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [100]

Problems

• Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [101]

Changes this week

• The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [102]
• Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [103]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

one of these categories breaks my watchlist

• Category:Speedy deletion requests

problematic — billinghurst sDrewth 13:04, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Report of Action, USS Chester, Vera Cruz April 21-22, 1914

Hopefully, you will find everything in order.

The photographs were taken by Dr. J. Michael Miller (USMC, History Division, Marine Corps University) at The Library of Congress. He and I had met in Veracruz in 2014, at a history symposium presided by the Mexican Navy (SEMAR). This "Report of Action" is a most valuable piece of documentation for the US Occupation of Veracruz in 1914. Please see the extensive work that I have contributed to the article in Spanish https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocupaci%C3%B3n_estadounidense_de_Veracruz_de_1914

Thanks for your help. --Wkboonec (talk) 16:26, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

• Just to remind you:

You may want to remove or change the "no-source" message for this document. It was casually found by Dr. Miller, as he explained to me, at the end of a file pertaining to the logbooks of USS Chester, at The Library of Congress.

Email interchange with Dr Miller

• This email interchange between Dr Miller and I, on his finding, may help you identify the source document.

2015-06-25 21:24 GMT-05:00 Mike Miller <letsctide@msn.com>: William, I thought you would like this one, I don't think anyone has seen it before. I will try to get NARA to include this in the scans you want, so you will have a perfect image. This really is an account that historians dream of. I am so happy that Mexican people can read this and understand the battle so much better. I will work this too, and see what clues we have.

Ah, the coffee with taste better in the morning with this important discovery, and another Nats win! I am off to North Carolina tomorrow to help my son and his wife with their new home! A happy weekend!

Best to you William, let us continue the saga! Mike

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:58:35 -0500 Subject: USS Chester Logbook -- with "Report of Action" by her captain William A. Moffett, inserted at the end (of April 22nd?). From: wkboonec@gmail.com To: letsctide@msn.com CC: cboonec@yahoo.com

Mike, I was away from my home and the Internet all afternoon. I just got back to find this great surprise waiting for me in my inbox. Extraordinary !

This "Report of Action" is probably the best account on the attack to the Naval Academy that we will ever get. Sweetman wrote a similar account in "The Landing at Veracruz: 1914", from a different point of view, and not as detailed. See attachments, in particular, the sources cited for Chapter TEN.

I will be going over this "Report", again and again, in the next few days. Then, I think I will be transcribing it (in English) and doing the translation to Spanish. It ought to be much appreciated by Mexican historians.

The "Report" mentions a chart, presumably showing the exact position of buildings, monuments, and ships. It would be great if you could also find that chart, hidden in the logbook.

The "Report" mentions the "Monument of Hidalgo" - perhaps this is an error: there is no such monument that I know of; my guess is that it meant the "Monument of Benito Juárez". See "Plano Francés" in attachment.

You say something about "deleted marks" in the standard logbook entries. I had not noticed them.

By the way, I have found the "Auto correct" feature of Microsoft Office Picture Manager to be quite useful, in making images much clearer. I am sending back the same six images, as they appear after the "Aurto correct". You will appreciate the difference.

Thanks for this extraordinary finding.

P.S. Another suprise: The Nats won 7-0, completing another series sweep!

2015-06-25 15:00 GMT-05:00 Mike Miller <letsctide@msn.com>: William, Yankees Astros will be good game, both strong contenders! Hope the Nats sweep Braves today, no more chop in Nationals Park.

Much flurry of activity about the Archives and the Logs, I will stand by to do what ever you need done. It may take awhile, but I hope they make the good copies.

Anyway, I found this last week, and it explains why the USS Chester's Log had deleted marks, and found this inserted in the back of the log, where no one could see it. Have you seen this anywhere? I wanted to work this a little more before i sent it, but thought this might answers some of the questions you have....

Enjoy the baseball! Mike

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 11:16:21 -0500 Subject: Re: Possible way to minimize on your "double, double toil and trouble" From: wkboonec@gmail.com To: letsctide@msn.com

Yes, Mike; it will be nice if and when the logbook of the USS Prairie reappears.

I am also awaiting for the logbook of the Spanish "Carlos V".

End of email transcription

Thanks for your consideration and understanding. Cordially --Wkboonec (talk) 17:32, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-18

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

Recent changes

• The content translation tool works again. It was turned off because of a database problem. [104]
• Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to add mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ) block for your scripts also, or add mediawiki.util dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [105][106]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [107]
• The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. [108]

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

19:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Category:Contributors to American Medical Biographies erroneous entries

Quick note. First, thanks for creating this. However, I noticed that some people who are not contributors ended up in the pile. ie. Author:Henry Ford Askew. Thanks, Haz _talk 13:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19

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

Problems

• Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [109]
• There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [110]

Changes this week

• When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [111]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [112][113]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [114][115]

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

02:24, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Dostoyevsky and other things

Hi Billinghurst and Beleg Tâl, I notice that the text I uploaded, Dostoyevsky - Letters and Reminiscences, has been deleted from Wikisource. Was quite looking forward to working on that next and hadn't appreciated that the translator's date of death would be a hurdle. Makes sense now I come to think of it but would you be able to direct me to the Wikisource policy on this so I can know for future reference? Also, I am going to run some introduction to Wikisource sessions at the university this month and next so am looking to boil down Wikisource guidance into 1-2 page handouts. Thinking of handouts for (1) How to upload from Internet Archive using the IA-upload tool (2) How to upload from pdf/djvu direct (3) How to set up an Index page. (4) How to proofread a page (including the main markup terms in a Wikisource toolbox (using the right tool for the job). If you have any guidance about how to simplify the process for beginners or know if these resources already exist then do let me know. My first session is on Friday 19th May so I'll be working on this all week. Best wishes, Stinglehammer (talk) 13:45, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stinglehammer: here are some resources for you:

• Wikisource:Copyright policy is our policy on copyright. All hosted works must be in the public domain under US copyright law or released under a compatible license. Help:Public domain can help determine whether a work is PD in the USA.
• Help:Beginner's guide to Wikisource is our existing resource for beginners and may help you with your sessions.

Hope that helps. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:58, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stinglehammer: The world's copyright laws is legal crazy paving. So as indicated by BT above we focus on US copyright law for works here; with the reminder that files are preferred to be at Commons, though where a file cannot meet the dual requirements, then they come here. Obviously we have missed the guidance that you have required. I would have thought that we had had it covered with our welcome message, obviously not. Feedback to the community about what you see would be helpful will always be welcomed at WS:S. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:14, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20

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

Recent changes

• You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [116]
• The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. [117]

Problems

• The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [118]

Changes this week

• The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [119]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [120][121]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [122][123]

Older unreported changes

• Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [124][125]

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

21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-05

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• “New Filters for Edit Review” beta released: As of May 9, the New Filters for Edit Review beta has been released to all wikis. The beta lets users review edits on Recent Changes using an easier and more powerful interface and many new tools, including user-defined highlighting and, on some wikis, predictive filters powered by ORES, a machine-learning program. You must opt in to the beta to try it out.
• More features coming soon: The New Filters are still very much in development. In addition to fixing bugs and making adjustments (here’s our current to-do list), we’re actively adding new features, many at users’ request. A few notable additions you can look for this month: A cool tool for saving filter settings; a “Watchlisted pages” filter; a “Flagged Revisions” filter (for some wikis only); a “Last revision” filter.
• Tell us your ideas—but don’t wait: The team is focused right now in making changes to the New Filters beta. But in a few months, we’ll be moving on to other projects. So now is the time to give the new tools a try and then tell us what you think. What works well? What could make things better for you?
• In the medium-term: By the end of summer, we plan to complete a suite of improvements that will, among other things: incorporate all the remaining Recent Changes tools into the new filtering interface; create new ways for reviewers to move back and forth through the filter queue; implement a “Reverted” filter; and, finally, bring the New Filters UI and tools to Watchlist.
• Have time for a talk? We're looking for people we can interview about their experiences with the new beta. If you’re a regular user of Recent Changes and have tried the new features—and if you can spare an hour to chat in English with our design researcher—please email dchenwikimedia.org with the subject line “user interview.” Let us know how to get in touch with you and what time zone (city, country...) you’re in.
• Wish you had ORES on your wiki? Some of the more interesting New Filters for Edit Review features are dependent on the machine-learning service ORES, which is available only on a small but growing list of wikis. For ORES to work on a wiki, volunteers from that wiki must train it by scoring some thousands of sample edits. Here’s a link that explains how the process works and how you can get it started on your wiki.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Many Recent Changes pages have on top a list of links. We plan to integrate those links in a collapsible menu. You are invited to comment the 3 proposals we have drafted on Phabricator.
• On wikis where Flagged Revisions are used, an edit highlighted as bad by ORES will not be highlighted anymore when the edit is reviewed by someone. [126]
• You can highlight pages that are in your Watchlist in Recent Changes. 3 different filters are available: in watchlist, not in watchlist, new changes in watchlist. [127]
• Wikidata, Dutch, Czech, Hebrew, Estonian and Finnish Wikipedia now have the new filters available as a Beta feature, and ORES is enabled by default on those wikis. [128]
• All wikis now have the Recent changes Filters as a Beta feature. [129]
• Users are invited to opt in to the Recent changes Filters beta when they visit the Recent Changes page. [130]
• On wikis that have ORES predictions enabled by default, it is now possible to choose how to display the predictions in watchlist and recent changes pages. [131]

Future changes

• It will be possible soon to save and retreive your favorite filters combinations. [132]
• We are working on adding filter groups for last revisions, edits from Wikidata and reverted edits. [133][134][135]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• When an article you have created is linked to a Wikidata item, you can receive a notification. Wikidata and all the Wikivoyages have it since May 9th, other wikis will follow. [136]
• Special:Notifications tabs is now set to "Unread" if there are any unread messages. [137]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can enable Flow as a Beta feature on your talk page on Arabic Wikipedia and Catalan Wikiquote. [138][139]
• When you send more than 50 mentions on one Flow post, you are now warned you have hit the limit. [140]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Unknown birth & death data

Can u have a look at Author:Jessie Duncan Westbrook? Category is showing as living authors. Birth and death years should be unknown, but I don't know how to enter this in Wikidata. Hrishikes (talk) 12:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Even better, I have put in dates of life. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:25, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. But the parameters of unknown are required for Author:Magan Lal. Hrishikes (talk) 02:02, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

If you don't know them then you can add dates flourishing. If you wish to apply a c. period of death, then do it locally. I find it problematic when someone simply doesn't know starts adding their lack of knowledge as data to Wikidata, it is better to leave it empty. — billinghurst sDrewth

Tech News: 2017-21

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
• There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [141]

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

22:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-22

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

Problems

• Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [142]

Meetings

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

Future changes

• You will be able to control who can notify you on the Wikimedia wikis. You will have a user blacklist. When you add a user to the blacklist you will not get a notification when they mention you. You can test this on Beta Wikipedia. You can read more and give feedback on Meta. [143]

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

12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

New Index pages

I just discovered that Special:NewPages does not allow for a search of the Index: or :Index talk: namespaces. Is this easily added? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:28, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: It does, change your dropdown at the top of the page to "all". I am not certain whether that is a stored preference for a later visit, so if it is not, then for that we can submit a phabricator ticket. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:47, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

What I mean is that I cannot search with a restriction, so that I am searching only and specifically for new Index / Index talk pages. I have to search "all" and then scroll through however many recent sets of pages there are listed. Other namespaces can be searched exclusively, but not Index and its associated talk. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:50, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

OK, for some reason the option is showing up now, whereas it wasn't before. Hmmmm. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:51, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

If you are looking for watching Index ns, I suggest starting with this RC filter and adjusting for what you want specifically to see. Once you have it, then creating it as a link. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Edith Harwood

Can you locate any information about the dates of birth/death for Author:Edith Harwood? I've had no luck at all, though I can find references to her, and can find works of hers dated as early as 1901 or as late as 1916. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:48, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I think that it is the (Cammilla) Edith Harwood (1866-1926, Florence) shown at https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Calendar?surname=harwood&yearOfDeath=1926&page=1 Also showing in find-a-grave. So either born overseas and has (next to) no census records, or it is the Edith Mary Harwood born in Northfleet in 1865. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:53, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

It would be a remarkable coincidence if it wasn't the Florentine Edith Harwood, since she seems to have been an expert in Renaissance art of Florence. --EncycloPetey (talk) 08:13, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-23

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

Recent changes

• You can see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [144]
• When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [145]
• You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [146]
• New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [147]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [148]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [149]
• You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [150]
• When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [151]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
• String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [152]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [153][154]
• Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [155]
• The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.

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

19:04, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Long time

Long time. I uploaded the file you recommended: [[156]]. Don't know how to bring it to Wikisource. Any tips? I have not used this site very often and am a beginner. I herd you liek mudkips (talk) 21:54, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

@I herd you liek mudkips: From Help:Proofread there is a page about Index: pages, that is the direction that you want. As a direct helper, from the commons file there is a Wikisource icon and link that you generated with the {{book}} template that will take you directly to the Index: page for you to create. Plus I would recommend turning on the local gadget (via Special:Preferences) Upon creation of an Index: page enables addition of metadata from the file at Commons. More information at Help:Proofread as that makes life easier as you have the book template in use. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:23, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-24

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

Recent changes

• Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [157]
• When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [158]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [159]
• Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [160]
• Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding &fuzzy=1 to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [161][162]

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

15:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

d:Wikidata:Requests for deletions#Dictionary entries

Hello. Could you please take a look? There's some Wikisource thing… Ratte (talk) 12:35, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems ru-WS is creating data items for individual entries in a language dictionary. Whatever the outcome, it looks like we need to be sure the resolution of the issue doesn't take down individual entries for DNB, EB1911, etc. by extension --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Sure, let us see what is the actual concern by asking why why why until we drill down to something that we can specifically address. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:34, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-25

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

Problems

• ORES had some problems on 13 June between 16:00 and 19:40 UTC. It has now been fixed. [163]

Changes this week

• irc.wikimedia.org has to be rebooted. This will probably happen on 21 June. It may be postponed. Some tools use this to get the recent changes feed. They will not work when it is down. [164]
• Special:PageData will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [165]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 June. It will be on all wikis from 22 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. You can now see how the TemplateStyles extension works on Beta Labs.

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

15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-06

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Integrated Filters

• The team is moving full speed ahead on a follow-up project to the New Filters for Edit Review beta dubbed "Integrated Filters." The name refers to the fact that we are integrating the Recent Changes tools that currently remain in the old user interface (like Namespace and Tag filters), along with some tools and capabilities from Watchlist and elsewhere, into the new Recent Changes interface.
• You can get an overview of the Integrated Filters projects, and the general release strategy, on the description page of the project Phabricator board. Among the more interesting new capabilities:
  • Category filters: We'll be adding the ability to filter by category. This is a little tricky, since wiki categories often work in a somewhat counter-intuitive way, with the broadest categories returning the fewest results—because categories like "Science" or "Art" tend to contain not articles but other categories. So we're exploring solutions where a category search will crawl at least a layer or two down the category treat to, hopefully, bring back more useful results. [166]
  • User filters: We're adding the ability to filter by any username, similar to what's available already on the the User Contributions page. [167]
  • Live update: Users will have the ability to look at a more or less continuous flow of changes. This is a much requested feature that we expect will open up new possibilities for Recent Changes, especially for patrollers who want to see vandalism or other changes as they happen. While the updates won't truly be "live," the page updates will be frequent, similar to the way real-time tools (like RTRC or LiveRC) works. [168]

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Have time for a talk?

• We're looking for people we can interview about their experiences with the new beta. If you’re a regular user of Recent Changes and have tried the new features—and if you can spare an hour to chat in English with our design researcher—please email dchenwikimedia.org with the subject line “user interview.” Let us know how to get in touch with you and what time zone (city, country...) you’re in.

Recent changes

• It is now possible to save your favorite filters sets by using bookmarks. [169]
  • This feature documentation can be translated.
• It is possible to filter only the last edits done on a page on the Recent Changes page. [170]
• ORES review tool has been deployed to French Wikipedia. This wiki can use predictions filters. To have the predictions filters on your wiki, you need to work on the labeling campaign for your wiki or request it. [171]
• There were some issues with loading highlighted results when the URL was copied and pasted. This is now fixed. [172]
• A "Watchlisted pages" filter group now lets reviewers use Recent Changes, and all its tools, to patrol changes to pages they've Watchlisted. If you have any feedback about how useful this is nor isn't—especially given that we plan to add the new filtering interface to the Watchlist page — let us know.
• There were issues with the tools still in the older filtering UI — like the Namespace filter and the number of results selectors. These have been fixed. [173]

Future changes

• Integration of new features on recent changes pages is planned. They will include menus to filter users, tagged edits, categories and namespaces. See the "What's new" section above for more information.
• Now that users can save filter settings, and declare any settings they want as the Recent Changes page default, we'll be reviewing the RC page Preferences with an eye to getting rid of as many as we can. For instance, if you want to hide minor edits or Category changes by default, you can now do that right on the RC page, instead of having to go to a separate page to manage defaults.
• On many Recent Changes Pages, the community has defined a large number of links that are displayed directly under the page name (example on Polish Wikipedia). Many of these links are unrelated or only peripherally related to Recent Changes, add informational complexity of the RC page. Research shows that they are used only rarely or never. We want to clarify RecentChanges page functionality, so we plan to put the links into a collapsible panel.
  • Should the panel default to open or closed? That is, should the default state (which users can change with one click) show the links as hidden or displayed? Let us know what you think.
  • The most used links are shortcuts to certain type of edits, (Mobile, Newcomers...). Users can already save their favorite filter settings to the Saved Settings menu, which should make some of the existing links redundant. We plan to provide default bookmarks for the most used filters combinations. [174]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Future changes

• Wikimedia Deutschland have scheduled the notifications of Wikibase notifications to Wikimedia projects: all the Wikivoyages on May 3; all the Wikipedias except en, fr, de on May 30; all other projects on June 13 and Wikipedias en, fr, de on September 5. [175]
• It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications. [176]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Flow has been activated on all talk pages on Catalan Wikiquote. [177]

Future changes

• On the Beta feature page, the activation message has been review to emphase the fact that the unstructured wikitext page will be archived. [178]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-26

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

Recent changes

• The <inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [179]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
• Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [180]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [181]

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

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Deleted TOC and Preface

Can you please explain why the Contents and Preface pages were deleted and their contents moved to the bottom of this main page, so that nobody can find it? — Ineuw talk 08:57, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

You are here asking about edits from over 6 years ago? Really? My commentary from today is that you are seeing a more usual presentation of a work where the table of contents is added in the lead part of a work so that a user can see and navigate, not have to click through a series of subpages to see about a work. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Didn't want to override your deletion without asking for a rationale. However, I can't lead readers to nowhere, so I am recreating the missing pages of Contents and Foreword. My reason being that I consider this, and two other works about Mexico to be outstanding, each within their scope. That is why I am revisiting each — to perfect and polish them. I hope you understand. — Ineuw talk 22:59, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Umm, Ineuw, why would you differ from the vast bulk of our works which align with this methodology? I can understand that maybe that a long preface, or similar, could be separated, however, I think that you will find that predominantly we put a table of contents on the root page. It is unusual for us to put the ToC separately as it is the basis of a navigation of a work. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:11, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: In that case the "vast bulk of the work" is laid out wrong. The editors here may know where the Table of contents is, but how does that help a visitor to the site? Where is the logic? Why would anybody scroll down to look for it? When you read a printed book, what what assumption is made about the location of the Table of contents, middle of the book, end of the book? I can go on and on to point out your false logic, but I think by now you get my point and it's time for us to consider the readers visiting the site, more than ourselves.

Nevertheless, I found a compromise solution. by anchoring the Table of contents in the page namespace and added the following line to the header not field.

| notes = {{c|[[{{ROOTPAGENAME}}#D19-1|Table of contents]]}} — Ineuw talk 20:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27

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

Recent changes

• There was a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used <mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [182]

Changes this week

• Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
• There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
• EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [183]

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

15:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

English cathedrals & stained glass windows

Hello, Billinghurst. A bit off-WS-topic, but I was wondering if you knew anyone who might be familiar with English cathedrals and stained glass windows... I am trying to pinpoint the specific cathedral and stained glass window depicted in this poem by Mrs. Coates. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:18, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I am unaware of a specific person. I would check English Wikipedia and see who are some of the people behind w:Template:Cathedrals of the Church of England which may also have wikiproject relationships. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Shipping records show Edward and her arriving New York from Southampton in Sep 1914, so I would be trying the southern cathedrals, unless you have a better idea of an itinerary in 1914. Noting that I don't see a passport application for her (travelling on husbands?). — billinghurst sDrewth 01:37, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Nothing on my end between 1914 and 1916 for travel. Have not come across an application yet... always looking for new photos! Thank you for digging! I will try your WP tip when I get the chance. Appreciated, Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28

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

Recent changes

• There are sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [184]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).

Meetings

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

Future changes

• Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [185]
• We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.

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

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-29

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

Recent changes

• "Wikimedia Labs" is now called "Cloud VPS". "Wikimedia Tool Labs" is now called "Wikimedia Toolforge". This is to help clarify the purpose of these services. [186]

Problems

• On some pages, the Table of Contents is not being shown. It will normally appear if you edit the page again. Investigation is currently ongoing. [187]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is: Migrate to HTML5 section ids. [188] The meeting will be on 19 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Page Previews, currently a Beta Feature, will be enabled for logged-out users for all remaining Wikipedias (with the exception of English and German) the week of 24 July. An A/B test will be run on English Wikipedia to collect data before approaching the community for further discussion. [189]

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

22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter, July 19, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons?

The millions of files on Wikimedia Commons are described with a lot of information or (meta)data. With the project Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons, this data is structured more, and is made machine-readable. This will make it easier to view, search (also multilingually), edit, organize and re-use the files on Commons.

In early 2017, the Sloan Foundation funded this project (see documentation). Development takes place in 2017–2020. It involves staff from the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) and many volunteers. To achieve this, Wikibase support is added to Wikimedia Commons. Wikibase is the technology that is also used for Wikidata.

Recent developments: groundwork

• A new and crucial technical step (federation) now makes it possible to reference data from one Wikibase website in another. Because of this, it will be possible to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe media files on Commons.
• Another important piece of groundwork is under development: so-called Multi-Content Revisions. This feature allows structured data to be stored alongside wiki text, so that one wiki page can contain several types of content.

Team updates

• Amanda Bittaker was hired as Program Manager for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. Amanda will take care of the overall management of the project.
• Sandra Fauconnier (known as Spinster in her volunteer capacity) is the new Community Liaison. She will support the collaboration between the communities (Commons, Wikidata, GLAM) and the product development teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland.
• We have open positions for a UX designer and a Product Manager!

Talking with communities and allies

• Long-term feedback from GLAMs. Besides the Wikimedia community, many external cultural and knowledge institutions (GLAMs - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) are interested in Structured Data on Commons and are willing to provide feedback on the long-term plans for the project. Alex Stinson, GLAM strategist at the Wikimedia Foundation, is currently in contact with Europeana, DPLA, the Smithsonian and the National Archives of the United States. Alex is also looking for other GLAM institutions who might be able to advise on the long term. If you know of an institution or partner that may be appropriate for consultation, do get in touch with Alex.
• Jonathan Morgan, design researcher, is starting to work on two projects:
  • Researching batch upload workflows by interviewing GLAM institutions
  • Researching the enrichment, organization and improvement tasks on already uploaded media files by engaging with active Commons contributors. This research follows up on existing research by Wikimedia Deutschland on heavy Commons users.

What comes next?

• The Structured Data on Commons team meets in the week after Wikimania to lay the groundwork for the next steps. This includes new backend development and design work, for better and more clear integration of the structured data in pages on Wikimedia Commons.
• The project's information pages on Wikimedia Commons will receive a long overdue update in the upcoming months. The team will also work on more and better communication channels. Feedback, wishes and tips are welcome at the project's general talk page.

Get involved

• Join us at Wikimania! We are present at the hackathon, and there will be a session on Saturday, August 12: Structured Commons: what changes are coming?
• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• Stay tuned for requests for input, discussion and participation as soon as the info portal is refreshed (see above). These will also be announced via this newsletter.

Many greetings from SandraF (WMF) (talk), Community Liaison for this project! 13:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser question...

Hi Billinghurst,

As you may remember from the far off past, I'm working on Volume 33 of the US Statutes at Large. The private acts section in Volume II contains almost endless repetitions of a specific block of boilerplate text: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension roll, subject to the provisions and limitations of the pension laws, the name of " etc., etc. Of course, the actual detail of the target text which ultimately needs to be corrected to the above will contain a potentially massively variable number of errors from Tesseract - and of course because of the pagination of the USStat, some of the sidenotes will usually be blended into the body text, further increasing the automation challenge! I have asked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser if this is a use case which might be appropriate for AutoWikiBrowser, but I thought I would ask you if you had any experience of anyone using AWB on WS, and if so whether (if you know anything about it) you thought it would be appropriate for me to try, and, if so, whose consent I would need? I've also left a question for Tarmstro99 on his talk page about whether his bot would be an appropriate alternative means of trudging through this boilerplate, but I think he must be on vacation. Conceptually, I still think that Tesseract should be the right place to do this, but that is way beyond my capacity!!! Thanks CharlesSpencer (talk) 09:49, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Page watcher jumping in. I have used AWB for a number of almost identical tasks on this very project. In my experience, the best thing to do is to go through a few dozen titles and load up a list of the most common transcription errors, and run that for the entire index. Cheers! BD2412 T 13:33, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

If you have a standard set of text on many pages, I would recommend that we template it. Then we can extract that text with a regex and add the template. Just makes the whol proofreading so much easier. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:27, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed! That would actually be useful across tens of thousands of pages, since the language at issue is not restricted to this volume. I did a test run of typo fixes with AWB, made 962 edits and barely dented the majority of scannos. BD2412 T 16:22, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I wrote a template (Template:USStatPension) back in 2010 with your valuable assistance, Billinghurst, and that of George Orwell III, but it's almost as time consuming to use as editing it by hand (with the obvious exception of the numbered section tagging, which the template does do very well). I was looking for a more brute force means of ploughing automatically through hundreds of pages... I suppose what I'm saying is that I would be far happier if the manual intervention was retyping the names of the individual pensioners than if it were manually picking bits of mangled sidenote out of the preceding boilerplate. CharlesSpencer (talk) 11:41, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I had a little time today to have a look, rather than just answer out of my (...). Standard AWB is not the answer here as it relies on the internal text, or the right anchors to know the internal text; it may work with an AWB module but you would need someone to build such. If you are saying that you can look at the pages, and take out the variable text for the page, then it is almost something that you can do within a spreadsheet in a columnar form,
scan_page Page_no. Name field1 field2 ...
then inject the template components into the regular intervening points between the columns, then get a bot to take components in order line by line or something interpret and apply per scan_page. For something like that we might be better prodding user:Mpaa for a proper bot. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:51, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thank you for looking into it. I had once considered trying to go offline completely and use mail merge through Word and Excel to solve the problem, so I know exactly what you mean, and that is definitely doable from a data extraction point of view. I suspect that chapters broken across pages will still pose a manual problem, but that would be a tiny element compared to the bulk of the chapters being ploughed through by a bot. Let me check in with user:Mpaa and see if he can help. Thanks again CharlesSpencer (talk) 15:11, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

User:CharlesSpencer, let me know if you need help.— Mpaa (talk) 16:32, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Mpaa, as soon as I've got a good dataset assembled in Excel, I'll be in touch. Might be a while, though, I'm afraid! Thanks. CharlesSpencer (talk) 06:14, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-30

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

Recent changes

• CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. This will make it easier to make templates look good on mobile devices. This now works on mediawiki.org and Wikitech. It will come to more wikis later. [190][191][192]
• .mw-ui-constructive modifier class is deprecated and has been removed. [193]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).
• It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications on a wiki. This new feature will accessible in your preferences, in the Notifications tab, on Wednesday, July 26. Please see the documentation. [194]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the Wikimedia Foundation July 2017 Metrics & Activities Meeting. The meeting is about how Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement are perceived and understood by the world. The meeting will be on 27 July at 19:00 (UTC). See the agenda and how to join.

Future changes

• New Filters for Edit Review, at the moment available as a Beta feature, will be released by default for the Recent Changes in September.

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

15:57, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-07

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The team is currently working on three main goals, which we expect to complete this summer or in September:

1. Graduate New Filters for Edit Review core features out of beta:
   • The core New Filters features slated to become standard parts of Recent Changes are the ones that have been out in beta for a while and fully road-tested by the community.
   • These include the new filtering interface, the machine-learning filter groups “User Intent Predictions” and “Quality Predictions,” the highlighting tools, the ability to save your filter settings for later use, and the new filter groups: “Watchlisted pages,” “Last revision” and "User registration and experience."
   • There’s a list of “blocker” tasks we need to complete before these features are ready to graduate out of beta.
   • We expect to release those features by default in September. A more precise message will be sent to communities. If you have questions about it, you can write a message on Mediawiki.org, in any language.
2. Extend the New Filters to Watchlist: The Watchlists of very active editors can include thousands of pages. To help these busy folks keep up with their work, we’re adding the New Filters UX and tools to Watchlist. The Watchlist and Recent Changes pages are similar, but there is some work involved in adapting the tools to their new setting. That work should be ready some time in late summer or early fall. Stay tuned for an announcement!
3. Continuing work on “Integrated Filters”:
   • While the New Filters for Edit Review beta brought probably 70% of the old-style Recent Changes features into the new user interface, it left some behind—like the Tag and Namespace filters and the controls for the number of days searched and number of results presented. As the name is meant to suggest, “Integrated filters” integrates those old-style tools into the new UI.
   • It also adds some new tools users have asked for, such as:
     • “Live updates” which provides a near real-time automatic refresh of the Recent Changes page.
     • Category filters, which enable users to search by category.
     • User filters, which let you define searches that include or exclude edits by particular users.
   • We will put the community-defined related links that cluster at the top of most Recent Changes pages into a collapsible panel, in order to clarify the Recent Changes page.

We should note that it’s not certain these last two additions will make the cut for inclusion this year. If you want a make the case for either one, we want to hear from you.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Some styling adjustments are ongoing on the filters for recent changes. [195]
• RecentChanges with the Beta feature were very slow to load on Wikidata. It is now fixed. [196]
• In the Beta feature, you can try the Live Updates feature. Just add &liveupdate=1 at the end of the URL in Recent Changes page. [197]

Future changes

• ORES review tool will be deployed to Romanian and Albanian Wikipedia soon. These wikis will be able to use predictions filters. To have the predictions filters on your wiki, you need to work on the labeling campaign for your wiki or request it. [198]
• Sometimes the RecentChanges page were reloading before the filters have ended to be loaded. It is going to be fixed. [199]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• It is now possible to display the number of unread notifications in the browser title bar, using a gadget. [200]

Future changes

• It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications on a wiki. This new feature will accessible in your preferences, in the Notifications tab, on Wednesday, July 26. [201]
  • The documentation is ready to be translated.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Index:Goody Two-Shoes (1881).djvu

Firstly, My apologies for an over-reaction to your comments elsewhere.

Moving on, I found that this was one of the first works I contributed to on English Wikisource and was therefore wanting some feedback on how to bring it up to the best standard possible. In reviewing it carefully I am STILL finding some f vs long-s, I'd missed on at least 2 passes, and so am intending to give it a 3rd.

You had validated a page in this work at some point, so I thought I would ask if you were planning on returning to it at some point? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-31

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

Problems

• Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that uses Wikidata. The developers are working on fixing the problem. You can fix a page by opening it for editing and then saving without changing anything. [202]
• Wikidata and German Wikipedia could not be edited for an hour on 28 July. You can read why and how we could avoid it in the future in the incident report.

Changes later this week

• Some wikis already have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. All remaining wikis except Commons will have these from 1 August. [203]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The default font in the edit window will soon change for some users. Instead of using the browser default it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [204]

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

21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Re deleted author page

Hi. The It's a beautiful day story was released under a CC license. It was deleted here because its Spanish counterpart was deleted, but it has since been restored (for several months now). I think it should be restored along with the corresponding author page. I'm sorry if this causes any inconvenience, I don't mean to cause any. --201.215.141.30 02:01, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

The work was deleted as non-notable, not due to any other deletion. The place for the discussion about the work is WS:PD. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:19, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/22

This page had a red-linked {{GFRB}} template, which I updated to {{DNB GFRB}}, I hope this was acceptable, as I saw the relevant page in a query I had to find typo templates. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:03, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Page:The Cutter's Practical Guide 1898 Edition Part 1.djvu/28

Thanks for re-reading this. I'd been using {{frac}} for consistency of appearance across the whole work in respect of fractions that didn't have a unicode point.

If you feel this isn't a major issue, is there a script for "regularising" fractions across an entire work? {{frac}} was used extensively in this one, and I had not been changing it.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:56, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

If you want, it is possible. I am unsure about doing it, I have read some concerns on rendering of unicode fractions vs. other methods.— Mpaa (talk) 20:51, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mpaa: why would do some creation of something that may look like something, rather than utilise the actual characters, per Wikisource:Style manual. If we take that path where do we stop? Isn't rendering a browser issue? If you do a copy and paste you get 1⁄3 not ⅓ which is essentially changing the context of the work. That is not a proper transcription. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:11, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I was just concerned about readability, people read what is rendered. Maybe there is no issue at all with support of these characters in browsers/fonts/devices. As far as copy paste, 1/3 or ⅓ it is always 0.3333... to me. Anyhow, no big deal. If one wants to replace, I can attempt something, sticking to this: http://unicodefractions.com/.— Mpaa (talk) 08:02, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

My point was that it is 3 characters, not the one. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:33, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-32

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

Recent changes

• You can now see which Wikipedia language versions are read in a specific country. This tool is called Wikipedia Views Visualized. [205]
• The Architecture Committee is now the Wikimedia Technical Committee. You can read the charter. [206]

Problems

• You can get an email when a page on your watchlist was edited. You can choose not to get emails for minor edits. There is a bug that means that you then don't get an email when someone does a normal edit after a minor edit. The developers are working on fixing this. Until it has been fixed you can activate "Email me also for minor edits of pages and files" at the bottom of "User profile" in your preferences if you want to. [207]
• The thanks button sometimes didn't work for mobile users. This was because of a new bug and has now been fixed. [208]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 August. It will be on all wikis from 10 August (calendar).

Future changes

• Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [209]
• Links to sections on Wikipedia don't work well in languages that don't use the Latin script. The URL in the address bar in your browser shows Latin characters like .D0.A1.D1.81.D1.8B.D0.BB.D0.BA.D0.B8 instead of the section heading in the wiki's language. Links to sections in non-Latin scripts will be in the script of that wiki in the future. This will happen in the next few months. [210][211]
• Wiki pages printed by the web browser "Print" function will have an updated style. This new style will be similar to the when you download a page as PDF. It will be better at showing tables, infoboxes and headings. [212][213]

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

21:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-33

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

Recent changes

• Bureaucrats can now set users as confirmed. Previously only stewards could do this on most wikis. Nothing will change for wikis that have previously decided to let administrators set users as confirmed. [214]

Problems

• The symbols in the language list that show that an article is good or featured in that language doesn't work. Links to the Commons category in the sidebar doesn't work either. The developers are working on fixing it. [215][216]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).

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

23:28, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Centering images for mobile view

Is using <center> the best/only current method for correct mobile rendering of centered images? Londonjackbooks (talk) 02:27, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Just wondering why you would say that rather than use the image position component wiki style [[File:Example.jpg|center]], unless needing to style within a table due to surrounding text. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

[[File:Example.jpg|center]] does not render as centered in mobile view. [217] Londonjackbooks (talk) 09:09, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Correction: does not usually render as centered in mobile view. The image in Meynell's Preludes title page is centered (but line spacing is off); the rest of the images within the text are displayed left in mobile view. Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:09, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Gotcha. There is a whole lot going wrong in mobile view with images and tables having centering removed. Best that it goes back to the community and if the community is not liking it then probably then through phabricator as something addressed to those developers of the skins. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:02, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Anything I can do? keeping in mind my limited knowledge of magic? Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:11, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that you can do it perfectly. Describe the two situations, and the problem with the mobile view from a visual perspective, and what you would like the solution to be. No requirement to get into the technical components. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:22, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to go on, but where should I bring it up? Scriptorium? I will try to address it tomorrow morning. Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:33, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-34

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

Recent changes

• You can now test the new Timeless skin on the test wiki and mediawiki.org. You can turn it on in your preferences. You can report bugs in Phabricator. It will come to more wikis soon. [218][219]
• Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [220]
• If a table has several columns you can often choose which column you want to use to sort the table. This has not worked for some columns for readers who have used Firefox or Safari. This has now been fixed. [221]
• The RelatedArticles extension has shown related pages on Wikivoyages. You will now see the related pages at the end of the article together with an image. Previously the links were in the sidebar. Wikis that want this extension can request it on Phabricator.

Changes later this week

• Videos will now be played in the WebM format in all browsers. Previously some browsers used Ogg Theora (.ogv). If you use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge you may see slower playback speed at high resolutions. Instead we will get better quality and smaller file size. You can still upload video as Ogg files. They are automatically converted to WebM. This doesn't affect Ogg audio files. [222]
• The default font in the edit window will change for some users this week. Instead of using the browser default, it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [223]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Editor Issues?

Hey Billinghurst,

Have you noticed a change in the wiki editor since yesterday? It now feels like typing into a terminal on an old mainframe. It is very hard to read. Any idea what is going on? -- Jasonanaggie (talk) 02:48, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

twittery

Hello, you are @billinghurstwik yes? I'll add you to the twitter team. Can you think of anyone else who should be on it? Sam Wilson 08:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Correct for my wiki twittiness. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:16, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-35

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

Recent changes

• Syntax highlighting is now a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It will come to right-to-left wikis later. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. [224][225]
• You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can turn this off or choose to get an email notification in your preferences. You can also turn on to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. [226]

Problems

• Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that use Wikidata. This has now been fixed and no new pages will get this problem. You still need to fix pages that were broken before and still show the error message. You can see how on this page. [227]

Changes later this week

• You can block users from sending you notifications. [228]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Technical Committee. The topic this week is Migrate to HTML5 section ids. The meeting will be on 30 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• In the future you will have global preferences. This means you could set something in your preferences to work in the same way on all wikis. You will not be forced to use global preferences. The developers are now asking if editors need exceptions. This is where you want to use global settings on almost all wikis, but have some wikis where you want it to work in a different way. If you want this you need to tell the developers now. You can do so on the talk page. [229]
• New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [230]
• The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 in September 2017. Wikis can ask on Phabricator to get it early, so they can help find and solve problems now.

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

22:09, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Is this a correct statement?

"Proofreading involves side-by-side comparison of an image of original text with OCR-generated text." If there is a better way to state it, how would you? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

That sounds right to me. Apologies if I dropped you in it. Needed someone with passion. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:18, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Bringing me out of my comfort zone, but for a good cause. Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:22, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

You are and have a real point of difference and such admirable qualities. You will be brilliant. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:59, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

<reading off a script> Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:03, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I stuck to the script, or I would have been as a "wretched individual"—stammering through and completely forgetting the point... Hoping it is/was well received, and that I did not merely preach to the choir :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Transclusion check

Hi Billinghurst. Does this transclusion look okay (I mean aesthetically)? Just thought I should ask before I add the work to New Texts. Thank you ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

probably best to put this to the broader community WS:Scriptorium/Help — billinghurst sDrewth 02:04, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Okay, will do. ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:12, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-36

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

Tech News

• We are asking Tech News readers five questions to make the newsletter better. You can answer the questions here. We are grateful for every reply we get.

Recent changes

• The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around. [231][232]

Problems

• Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in your preferences and see if it helps. [233]

Changes later this week

• New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [234]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can see a presentation about and discuss the new Technical Committee on 5 September at 17:30 (UTC). There will be a presentation on YouTube and a discussion in #wikimedia-office on Freenode. You can use the web chat. [235]

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

22:15, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Reminder

Remind me again, if I wish to delete a Talk page after a move (assoc. page is now a redirect), what reason do I supply? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown I used orphaned talk page. Probably time we looked at our reasons again, it has been a while since we have checked pertinence. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned talk page makes sense but I over thought it last night, was making dumb errors, and so deferred to you. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 09:17, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance

Review Talk:Mesha Stele

[236] as it says translator is H. F. B. Compston which differs from obverse of WS page. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:06, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Link template required

• History of Iowa From Its Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century, numbers of biographical subpages to link. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:28, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-37

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

Recent changes

• You can get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [237]
• The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [238]
• The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: tidy-whitespace-bug. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [239]

Problems

• Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead. [240]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
• OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
• New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences. [241]

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

19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Elimination of illumination in transcription

Just stumbled across the illustrated version of McCrae's In Flanders Fields (1921). It just seems "wrong" to eliminate the illustrations from the final transcription. Would it be permissible to include them along with the transcribed text? Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:28, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. I see that concern was addressed here: In Flanders Fields (1921)/illustrated Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:33, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Changes to EB1911 Table of contributors is breaking transcluded view

Hi Billinghurst, I saw that the recent changes made to several EB1911 contributors pages e.g. Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/25 has broken the transcluded view e.g. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vol 1/Table of contributors. Can you take a look? thanks. DivermanAU (talk) 00:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Done tables strung together causing other issues rather than being the open and close being in the header. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:30, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Court case naming/template thoughts

Heya!

I was interested if you had any thoughts on how/where best to set up some pages for a few court cases I'm setting up. In the past I've either had the opinion on the main page when there was just one published document such as for Veronica Ollier v. Sweetwater Union High School District or been able to use the Template:Case when there were multiple such as with Riley v. California) but I'm trying to figure out the best way to organize cases like Alaska Airlines v. Judy Schurke which I'm trying to do now (and have a very similar case after this). In these cases there are two documents already, the "panel opinion" ( such as Index:Alaska_Airlines_v._Judy_Schurke_-_Panel_Opinion.pdf ) and the order that the court will hear it en banc (such as Index:Alaska_Airlines_v._Judy_Schurke_-_EnBanc_Order.pdf). In the future there will be a second Opinion of the Court (this time from the en banc court). The cases template seems to just "assume" that there will be one opinion of the court and I'm not entirely sure how to adjust that... The other question is whether I should 'split' an opinion if there is a dissension on one publication. For example in this case the Panel Opinion also includes a dissent but it's on the same published document. Should I just include it?

I imagine for now at least one main option would just be to have a makeshift ToC on the main page? I may be overthinking it :) . Jamesofur (talk) 02:47, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-38

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

Recent changes

• You can now see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them. [242][243]
• Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed. [244]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• We are replacing Tidy on Wikimedia wikis. Editors need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors. Some wikis have already switched. If your wiki would like to switch to the new format now, you can file a task.

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

15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

DNBdates

I was wondering how you gleaned the information from the DNB for #DNBdates use. Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:11, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Focused search. Special:Search/25 Sept. DNB00 : then looked for something interesting/different. See mw:Help:CirrusSearch for help. I have been known to run more complex searches, though for this it isn't that necessary. I need to go back and look at some of the stats, and to do another week's worth of posts. Any suggestions of value would be useful. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Tried it out for October. Mostly b/d dates of women novelists, poets, singers, actors—some listed as prominent in their day. Most of October is accounted for but for Oct. 3,4,10,11,18,19,21,31. Mostly women came up in initial results, so I went with the 'theme' and added Miss and Mrs. to the search to narrow things down. I made a list as I went along if you are interested. Not necessarily of "value" or "interest", but something. Also found what may be an error: "Jewsbury, Maria Jane" DNB article links to a WP article with a different first name where b/d dates differ (if I recall correctly). Any other way I can help... Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:47, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39

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

Recent changes

• Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with CTRL+F or cmd+F when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs. [245][246]
• Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow. [247]

Changes later this week

• You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences. [248]
• Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser. [249]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
• You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.

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

15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Road Signs

Index:UKSI19810859.pdf thanks.

Looking at this again, I am actually wondering if it needs to be a table at all, given that if a 1 row per sign format is used, it doesn't need the table. You and other have said in the past that Wikisource need not slavishly follow the print format where it's not necessary to do so. 1 row per sign might also be better for mobile presentation? Your thoughts? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't have any at this point of time. Life is a little too busy. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:29, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-09

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured Discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• This newsletter is the first for the Global Collaboration team!
  • Global Collaboration team formed in July by merging the Language and Collaboration teams of the Wikimedia Foundation. The team is part of the Contributors department.
  • The newsletter now includes updates about Content translation. The Global Collaboration team now have an extended report (in English), with more information and data about the different projects we take care of.
• Due to vacations and Wikimania, no newsletter has been written in August.
• Major changes, with possibly an important impact on the wikis, are now marked with the star icon in the newsletter. Let us know if you like it.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Filters for Recent Changes will be deployed by default on all wikis. [250]
  • Some features for Recent Changes remain on Beta. See the list.
  • The initial deployment was scheduled for September 26. It has been postponed after October 3 for performance issues. [251]
• The filters for Watchlists, as a Beta feature, have been deployed as a Beta feature on Sept. 19. [252]
• "User registration" and "experience level" groups have been unified. It is now possible to select only actions from logged-out users or from logged-in users. [253]

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Delete action on the list of translations is now more reachable. Now it's possible to open it on click, and easier as well, because active area is bigger. [254]
• Content Translation language selector is restyled to be more compact. [255]

Future changes

• The translation editor of Content Translation will be replaced by the visual editor. Work is ongoing. [256]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• For users who don't use JavaScript, a button has been added to Special:Notifications to mark all their notifications as read. [257]
• It is now possible to restrict who can send you notifications. [258]

Structured Discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed. [259]
• Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. [260]
• Structured Discussions' help pages have been updated. Translations may require updates as well.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:10, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-40

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

Recent changes

• You can now use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it. [261]

Changes later this week

• If you have turned on "Automatically enable most beta features" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature. [262]
• Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look. [263]
• The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October. [264]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature. [265]
• The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.

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

23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Page view

As long as you seem to be on, could I trouble you to look at Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/100? Is the side-by-side view working for you when viewing the page? It's not for me (either as view or edit), despite null edits, refreshes, purges, etc., but other pages from the same work seem to be fine. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:07, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Fine for me in monobook. Appears that you have a caching issue somewhere. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:21, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-41

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

Recent changes

• The number of active users listed by {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too. [266]
• Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. [[::File:X.jpg]] now has to be [[:File:X.jpg]]. There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter. [267]

Problems

• You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models. [268]

Changes later this week

• The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week. [269]
• If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

14:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Titling of work for move

I would like to convert Sartor Resartus to a versions page since there are two works hosted here by that title. Currently, Sartor Resartus links to a Gutenberg version. We have a scan-backed version as well—Sartor resartus; and, On heroes, hero-worship and the heroic in history—which is proofread but for one problematic page (which I am in the process of resolving), but which is not yet transcluded. I would need to rename Sartor Resartus, but to what? Sartor Resartus (Gutenberg)? I am aware that I will also need to rename all subpages as well after the move. Suggestions? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:36, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: In lieu of you being able to determine more edition data from Gutenberg, that sounds okay. If desired, I can run a bot through to rename those title pages before or after the move. It would be [[Sartor Resartus]] to [[../../|Sartor Resartus]] which would be quick and easy; though I would want to fix up the prev/next too as they are not relative links, and again can be done ahead of a move. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:20, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Running a bot through would be great, though it doesn't need to be done until tomorrow. I can get to prev/next tomorrow as well. Thanks! Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Relative links done, and shows the true value of relative links. :-) — billinghurst sDrewth 21:01, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Great! Thank you much :) I'll tackle the disambig/transclusion tomorrow. Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-42

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

Recent changes

• When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's format configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it. [270][271]
• The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.

Problems

• There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis. [272]
• Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this. [273]
• Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [274]

Changes later this week

• Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [275]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Hawthorne's Notebooks

With this change, we lost the Roman numerals in the article titles that distinguished the several articles from each other. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:52, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Yep, I have it in a paste to update, doing a little text juggling. Thanks for the note however. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:53, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

The text editor in AWB is a little small and makes alignment difficult, and the gaps in the numbering and the wish to preview, just made it need to be a follow-up job. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:01, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-43

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

Recent changes

• You can use ccnorm_contains_any when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation. [276]

Changes later this week

• When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better. [277]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is a Structured Commons community focus group for Commons and Wikidata contributors who want to give input on structured data on Wikimedia Commons. You can sign up to join it. [278]

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

18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons newsletter, October 25, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Rama published an article about Structured Commons in Arbido, a Swiss online magazine for archivists, librarians and documentalists: original in French, illustrated and the article translated in English.
• We now have a dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

• Join the community focus group!
• Translation. Do you want to help out translating messages about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.
• The documentation and info pages about Structured Data on Commons have received a thorough update, in order to get them ready for all the upcoming work. Obsolete pages were archived. There are undoubtedly still a lot of omissions and bits that are unclear. You can help by editing boldly, and by leaving feedback and tips on the talk pages.
• We have started to list tools, gadgets and bots that might be affected by Structured Commons in order to prepare for a smooth transition to the new situation. You can help by adding alerts about/to specific tools and developers on the dedicated tools page. You can also create Phabricator tasks to help keep track of this. Volunteers and developers interested in helping out with this process are extremely welcome - please sign up!
• Help write the next Structured Commons newsletter.

Presentations / Press / Events

Audience at Structured Commons design discussion, Wikimania 2017

• Structured Data on Commons was presented at Wikimania 2017 in Montréal for a packed room. First design sketches for search functionality were discussed during a breakout session. Read the Etherpad reports of the presentation and the breakout session.
• Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, answered questions on Quora. One of her answers, mentioning Structured Data on Commons, was republished on Huffington Post.
• Sandra Fauconnier, Amanda Bittaker and Ramsey Isler from the Structured Commons team will be at WikidataCon. Sandra presents Structured Commons there (with a focus on fruitful collaboration between the Wikidata and Commons communities). If you attend the conference, don't hesitate to say hi and have a chat with us! (phabricator task T176858)

Team updates

The Structured Commons team at Wikimania 2017

Two new people have been hired for the Structured Data on Commons team. We are now complete! :-)

• Ramsey Isler is the new Product Manager of the Multimedia team.
• Pamela Drouin was hired as User Interface Designer. She works at the Multimedia team as well, and her work will focus on the Structured Commons project.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!

Research

Design research is ongoing.

• Jonathan Morgan and Niharika Ved have held interviews with various GLAM staff about their batch upload workflows and will finish and report on these in this quarter. (phabricator task T159495)
• At this moment, there is also an online survey for GLAM staff, Wikimedians in Residence, and GLAM volunteers who upload media collections to Wikimedia Commons. The results will be used to understand how we can improve this experience. (phabricator task T175188)
• Upcoming: interviews with Wikimedia volunteers who curate media on Commons (including tool developers), talking about activities and workflows. (phabricator task T175185)

Development

In Autumn 2017, the Structured Commons development team works on the following major tasks (see also the quarterly goals for the team):

• Getting Multi-Content Revisions sufficiently ready, so that the Multimedia and Search Platform teams can start using it to test and prototype things.
• Determine metrics and metrics baseline for Commons (phabricator task T174519).
• The multimedia team at WMF is gaining expertise in Wikibase, and unblocking further development for Structured Commons, by completing the MediaInfo extension for Wikibase.

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! It takes place on Tuesday 21 November, 18.00 UTC.

Warmly, your community liaison, SandraF (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 14:26, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Person with duplicate entries at WD

Hello. There are two entries for George Hussey Earle, Sr. at Wikidata:

• d:Q18910470
• d:Q33100504

How does one go about deleting one or "merging" both? One links to the WP article, and one to the WS Author page. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:44, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Merge them. There is a merge tool as a gadget at WD for that purpose. A merge go to the lower Qid by default. If you wish for me to do it, then let me know. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:59, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I will give it a shot. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:01, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Hoped that you would. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:20, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Best way to learn. Least I can do. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:59, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I love Londonjackbooks the adventurer, the bolder. Tools in your hands are used well and with full consideration. (((-: — billinghurst sDrewth 02:46, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

A warm "thanks" to Billinghurst the astute. I needed that Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:10, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

"disinterested thoughtfulness"

—words (fwiw) that pretty well sum up my opinion of your care and concern for WS maintenance &c. Just an appreciation from one who is here primarily for selfish ends. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:51, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't always score a pass on courteous, though it is not through wont of trying. Otherwise, thanks for your words. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:07, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Template:Font-size90%

I thought Template:Font-size90% was supposed to render text at 90%, but lost of recent edits have changed that. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

That template is a sad story in itself for over-formatting, well, for what it says that it will do. It definitely doesn't fall into our 'keep it simple' model of doing one thing, or utilising Template:Font-size. Personally I fall within using those mentioned on Help:Font size templates, and I challenge anyone to see the different between {{fine}} and this extra template. Where it comes within the PSM model, I have pretty much backed away from making suggestions.

With the introduction of template style sheets, these templates/styles clearly need to be tidied up, though I doubt that the will is there. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 02:43, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Your comment is incorrect and I find it passive aggressive and "whiny" to a degree. Please point me to where you saw the template not working, since I use it hundreds of times in every volume of PSM.

What is incorrect? The 90% font-size template is supposed to render text at 90%. However, edits keep changing the percentage. Where in that comment have I been incorrect? Where have I been "whiny"? I stated my understanding, and pointed out that changes have been made. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:25, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: You are well aware that there are major differences between the two font templates mentioned, even though they are the same font-size. Perhaps, appearance is not important to you, but for me it is. — Ineuw talk 16:20, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ineuw: When I open up and look at the coding in the template it is evident that the styling is different, that is not evident from the name, that is my commentary about over-styling for what is expected for 90% font. We should be keeping things simple. Having 91% font within a font called 90% is misleading, and I challenge that it is a 1% we should be fussing about. Having other formatting within it is confusing to other editors. These are universal templates and we shouldn't be offering unexpected surprises. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:39, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource-bot

I've attempted a setup to have my User_talk: page archived by the bot, but I'm unsure (a) whether I have set things up correctly, (b) whether there is more to be set up than I have done, and (c) whether the bot will now proceed on its own time, or someone must operate the bot, and whether my Talk page will now be included in that process without further attention by me. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:54, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Did this get overlooked in the subsequent edits? I don't really know what I'm doing here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:10, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I did miss this. I am just doing the daily bot run, and it seems to have created your years of archives just fine. I will let you check that the result is to your liking. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:08, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

The only problem I've noticed is that the default page header is set to {{talk archive}} (which doesn't exist) instead of {{archive header}}. The bot and documentation may need an update for that, but I've already handled the problem on the new archive pages for my talk page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 10:39, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: The bot is what the bot is, I am running the standard pywikibot installation. The instruction at user:wikisource-bot for that parameter already suggests to use the template you suggested, and the example at "Typical example" already includes it. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:48, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

I guess I was just expecting there to be something there for the default value, rather than a red link to a template that doesn't exist, but now that I look at it, I see that the template is redlinked even in the doco. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:16, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

It is not a traditional wiki template. Wikisource-bot finds pages using the 'template' and then does its thing, there is no actual local parameter or configuration to override. If you felt strong enough you could create a redirect from the (python) default, I chose not to leaving it up to the user at this time. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:02, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Too much time is wasted on the picayune.

Your recent comments and editing activities tell me that you are getting bored because you are commenting on the unimportant, and deleted info which you did not bother to research.

Here I am referring to your edit of Author:Joseph Edward Kirkwood page. At the time of creation, I found an article about him which stated that he died in 1928 at the age of 56, so calculating his birth year was not all that difficult. The math 1928-56 does equal to 1872, both in Hungary and Australia. Why you removed this info is beyond me. But I took the trouble of Googling his name again and found additional confirmation here — Ineuw talk 21:06, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ineuw: Billinghurst didn't delete the data; he simply removed our local override, thereby allowing the information to come from Wikidata. If you look, you can see that the author's birth and death dates are still displayed correctly in the header, just as they were before the edit. Dates of birth and death for authors are now housed at Wikidata, instead of here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I stand corrected and retract my criticism about the author dates, but not about the issue of comments regarding the {{ts}} shorthand codes, to which, I will reply to on my talk page. — Ineuw talk 16:06, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Re Kirkwood. When creating an author page, please try clicking the "Search Wikidata" link. In this case you would have found d:Q21517546 like I did, if you there then look at the history of the article, and come back and tell me that I did nothing with what you started. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:09, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ineuw: If you look at much of my editing there will always be a significant proportion of about tidying and aligning to our agreed styles. Someone has to continue to do the maintenance, and let me tell you that sometimes it is frustratingly tedious. I presume that you have an alternative, so how do you propose that the maintenance is done?

Authors. I have been putting much effort into ensuring that the data on our authors is in Wikidata and then removing local overrides. In fact, you will see that I have been putting much effort into identifying our (minor) authors and documenting that from minor sources. Also I have been creating author pages for missing authors, and tying our existing author pages to Wikidata items. This hails from much discussion in Wikisource:Scriptorium about author pages, not requiring local data if we can store it centrally, especially when referenced, but not removing data until we know that it is in Wikidata. The community decided that images, dates of life, interwikis and authority control data should all come from Wikidata, and it wasn't magicked over the years, it has come from effort, time, coordination and asking favours of outside people (hard work!). Similarly, where we have research on the author page. overt or hidden, then it is moved to the author talk page; if it duplicates Wikipedia link, then it can just be trimmed. [Fact: I check every damn piece of data removed to ensure that the data is available at Wikidata prior to its removal, and preserve the sources that we where recorded and are uniquely held.] So, your snide comment is not factually correct, and it is somewhat insulting.

Similarly I have been aligning our author page linking to transcribed reference works to the templates based on {{authority/link}} and a bit of {{authority/lkpl}}. I am also hoping to get to systematic on the contributor data for these reference works, though that will take a little longer as it is more complex.

I appreciate you efforts to correct and update, but when I first saw your edit on my watchlist, I only saw the diff, not the actual page until I followed through your edit. I noticed that my Author page contributions have been linked to Wikidata, but I was under under the impression that it is done by a bot and not added manually. From that point on, I looked at various entries in Wikidata, and it dawned upon me the enormity of that project which will take decades to bring it up to date by an army of editors, since it encompasses everything, including templates, etc. . . . and there are only ~300 active editors here. — Ineuw talk 16:06, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

To {{table style}}. This community has had a long-held approach to simpler formatting (Wikisource:Style guide) and, especially, not forcing font styles or fixed font sizes on people, instead letting browsers do the work and allow for users' preferences where they have then. With table style and adding of font styles, you are stepping outside of the approach that the community had previously taken, so I started that conversation with you. How else would you like for me to address that? We are a community and reportable to the community for our actions, and our styling. We are each accountable for our edits, and our compliance with the style and holding to the consensus. If you think that we should be forcing styles, and as such change our guidance, then I invite you to have that as a conversation with the community.

Now I may be an annoying tick and push people about aligning to community consensus, or myself asking for community consensus, or even bring matters up for discussion where people may say "just do it". My comment is that for clarity, and sustainability of one approach, not a multitude of conflicting styles, that having that consensus is important. While I may have expressed a differing opinion during such conversations, I know the importance of buying into and accepting the consensus. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:02, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

I get your point about community consensus but after seeing various contributions by the editors, the reality is not reflecting that consensus, and I don't think that is a bad thing. There is nothing wrong about displaying the style characteristics of individual works in general.

With works displayed in the main namespace, and changing the available default layouts, there is a problem with the browsers. Serif appears smaller than non-serif, (Times New Roman or Garamond versus Arial), because of the stroke thickness of some crucial characters, even though they are the same font size. Both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox allow only one size setting for both. I can't speak for the font settings of Safari, Opera, Edge, or Internet Explorer. I am considering to make a proposal that a minimum font-size should be specified for the {{Default layout}} template to bring their appearance to the same.

As for the shorthand codes in the {{ts}} template, I agree that there are many unused codes, or used only a couple of times (and I am also guilty of this). If there is a way identify these codes and clean them up, I am willing to help. Overall, I am less concerned with the number of declarations than with the issue of inconsistency in the code names. This is something I am also interested in correcting. — Ineuw talk 16:06, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ineuw: Of course some people don't follow the consensus, and that is why we as a later party change to the consensus, plus educate and challenge the use away from the consensus. If that isn't done there will be drift, and drift upon drift, ... That said it is why we should also sometimes challenge the previous consensus in a progressive manner when we see that it has become a problem. Re browsers and fonts, sure, and that is why we have a practice of css-relativism, and a common style, but most importantly keep it simple. We should always focus on the intent of the author, not get hung up the compositors' outputs. We see the problems of browser differences, screen outputs, mobile presentations, and every element of complexity that we add has that potential for drift. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:27, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-44

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

Recent changes

• You can now block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [279]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-45

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

Recent changes

• You will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [280]

Changes later this week

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 6 November. You can post proposals from 19:00 UTC and until November 19.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#.D0.98.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D1.80.D0.B8.D1.8F instead of https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История. This will soon be fixed. Old links will still work. [281][282]

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

18:44, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

constitution of the U.S. state of Ohio

You were the last person to edit the Wikisource page for the constitution of the U.S. state of Ohio. The link to the current constitution leads to a blind redirect that moves the user back to the same disambiguation page. The document is easily available with a web search. Please fix the page. —unsigned comment by 104.129.194.61 (talk) . (on user page)

removed the link — billinghurst sDrewth 21:17, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-46

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

Changes later this week

• The diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator. [283]
• A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [284]
• Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences. [285]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki. [286]

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

19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Cat:Not transcluded

Will tagging like this, with [[Category:Not transcluded]] in the footer still function? I have been working under the assumption that the Category link must be placed in a section of the page that will be transcluded in order to be detected and fulfill its purpose. Can it be placed in the footer? --22:22, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

It needs to be in the body so we can independently check whether a "not transcluded" page has been transcluded into main ns: or not. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:40, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Noting that the best we can do is petscan:1481103 which is gives a broader shout-out, I haven't identified a more accurate means to represent the intersection. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:56, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-47

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

Recent changes

• If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future. [287]
• The abuse filter now has a function called get_matches. You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November. [288][289][290]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Language converter syntax will no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}- must be replaced. You will have to write -{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }- instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. This will happen next week. [291][292]

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

19:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-11

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The Global collaboration report for October is now available.
• All wikis now have the Filters for edit review as the default system on Recent Changes page.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Most recent changes

• Filters for Watchlists are still on Beta. Please try them and give feedback before we release it for all users!
• Shortcuts to filter Namespaces and Tags are now more visible. [293]
• Discovery of the search bar has been improved. [294]
• If the Recent Changes page or the Watchlist fails to load or is time-outed, a message is now displayed. [295][296]
• The bookmark icon for creating a "Saved filter" is now grayed when it is not possible to save. Before it was not visible. Bookmarking is unavailable when, for example, the current filter set is already saved. [297]

Future changes

• Live updates on Recent changes will be moved out of beta and into the standard feature set by the end of the year. [298]
• Extension:Translate filters for RecentChanges are going to be integrated to the new filters. [299]
• Automatic edit summaries will be filtered as tags. [300]

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• List items (suggested items and in-progress/published translations) layout restyled to prevent overflows on small screen sizes.
• Search results for new translation dialog are now embedded, instead of being displayed in floating menu. Search results remain displayed when tabbed out and can be closed using ESC key.
• Missing pages are no longer shown when there is no match for search query. Message informing that there are no results is displayed instead.
• Embedded search results enabled to provide users with more translation opportunities. Articles user recently edited (in currently selected source language wiki) are surfaced when there is no input in search bar, with additional info if article is missing in user's currently selected target language.
• Long suggestion descriptions are limited to three lines, and the rest is truncated, which is indicated by ellipsis.
• Chart data representing user translation statistics in now showing all the months since user's first published translation. Months that went without translation are now displayed in chart as well.
• A loading indicator is shown while suggestions are loading.
• Button to discard dialog is now shown through the whole process of selecting article to translate.

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Edit-user-talk notifications are now expandable. [301]

Structured Discussions [More information • Help pages]

Future changes

• Some work is ongoing to store Structured Discussions contents from HTML to wikitext. That change will allow some specific templates and magic words to work properly on Structured Discussions. [302]
• Some tests are conducted in order to prepare the rewriting of Structured Discussions' interface. That rewriting will have no visible impact on users but it will ease future changes.

Other projects

• Compact Language Links has been deployed on German Wikipedia. [303]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:36, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-48

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

Recent changes

• You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later. [304]
• You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [305]
• You can now use the Timeless skin on all wikis. You can choose skins in Special:Preferences#Appearance. [306]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-49

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

Recent changes

• It is now possible to upload MP3 files to Commons. Only users with MP3 file upload rights can upload MP3 files. [307]
• You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [308]
• There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects. [309]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
• Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [310]
• Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [311][312]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You can vote for wishes on the survey page until 10 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2016 results page.
• The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [313]

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

17:51, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Speedy

Could you delete https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:History_of_Persia Pleaae Thanks! --Zppix (talk) 20:16, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 22:35, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-50

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

Recent changes

• URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#.D0.98.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D1.80.D0.B8.D1.8F instead of https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История. This has now been fixed on all wikis. Old links will still work. [314]
• A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [315]
• If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [316]
• Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [317]
• Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [318]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can discuss new or improved blocking tools with the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team. They will work on building better blocking tools. Leave comments on the talk page.

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

17:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Localization tools

I've forgotten whether we have tools to assist with localizing files such as requested here, and where I might find them. In a pinch, I could download / upload, but that wouldn't preserve the edit history. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:22, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Commonshelper tools are supposedly able to move files between sites, not just to Commons. Where A Commons admin also has admin rights at another wiki there is a javascript tool which utilises OAuth permissions to allow a copy (how I have previously undertaken such tasks). There is no ability to copy a file with its native upload history; just hacks. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:39, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. I've never managed to make Commonshelper work properly, but from your reply in the Scriptorium/Help, it sounds as though an admin from Commons (like yourself) should be able to do the move more easily than myself, now that the Files are tagged. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:12, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Structured Commons newsletter, December 13, 2017

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• There was a IRC Office Hour about Structured Commons on November 21. You can read the log here.
• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

A multi-licensed image on Wikimedia Commons, with a custom {{EthnologyItemMHNT}} Information template. Do you also know media files on Commons that will be interesting or challenging to model with structured data? Add them to the Interesting Commons files page.

• NEW: Participate in a survey that helps us prioritize which tools are important for the Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey runs until December 22. Here's some background.
• NEW: Help the team decide on better names for 'captions' and 'descriptions'. You can provide input until January 3, 2018.
• NEW: Help collect interesting Commons files, to prepare for the data modelling challenges ahead! Continuous input is welcome.
• Join the community focus group!
• Do you want to translate messages and information about Structured Data on Commons from English to your own language? Sign up on the translators page.

Presentations / Press / Events

Presentation about Structured Commons and Wikidata, at WikimediaCon in Berlin.

• Sandra presented the plans for Structured Commons during WikidataCon in Berlin, on October 29. The presentation focused on collaboration between the Wikidata and Commons communities. You can see the full video here.

Partners and allies

• We are still welcoming (more) staff from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to become part of our long-term focus group (phabricator task T174134). You will be kept in the loop of the project, and receive regular small surveys and requests for feedback. Get in touch with Sandra if you're interested - your input in helping to shape this project is highly valued!

Research

• Research findings from interviews and surveys of GLAM project participants are being published to the research page. Check back over the next few weeks as additional details (notes, quotes, charts, blog posts, and slide decks) will be added to or linked from that page.

Development

• The Structured Commons team has written and submitted a report about the first nine months of work on the project to its funders, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The 53-page report, published on November 1, is available on Wikimedia Commons.
• The team has started working on designs for changes to the upload wizard (T182019).
• We started preliminary work to prototype changes for file info pages.
• Work on the MediaInfo extension is ongoing (T176012).
• The team is continuing its work on baseline metrics on Commons, in order to be able to measure the effectiveness of structured data on Commons. (T174519)
• Upcoming: in the first half of 2018, the first prototypes and design sketches for file pages, the UploadWizard, and for search will be published for discussion and feedback!

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.
• Join the next IRC office hour and ask questions to the team! It takes place on Tuesday, February 13, 18.00 UTC in wikimedia-office ^webchat.

Warmly, your community liaison, SandraF (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 16:32, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Redlink /template behavior

Let me try to word what I am seeing correctly: When I hover over the redlinked "EARLE" on this page, I see the Earle author link in ALL CAPS; but in edit mode, the author link is formatted correctly, and should lead to a blue link since Earle is a hosted author here. Is there some issue with a template somewhere that renders the link in all caps when it should not? Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:04, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Template:CaseCaption used the UC: (see Help:magic words); I have changed to use {{uc}} which is softer. One forces case change to all the text, the other does text formatting, so not forcing its way into the wikilink. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:14, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into it. Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:17, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.

Problems

• When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [319]
• Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings

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

Future changes

• Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
• The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has now ended. You can see the results. They decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year.

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

15:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Changes to the Early Wycliffe TOC breaking thorn links

You left a message on my talk page talking about broken capitalisation of the letter thorn in links. You were the one who broke it, however. You changed &thorn; to Þ, which broke the capitalization(&thorn; is þ, and &THORN; is Þ, but you changed both entities to Þ). JustinCB (talk) 00:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed(see my talk page). JustinCB (talk) 00:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-12

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The last Global collaboration details report is now available (in English).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• The filters are now deployed as a default feature on all wikis on RecentChanges and RecentChangesLinked pages.
• The filters are still available as a Beta feature on all wikis on Watchlists. Please try them!
• LiveUpdates have been deployed as a default feature for all wikis.
• On wikis using Extension:Translate, translated messages can now be filtered. System messages can be filtered as well, on all wikis. [320]
• "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent, to invite users to use that native feature to update the list of results. [321]
• Pagination and time period selectors are now combined and located on the right on left-to-right wikis. [322]
• When a user wanted to click outside of the filter menu to close it, it was possible to click on "revert" link by accident. It is not possible anymore. [323]
• It is now possible to filter the following events using the Tags menu: Making a page a redirect, Changing redirect target, Changing an existing redirect into a non-redirect, Blanking of the page, Removing more than 90% of a page content, Rolling back an edit. [324]
• Some design improvements have been done to Related Changes page to integrate the new filters. [325]
• "Save current filter settings" menu and legend overlapped the results. This is now fixed. [326]
• Some small design improvements have been done. [327]

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

• Now Content Translation prevents source and target language to be set to same language. [328]
• The dialog for selecting article to translate is standardized. It introduces a new component that is used for the selected page on both the "New translation" dialog and the "Suggested pages" list. [329]
• More space is given to the language filter, to increase responsiveness and show more language names without truncation. [330]
• While searching for a new page to translate, duplicates are not shown anymore for user search input. [331]
• Various PHP warnings and JavaScript errors have been fixed. [332][333]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

• It is now possible to use Special:Nuke on hidden Structured discussion topics. [334]
• The Reply button is not active anymore until something is typed. [335]

Miscellaneous

• For wikis that use ORES, preferences for ORES have been rationalized in Special:Preferences, on Recent Changes tab and Watchlist tab. [336]
• ORES will be deployed on Simple English Wikipedia. That wiki will be able to use the Prediction filters. [337]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Structuring of Ram Khamhaeng Inscription page

Hi. I'm kind of wondering how Index:JSS 006 1b Bradley OldestKnownWritingInSiamese.pdf should be structured in the mainspace. It's a single lengthy journal article (which occupies the entire issue), so it's not really broken into chapters (though it does have distinct section headings). Should the article have its own page, or be a subpage of the journal? (Existing pages seem rather inconsistent.) And should the article itself be divided into subpages? I think the translation itself should have its own subpage so that it can be linked to directly, but what should the subpage titles be? The entire article is titled "The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese: The Inscription of Phra Ram Khamhæng of Sukhothai, 1293 A.D." and the heading of the translation itself is just "Translation", so the current title of the page The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese/The Inscription of Phra Ram Khamhæng of Sukhothai, 1293 A.D. doesn't seem correct. Should it be moved to one of the following?

• The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese: The Inscription of Phra Ram Khamhæng of Sukhothai, 1293 A.D./Translation
• The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese/Translation (Omitting the subtitle, though as a result the reference to Ram Khamhaeng is lost from the title)
• Journal of the Siam Society/Volume 6.1/The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese: The Inscription of Phra Ram Khamhæng of Sukhothai, 1293 A.D./Translation (Subpage of journal, but resulting in overly long title)
• Journal of the Siam Society/Volume 6.1/The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese/Translation (Combining the above)

I'm not planning to work on any of the journal's other articles, though. --Paul 012 (talk) 10:21, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@Paul 012: A little hard to know from the outside of the work. So how about I discuss principles.

1. We identify that we are reproducing editions, and while many are one-off editions, all are not; we so need a plan/scheme
2. We try to remain true to the published work (within reason),

So ... if we do want the journal name, that can be the parent, though I don't think that the volume is that critical; if we do not want journal name that while it is pertinent, in the scheme of things, maybe it is best to just note it on the talk page of the article. We would also do well to note it on the author's page, and we can record that detail when we poke it into wikidata. [Less than perfect, but probably best in isolation].

With regard to subpages and names. It could all just be displayed as one long page, not usual, but has been done plenty of times when real breaks or no logical breaks work well. If you can find logical breaks, then that works okay, just to note that page titles are better when informative. Find the balance knowing that search engines are most likely the way in, though it may be by wikilink. (There is no exact science in some of this, we have to go with the gut, and there will always be a difference of opinion, so we go back to the person most knowledgeable on the work. Soemtimes there is the necessity for compromise.) Thoughts? Questions? — billinghurst sDrewth 03:45, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh you have progress well since I looked at this last. Omitting the root name, let see how this seems as the set out

• page 1 {{page break|label=}} 2 {{page break|label=}} {{auxiliary Table of Contents|with subpage detail}}, and then copyright tag; then subpages
• Bibliography
• The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese
• Translation
• Transliteration

... (not knowing detail here)

Thoughts? — billinghurst sDrewth 04:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

This seems fine to me. But I'm now wondering more about the root name, since you mentioned search engine traffic. This probably means the full title would be preferable as the root name? --Paul 012 (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

@Paul 012: Possibly/probably, the horrid balance between length <-> findability <-> understandability. No right/wrong answer. We can omit journal name and no one will scream and if necessary move pages at a later time. If we include journal name, then we have some work to do at that level to make sense of the journal. No one is going to scream either way as long as we use relative links for navigation within the work. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:55, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I've now gone ahead and created The Oldest Known Writing in Siamese: The Inscription of Phra Ram Khamhæng of Sukhothai, 1293 A.D.. Hope I got it right. --Paul 012 (talk) 02:48, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

You will see that I have had a bit of a fiddle, which you can unfiddle if you prefer, and added the general meeting link—being true to the published work. One important task for you, and one where you are allowed a little internal shimmy. Please add the work to Template:New texts so that it can display on the front page. Congratulations on completing your first work at English Wikisource. Job well done. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:19, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Huge Thank you for the help with WikiProject/Connecticut Coordinating Center

My apologies for the seemingly contradictory edits. I am still getting the hang with things (obviously), so it took me a second to figure out what you did. I really want to thank you for helping me with that page, even if it is a bit unorganized right now.MattLongCT (talk) 03:36, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

@MattLongCT: Ack, did I forget to send the note; hmm still sitting open in the browser. Sorry about that juggling things on screens and at home. Not a problem, please feel free to take questions to WS:S the community is here to help. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:55, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

billinghurst (talk • contribs), no big deal! We all are only human (I, too, have a similar set up). I really appreciate the help either way! [I certainly will follow up with WS:S if so needed.]MattLongCT (talk) 04:11, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

FT protection

Do you have a speedier means to protect all the Mainspace pages of FT selections? I'm fine for shorter works, but there are some lengthy choices this year, including one with about 150 Mainspace pages to be protected. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Can do it mw:Manual:Pywikibot/protect.py, not that I have needed to previously; guessing it would take about 5-10 minutes. AWB can do them serially reasonably easily though repetitively. Would say pywikibot would be the preferred means (after a practice, which can happen at any time). — billinghurst sDrewth 12:08, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

All the instructions for download and installation are written for Windows, which I don't have.

Since this is something I will not be doing more than 12 times in a year (and probably less), could I prevail upon you to protect the two works currently in need of such: Catholic Hymns (1860) (subpages; I've done the main) & Oriental Scenery (I've done the top level and 6 pages in the first subdirectory, but not the ~150 pages in the next subdirectory). --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:40, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Catholic Hymns is done, though I will need to remember to turn off the protection in February as there is currently no expiry option in pywikibot. With regard to Oriental Scenery, I note that at something like Oriental Scenery/Part 4 that the image is not centered, templating issue. /me grumbles about wretchedly complex templates. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:53, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. The Oriental Scenery isn't scheduled till August, so there is yet time to correct issues if they are found. I set it that late because we (a) have a dearth of nominations, and (b) featured a similar work in August 2017. If we didn't get more noms it could have led to two similar works being featured in the same year (with one being a repeat). --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:21, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta. 06:26, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Move template data to WD

Category:Pages using authority control with parameters has pages with {{authority control}} data that should be housed on the WD page of the item. Look to set to utilise PLbot to move the data to WD, save some queries on its use and set up tracking. Need to be a good lad and set up fully-fledged maintenance pages. Oh for more time! — billinghurst sDrewth 06:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Note to self and anyone else interested.

Category:Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania should it be a portal too? If yes, we really need a means to autopopulate (minor) portals so we do not have do lots of work in that space.

If it is not, we need to look to adapt {{authority control}} so it can be utilised with arbitrary access to WD so AC can be filled on such a page. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:26, 20 April 2017 (UTC)