Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in , although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.
Possible bot to determine relevant popular wikipedia pages
I know that there are bots in wikipedia which determine the number of times a given article is viewed per month. The bot(s) involved generate pages like w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Popular pages. I wonder if there might be a way to request that bot, or some other bot, generate a similar list of the articles about either authors whose works are in the public domain and/or specific works which are in the public domain. If it were possible, maybe using such a bot to help decide which books to collaborate on here might be helpful. John Carter (talk) 18:12, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Categorization for authors born before 1900
Authors with missing death date but known birth date still automatically fall into the "Living authors" category, even if they are born in middle ages. There exist, by now, over 200 such "highlanders". I think authors born before 1900 or earlier than some years ago (e.g.{{{CURRENTYEAR}}}-120) should be automatically categorized as "Authors with missing death dates" and death year should be shown as "?", e.g. "1869—?". I'd add such option by myself, but I have no permission to edit the author template.--Nonexyst(talk)17:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
The author is shown as living if the death year is "missing", but not if "queried". So a question mark can be put in place of death year and it will work fine. Hrishikes (talk) 04:40, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I know that placing a quotation mark can resolve the problem, but, as I wrote above, there are more than 200 "highlanders" born in 19th century in the "Living people" category and it takes much time to handle 'em manually, so I think the best way is to solve the problem automatically.--Nonexyst(talk)21:09, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Long s template
Is a long s (ſ) template possible, which would be able to convert all lower case esses to a long s, except for the esses that are placed at the end of words in a given text. For example this text I'm working on Page:Cynegetica.djvu/56. If this whole text could be wrapped in a long s template and automatically convert the esses it would be a great help for people who prefer to keep the long esses in texts like myself. I use find and replace on another program to do it so far, one by one. Jpez (talk) 06:03, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I shall not pretend this approach isn't incredibly ugly nevertheless but {{#invoke:String|replace|{{#invoke:String|replace|{{#invoke:String|replace|I shall not pretend this approach is incredibly ugly nevertheless|s|ſ|plain=false}} |ſ |s |plain=false}}| $||plain=false}} produces I ſhall not pretend this approach is incredibly ugly nevertheleſs.
(Result is coloured green merely for emphasis of output.) Is this anything like what you were looking for? AuFCL (talk) 10:24, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Nice I played around with it a bit, if it is possible to keep the small s in the following situations it will be perfect.{{#invoke:String|replace|{{#invoke:String|replace|{{#invoke:String|replace|Cheers. Cheers, Cheers! Cheers? Cheers-Cheers— etc.|s|ſ|plain=false}} |ſ |s |plain=false}}| $||plain=false}} produces Cheerſ. Cheerſ, Cheerſ! Cheerſ? Cheerſ-Cheerſ— etc.Jpez (talk) 13:55, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
If you're going to do this, I think it's wise to keep the original with the standard s and create a second copy with ſ. Readability should be above trying to match typesetting and even native English speakers will have trouble with it. Never mind that we're also trying to cater to an audience that may not read English that well to begin with. Plus, there are just so many exceptions to when it is used in practice, and I second that it looks ugly. The Haztalk18:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
No, that's a terrible idea; no need to reduplicate whole documents. Personally, I don't think long-s is worth keeping most of the time, except for earliest editions of certain high-profile works, such as those by Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Locke. But where it is kept, and matches the original, then that should be the primary effort. If someone would like to create a second "annotated" version that modernizes the orthography, then we're working on policy that would permit this to happen. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Such a template is inappropriate. If you feel the long-s is content to be transcribed, then you need to transcribe it; editors need to be able to fix a one character error in the transcription by changing one character, not by making some magic change to some magic code. If you want to insist on adding a stumbling block for our readers in the name of fidelity, you need to make sure you're actually being faithful to the original and make it easy for editors to fix errors.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't agree with some of the comments saying the long s is ugly. I think we're just not used to it and also which font is being used plays a role. Personally I'd like to read a text with the original long s since it takes you back to the time when it was actually used exclusively, it adds a flavor to the text that shows exactly how old it really is. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's not that difficult to read if you get accustomed to it. Also I believe that we should be as faithful to the original as possible and use any ligatures or special characters available to transcribe the text as it actually was written. So I understand what Prosfilaes is saying and since it was brought up, I think we can be as faithful to the original using the typography that was used then and also being able to convert the long esses for any readers that would prefer to use modernized typography if possible.
As a lay reader, I think Wikisource should be more friendly to the lay readers, for whom, the text of the ancient works are more interesting than the ancient orthography. Ancient orthography is mainly for researchers, who won't depend on a transcribed text anyway. If Wikisource is to become appealing to the common people, who constitute the mainframe of any reader base, the layouts and typography should be something the lay reader is comfortable with. If the reader needs to get "accustomed" to some archaic style which has no modern relevance in his other readings, then why would he become interested? Long s, ligature letters (f + i/l/f) etc. are things of a bygone era, why are we burdening ourselves with these? If truthfulness to typography is so much required, then why are we not incorporating paragraph indenting and curly quotes? Hrishikes (talk) 04:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
The fi ligature is not the thing of a bygone era; it is the right thing to do in English typography. But when I see, e.g. "Can not find my book (PediaPress)" above, I see an fi ligature, one that disappears when I cut and paste it into this edit box. Because in a proper system, ligatures are composed automatically by the display layer and are transparent at the character level.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I don't think the long s is "ugly" either. It is fanciful and looks very nice to me. I like it. I was born and raised in Virginia, 1st successful colony of "Mother England" and the fanciful long s is used on places where delight to the eye (perhaps confusion to the mind for outsiders) is often used. Virginia was and remains much the same as England in many ways. —Maury (talk) 04:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I didn't say it was ugly; I said that it was a stumbling block to the readers. If you want to read a text that looks like the original, that's what the scans are for. It probably breaks most screen readers, helping blind users get back to the days when they had to have help to read books.
Do not use the ligatures. They are deprecated compatibility characters that aren't well supported and don't form a complete set and Unicode actively rejects any plans to expand the set of ligatures. If you want to see ligatures, set your font for Wikisource to one that automatically ligates. If you want to see the exact ligatures in the original text, use a scanned copy, or make a re-typeset facsimile (there are reasons why those have dropped out of fashion since accurate cheap photographic reprints, but as you will). Don't try to do it in something that uses Wiki markup and turns it into HTML; those are the wrong tools for the job. The long-s at least has a shadowy existence as more than typography, even if it's less than a real letter; the ligatures are merely typography.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Long s has been a topic around here before, and it is in the archives of this page for those who wish to dig. The outcome of that/those discussion/s are:
The template {{long s}}/{{ls}} can be used in the Page: ns, where it transcludes to 's' in the main ns;
There is no requirement to use the template, and feel free to put 's';
Except with works where it is integral to the work then it can be typeset with the character for transclusion to the main ns.
In short, those who wish to play with it can do so, but we don't impose it on our viewers, and for those who are transcribers please note that you will limit those who will assist with your proofreading. — billinghurstsDrewth10:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
For clarity's sake, I was referring to long s looking ugly in our font, not in general. I think that's what other people were referring to as well. I actually read many works from the 1700s in their original form with long s (and find them gorgeous), so I have absolutely no problem with it. As I noted above, I think the accessibility of text is more important to the individuals we're trying to reach with this website though. Also, since my other message obviously wasn't clear, I of course do not think there should be two versions of the text simply because of this. However, the OP seemed determined to have a long s version without using the current methods of templates already in existence so it was a last resort suggestion. The Haztalk14:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Hi, this message is to let you know that, on domains like en.m.wikipedia.org, unregistered users cannot edit. At the Wikimedia Forum, where global configuration changes are normally discussed, a few dozens users propose to restore normal editing permissions on all mobile sites. Please read and comment!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [1]
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [2][3]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [4][5][6][7]
The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [8]
The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [9]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [10]
Future changes
You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [11]
I was under the weather most of last week so, while I was curiously monitoring this particular development string previously, the brain fart since has left me out of the loop when it comes to the current state of affairs. I will endeavor to "see" what's up on this front over on test2.wikipedia.org which hosts a rudimentary version of our namespaces and the PR extension later tonight - hopefully this change is already live there. I'll touch back afterwards (and nobody is preventing anyone from starting without me either). -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:55, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I can see the first possible pitfall already - the new anchor "eats" even more of the left-hand gutter/margin where the embedded page-links in dynamic layouts usually reside. If it does, we can start thinking about a collapsing side-bar (or even better -- something lightbox-ish) and build a permanent "gutter" to host everything from sidenotes to pillcrow markers to embedded pagenum links and anything else you can think of. That way, we might actually gain usable screen-space in the end in spite of any possible new elements taking up more screen-space. -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
We tend not to utilise section headers in our transcriptions, so I think that the actual impact will be minimal for the number of works, though where someone has used sections, it will have the impact as you note. Sounds like we need to hear more about their next skin and make sure that there is a consideration for Proofread Page. — billinghurstsDrewth12:11, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
That's a growing issue as HTML5 expands the h1 thru h6 scheme. Eventually, these new heading elements (header, footer, aside, nav & the rest along with the existing 6) will be just as commonly used as the current h1 thru h6 scheme. So the current practice of centering a div for chapter headings is going to come back and bite us in that aspect as well as a few others. IOW; we should have been manipulating the h2 thru h6 tags to do stuff like that at some point (eliminating the need of adding an anchor template to such centered-div chapter headings would have been likely with the advent of this latest refinement for example).
Nah. That's just me trying to turn Dynamic Layouts into a gadget. It worked for me -- until you mentioned this & then I tried without logging in -- then I got a static label too. So it's reverted.
I'm sorry to hear that -- and with all due respect -- everybody who invested some editing time to work through a dozen or so steps has resolved their issue by now. Some of those solutions are somewhere above by now & as well as still on my talk page.
And "Gadgetizing" the 3 or 4 remaining "hard" scripts is a necessity for keeping the future possibilities for us open. Plus Common.js does not utilize the ResourceLoader like the gadget extension does (& that is primary reason for porting over). -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:59, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
hi, i see that page links on display option are black again. you of course understand how it is disruptive, if editors are trying to transclude pages into articles. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge13:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
I think you're the only one this time - re-worked it last night & its working here. Need some more feedback at least (Browser & Operating system). Anyone else? -- George Orwell III (talk) 13:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
This March, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas for improving gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women, and many important topics are still missing in our content. We invite all Wikimedians to participate. If you have an idea that could help address this problem, please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 31.
All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help this project better represent the world’s knowledge! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
FWIW: The English Wikisource also has a regular Proofread of the Month. We select a work (or works) specifically written by a woman to be proofread each August. Works by women can be proofread in other months as well, but for August we ensure that the voice of female authors is included in the rotation. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:08, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
For what it's worth, last time I checked Wikisource was actually quite good for gender balance. Not quite 50:50 but better than most of its sister projects. The only one that was consistently better was Wikiquote. Not to knock the campaign; just an interesting piece of information. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@AdamBMorgan:, I'm curious, where did you get this info? It seems that the research around this always has a challenge in identifying people's gender, and in determining the criteria for being a "regular user" etc. (My instinct is that you're right -- it seems like there are plenty of women here, compared the other projects I work on -- but I'm curious about the source.) -Pete (talk) 23:58, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Example gendergap chart
@Peteforsyth: It was based on a chart on Tool Labs ("gender gap / edits"; which appears to be down at the moment). It wouldn't stand up as rigorous science but it can give an indication. I believe it is based on individual recorded edits and the declared gender of the user (via user preferences). When it is working it looks like the screenshot example to the right (Wikisource is the purple line). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
The problem with trying to determine the actual number(s) for gender make-up starts with the lack of the User: preference setting. Easy way to see if it's set is to use the magic word to check...
{{gender:Peteforsyth|he|she|unset}}, unset
{{gender:George Orwell III|he|she|unset}}, he
One of the things we could do/should do in order to improve upon this (& some other Preference related issues) is make April's monthly maintenance focus a User: housekeeping-centric one. We can make sure folks visit their settings every so often & setting gender could be highly recommended or something. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the specifics, @AdamBMorgan: and @George Orwell III:. I'm reluctant to sign onto the notion of "highly recommending" this setting -- I have no problem with people choosing one or the other, but I think the pros and cons are too extensive, and too varied for different people, and I'm not so comfortable with the notion of making a sweeping recommendation like that, at least without substantial accompanying information to inform a decision. In my case, I simply have an aversion to putting personal information out there in a structured, machine-readable way. I sometimes do it, but my default is to avoid it. I'm sure many of my family members are irritated that I haven't formally acknowledged on Facebook that they are my brother, cousin, etc. But I simply don't see the benefit to me (or to my family members) of giving that information away in structured format.
With gender on Wikipedia, I think it is a given that the vast majority of people will not choose to enter this info. Perhaps a major software-based effort (like, a big dialog box that strongly requests the information) might change that, but I hope we won't go down that road. I think the reality is that genuine gender-oriented research in the Wikimedia world will need to use social techniques for gathering information, rather than computer-assisted techniques. It's a pain, but I don't see me sharing my info as a viable step toward changing that.
In another place & time -- I'd be of like mind believe it or not. Unfortunately, I think "we" pretty much showed our hand when we went with Pete, George & Adam in our respective User: name selections during account creation. IMHO, User: name recognition is just as "machine" detectable in this day and age as the gender preference setting is believed to be.
With that in mind, I figured there was little, if anything, to be gained by not setting it and maybe others in the same "boat" will reach the same conclusion if any subsequent recommendation is framed in a similar fashion. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:11, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The amount of littering on my street, and in my neighborhood, is astonishing to me. I've lived here a couple years, and never seen a place where it's such common practice to toss every piece of trash to the wind without a thought. Still, I don't participate. My tossing the occasional soda can aside would make no significant negative difference; in fact, it would surely be quickly claimed by a recycler. Still, I choose not to participate. Not primarily because it would make a difference to the community, but because it makes a difference to me. -Pete (talk) 15:25, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
That's fine be me. Nevertheless, the original point remains; development planning is woefully handicapped by the lack of accurate data and this gender profile issue is but one of the many existing problems with using preference settings for sampling purposes. I'm only advocating for better sampling thru more proactive User: participation. In this case, I'm basically encouraging periodical reviews of User's own preference settings and is something we should consider formalizing to some degree imho. Those who are not aware of the setting in question might improve the numbers related to this discussion as a result. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, agreed -- and my core response remains as well; show me a plan that will substantially change those numbers -- i.e., there is reason to believe a statistically significant number of people will begin self-identifying to an extent that is actually useful to researchers -- and I will take notice, strongly consider changing my own practice, strongly consider signing onto the kind of recommendation you suggest. But in the absence of a solid theory of how it will be successful, I am skeptical. -Pete (talk) 21:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
┌────────────────────────────────────┘
Well, I really don't know how to assure you something like that actually takes place in the end (mostly because we only have control over this project among the hundreds of wikis out there). We do know the latest data in the chart linked above is ~2 years old and a bit obtuse for our needs here so the logical first step in a series of steps to follow would be to better ascertain the current status of that Preference setting for a fixed sampling (i.e. relatively recent and/or active contributors) as a baseline -- This needs someone knowledgeable with py or the API to get done. After that, its all uncharted territory where the previously mentioned formal Monthly Maintenance task is but one approach to test. Whatever we decide to try will then need to be re-sampled to see if we managed to improve our own numbers or not. In short, the entire endeavor does not seem promising at face value but we can't be certain unless we try. The alternative is far less democratic.
The usual way they manage to "induce" Users to [re]visit their Preference settings of late is to add, remove or modify some aspect or behavior tied to a setting or settings and then "break" something (intentionally, unavoidably or otherwise) related to that aspect or behavior. Once normal or expected operation is disrupted for Users and the "fix" remedying it hinges on x, y &/or z being done in one's Preferences, the changes are adopted pretty quick and without debate by the relevant User: group or groups (again, recently active contributors). Users who haven't logged in for months if not years, however, will stay "broken" until they also do the same. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:55, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't know if this is even slightly germane to anybody's purposes but as evidenced here, out of 144238 current enWS user-ids registered (no idea how many blockees and auto-non-editing-registrations from sister projects that may include?) 366 have declared as females, and 1475 as male. AuFCL (talk) 04:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for that very interesting link, @AuFCL:. @George Orwell III:, I'm not asking for assurance or a guarantee -- which would clearly be unreasonable -- but for a more complete theory/plan. My belief is that for the foreseeable future, genuine research into the gender breakdown of Wikimedia projects will need to be done using survey-driven data, rather than computer-generated data. I simply don't see how an incremental uptick in self-identification will change that -- or how even a "strong suggestion" could lead to anything more than an incremental uptick. -Pete (talk) 18:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
That's the rub. The gender "setting" does nothing except tag a value with he/him, she/her or null. That's all. One can think of it as a poor man's survey -- which makes sense for an all volunteer, non-profit entity -- or one may not. Unless there is a swell in support for doing one thing or the other, I'll be moving on I suppose. -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we've probably talked this one out (and then continued talking for a while, I suppose!) Always find our discussions enlightening, though, thanks for sticking with it. -Pete (talk) 20:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Commons user attempting to delete files used to verify documents at Wikisource
The phrase "please do not panic" was intended with this in mind, i.e. as a friendly hint that nobody will be hurt and the files will survive at Commons. There is no assumption involved. My apologies if this was misunderstood. Regards, AFBorchert (talk) 18:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
Explaining Wikisource, why it's valuable, and how to get involved
I've long been fascinated by how little-known Wikisource is beyond its core contributors, and I'd like to do what I can to help a broader audience understand it (and potentially contribute).
I just made a 12 minute screencast, focusing on grabbing images from old books. I'd like to make more like this -- for various audeinces (e.g., librarians, Wikipedians, etc.) and documenting some of the more technical pieces of Wikisource.
I'd be really interested to know what other Wikisource people think of this, and her any suggestions for improvement, for future topics, or pointers to existing resources that I may have missed. In particular, I've had some discussion with @George Orwell III: and @Hesperian: recently that relate to this; I would love to hear what you guys think.
Done well, such videos could be a GoodThingTM. I'd be willing to help in whatever way I can, but not until June when my schedule will free up. There is already a facebook page for Wikisource, but it seldom has new posts, and I don't know who runs it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Well done, Pete. I enjoyed your presentation. There are also some works from wikisource placed on YouTube as I and others have done. I added music to those I did. However, I would have also presented a side by side photo of the yellow images with the cleaned images as I do in all of my own works with books and images. They are not printed yellow as we all know and the change to the proper contrast, color, &c is important in presentations like yours. Too, I have one blasted problem with some few images and that being how to remove those lines on an image that mess up the image -- they come from the left and right and sometimes are just splotches. How can the images be cleared of them? Does anyone know? I have done several books and lots of images. There are some excellent books worth saving and a photo "is worth a thousand words" I have skipped good books and went to other other books due to the bad images in uploaded books at various areas on Internet. I recall an excellent book on HathiTrust showing beautiful color plates of flowers that I had to skip because I will not use the messed up drawings in color. So that is a problem that needs to be addressed and resolved. Most everything I can handle when it comes to images including colorizing for personal usage on coffee mugs I use. I can take twisted or bent forward, backward, &c. paper -> image -> and corrected those as well. So I would like to know if anyone on any wiki area knows how to remove those lines traveling to and fro ruining images.
AdamBMorgan also has a site where he was (still?) enhancing wiki works. So too with Erasmo Barresi of Italy using YouTube. Links to the front of Wikisource.org work well. So too with Facebook when enhancing and advertizing Wiki areas.
All of these things presented are not new but neither are they promoted.
Your voice comes across as very clear which is also important. Still, you showed all yellow images while speaking of making wiki areas better. I hope that all of this feedback helps all of us who love wiki areas. Kindest regards, —Maury (talk) 08:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Many thanks for the feedback. @William Maury Morris II:, you make a good point about showing a fully enhanced image. I did not intend in this video to show the full range of what is worth doing on Wikisource, I wanted to focus on the process of getting the original, high quality scan -- because accessing that is essential to any restoration work. But, in hindsight, I would have done well to explain more clearly what I was and wasn't covering. Maybe I could address that with some edits to the blog post. (Unfortunately, I find editing the video rather intimidating -- I think it can be done, but it seems complicated to do it well. I may give it a try. For this, I used Screencast-o-matic Pro -- I have tried a number of tools (see w:en:WP:WikiProject Screencast) and that one seems to be the best combination of cheap, easy, and fairly good. But I will probably continue trying others, and welcome suggestions on that too. A format that is easy to edit afterward would be especially useful.)
My friend Mike, who is not really a Wikimedian but has done some volunteer work for Distributed Proofreaders/Project Gutenberg, gave me some good feedback too, which I mostly addressed with the bullet lists in the blog post. I will definitely consider a screencast focused on image restoration, and if I make one -- or find a good one -- I'd be happy to link to it prominently from the blog post, YouTube page, etc. (One consideration is, I'm not really expert at it. I can do some things, but am not sure I'm the best person to do a demo. I'm also not too confident with free software like GIMP, which is what I'd prefer to use if guiding others.)
I've seen @AdamBMorgan:'s blog, and have been impressed -- though I have not seen it lately. I will probably continue to do these on my own regardless, but would of course prefer to collaborate with others if there is interest. -Pete (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
I also mention it to high-school English teachers. Such a teacher once asked me whether there was a Concordance in print for Moby-Dick. In response, I pointed out that Wikisource had an copy that could be searched electronically for free. It made her AP Literature class that much easier to run, and allowed her students to work on their papers from home. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
EncycloPetey, when you think or promote books like Moby Dick please remember that Matthew Fontaine Maury is mentioned in it (also 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea) and more than once in each book. The point I make here is those books were based on living persons to assist in book sales and fascination. M F Maury will be found on that easily searchable book (important since hard copies is not searchable) - Chapter44, bottom left, Melville writes of M F Maury and "charts" that people knew M F Maury was working on. Melville declares that it so happens that what he (Melville) has written has just been done by M F Maury of the National (Naval) Observatory when it is the opposite -- Melville inserted what Matthew Fontaine had already been working on and had just completed. This was done, perhaps, to promote Melville's book because Whale Charts did not exist as M F Maury created them -- so Melville writing about "Ahab" pouring over whaling charts comes from M F Maury's work on whale charts. It is the footnote of Chapter 44 which I have used for years as my email.
Image Quality
You asked about an example of an image on my Talk page. It was among the very images you used in your presentations. Those are all yellow but I also noticed, as I have many times when enhancing images, you showed several examples. I refer to Wilson Price Hunt "Wilson Price Hunt" on mouse over)
His image is ugly even though it has been worked on. See those lines in that image? That is what I was writing about. Too, it looks like the fellow has been blurred a bit but I don't know. I don't think a man would look as bad as he does regardless of just the lines problem. It looks like an image that was done on a painting with the canvas lines showing. Anyhow, you spoke and have written about "enhanced images" and this is not an enhanced image as I think of the word enhanced.
I admire your work with the "Screencast" on YouTube and elsewhere and hope that you will work up something on true image enhancement. I fully understand you could not, or rather I could not, do everything in one presentation. The old "Windows Movie Maker" also works well as opposed to "Screencast" of which I am not familiar. They are all tools with which to explore and work with. I did 2 works on Cycles on YouTube using Windows Movie Maker, a very old program. I Used images from WikiSource, created a compilation, and added proper music -- it is important that music goes well with subject matter. It promotes that specific book here on WikiSource because I also added text on colored background and showed links to WikiSource.Org
(Arbitrary outdent) @William Maury Morris II:, thank you for all the detail. Just a quick response for now, more later: the lines you are referring to are called moire. Worth reading up on. I do know some techniques for reducing it; they work well on some images, not so well on others. It won't work well on this example (short version: because the dots are relatively large. Also, though I refer to this as a photo in the presentation, I'm sure it's a painting, which I think explains the ugliness!) Here is an instance where I (mostly) removed the moire, and then darkened and sharpened the image. I'd be happy to do a short screencast to illustrate what I did. I'm out of time this morning -- more later. -Pete (talk) 15:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I've done a bit of work also on 'de-halftoning' images (see commons:File:John_E._Hurst_Building,_Baltimore.jpg for example). The appearance is an artifact of halftone printing methods), but I don't claim to be at all adept at it. The method I am aware of involves using a (usually very slight) Gaussian blur to blend the dots into a more averaged appearance, and then an unsharp mask to restore an 'in focus' appearance. This usually seems to end up with an image that looks slightly blurry, however. The are probably better methods, and some kind of presentation on how to do it would be a very good thing. Revent (talk) 23:33, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that's basically the process I use -- with one addition, in cases where the halftone dot is of similar size to the scan resolution. Then, I will first increase the image size, so that the blurring happens over a more forgiving array of pixels. (For instance, if your scan is at 200dpi, and you have an 80dpi halftone screen, you might want to do this. If you have an 80 dpi halftone screen and a 1000dpi scan, it might not be worth it. I do this more by "feel" than by science, I wish I could comment more specifically on when you want to do this!) -Pete (talk) 23:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Scaling up the image is something that I had not considered... I admittedly have not done this a lot, just for a few images where someone asked because they appeared really bad in use. I agree very much, though, that it does seem to largely be a matter of 'feel' as to what parameters to use in the filters... it seems quite dependent on the exact image. I would say a higher scan resolution seems to have a huge impact on the results, so scaling up the image seems like quite good advice. Revent (talk) 23:53, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
The moire (the technical name for the kind of halftone artifact this is) generally results from scanning (or printing) at a resolution that is not very compatible with the resolution of the dots used in the halftone process. As a general rule, the higher the scan (or print) resolution, the less likely there will be moire. But when the numbers are close enough to each other, things get pretty ugly. (Imagine the patterns you'd see if you look at a spinning bicycle wheel through a picket fence…same thing.) If the moire has already been introduced, a good amount of quality has already been lost; you generally can't fix it without blurring detail of the image itself. But, yes, bumping up the resolution before doing that blurring will help some. (Also, fooling with the radius etc. of the blur function is worth trying. I usually use trial and error to narrow it down to the minimum amount of blurring that eliminates the dots.) -Pete (talk) 00:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
(nods) My attempts at this type of thing haven't been dealing so much with moire patterns themselves, per se, but simply cases where the actual 'half-toning' of the image itself created something that looked bad at typical resolutions, due to ending up sufficiently 'zoomed in' that the halftone 'optical illusion' failed. An actual true 'moire' pattern itself would indeed be the effect of an interference pattern between the scanning resolution and the 'resolution' of the halftone... Gimp actually has a filter (descreen) that is explicitly intended to remove actual 'moire' patterns, but I have yet to experiment with it. Revent (talk) 00:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
To make what I mean a bit more clear, you can have a moire pattern in the actual fullsize image itself (due to scanner artifacts) or a moire pattern visible in resized images (due to a harmonic with the frequency of the halftoning and the resizing ratio). The method I mentioned would work for 'de-halftoning' a fullsize image (which would prevent moire patterns being visible in resized versions) but would probably be unsatisfactory if there were actual moire patterns in the fullsize version (from the scanner). Revent (talk) 01:03, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
You're right -- thanks for that important clarification. Sometimes it's moire we're dealing with, other times it's simply the halftone dot itself -- and there are subtle differences in how to handle each. Very cool to know Gimp has a filter for moire -- I will give that a try. -Pete (talk) 01:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Actually, @Revent:, I think the Tabitha Brown example above illustrates your point nicely. I blurred it enough to get rid of the halftone, but there is a rather subtle moire pattern in the background. I certainly wouldn't want to blur it to the point of eliminating that, as that much blurring would obscure many of the facial features. But in that case, the moire is minor, so it's not a big deal. -Pete (talk) 01:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, the original has both halftoning and a faint moire (which is still visible in the final version).. you did (IMO) a very good job of removing the halftoning, but that didn't affect the actual 'moire' pattern itself. (I do agree that it's unlikely that an attempt to do so would be worthwhile.) That image is also a good example of the drawback that you have to watch for, particularly around the eyes... the final image is not actually 'less in focus', but has a tendency to appear so when looking at fine details.. you can counteract that to some degree with an unsharp mask, but it seems to improve the 'low-res' appearance while giving visual 'rainbow effects' on edges in the full scale. It's very much a matter of experimentation and practice, as you noted, which is why an actual video or two demonstrating the process would be great. In general, though, it seems like the 'best' answer in all cases is simply a higher resolution scan, as it then gives better results when removing the halftoning. Revent (talk) 01:19, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [12][13]
VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [14][15][16]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [17][18]
The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [19][20]
You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [21][22]
You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [23][24]
If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [25]
"Layout" option in index-transcluded pages disappeared
Recently two options have been added to sidebar section "Display options", one to show/hide page links, another to show them inside or beside text (the latter doesn't work), while the layout switcher disappeared. Is there a way to get back old page links and layout switcher? I use Firefox & Chromium (Ubuntu 12.04). --Nonexyst (talk) 17:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, now (though I use another computer with latest versions of the same browsers) it sets the layout to every Wikisource page. ----Nonexyst(talk)08:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
i see someone was coding with the layout options. they disappeared for me from the 4th to the 10th. it would be nice to put a notice here, so we wouldn’t be guessing and working around. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge21:18, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Input for improving integration of Wikidata in watchlists needed
The following was a message asked to be distributed to communities, and relates to where the information, that we pull from Wikidata, is changed. For example, interwikis, VIAF, etc.
“
Hey folks :)
Data quality and trust is what we're currently concentrating on in the
development around Wikidata. A big part of that is improving the
integration of Wikidata in the watchlist of Wikipedia and other sister
projects. I just opened a page to collect input on how we can improve
it.
—Lydia Pintscher (WMDE), wikitech-ambassadors mailing list
For those who have an interest, it would be great if they could have a look. Comment there if you like, or we can comment here and provide a collective feedback. — billinghurstsDrewth23:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [28]
It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [30][31]
Problems
Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
A puzzle piece icon () now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [32][33]
You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [34][35]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [36][37]
You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [38]
Sorry I thought you meant the pagelist wasn't showing in the index page for some reason. Scan resolution in edit mode was set to 0 on the index page. It's working fine now. Jpez (talk) 19:40, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I also am seeing the two toolbars but the weird thing is that it is only on some pages and also the proofread tools are missing when it happens. Jpez (talk) 11:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Giving examples would help. Also telling us what preferences that you have set, in this case for toolbars. Every Tuesday is software update day, and there can always been unintended consequences with changes taking place in one part that can effect us with Proofread Page. — billinghurstsDrewth11:49, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
"Enable enhanced editing toolbar" set to enabled seems to cause this for me (XP/Firefox 36.0.1.) Turned it off and the problem went away. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:20, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Is this the problem of having both toolbars enabled? If so the preferences should be changed so only one of them can be enabled at once.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:51, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
A very quick check suggests the 'Enhanced editing toolbar' needs to be overhauled to be compatible, it also not displaying the Special Characters box when that option is selected (XP/Firefox 36.0.1) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:54, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I also unchecked enhanced editing toolbar and at least I can do some editing now (I can use OCR, zoom in out etc. Before these weren't available.) so the problem must be something with the enhanced editing toolbar as ShakespeareFan00 pointed out. I am using firefox with Linux. Jpez (talk) 17:07, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Interestingly, this problem occurs in Windows (7) Firefox versions 36 & 37 and Internet Explorer 11, but not in Chromium (Chrome) or Opera. It also works correctly Linux/Xubuntu in all browsers (FF, Chromium and Opera).— Ineuw talk03:29, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
@Ineuw: I'm sorry I don't even know what the legacy toolbar is. In preferences in the editing tab I unchecked (Enable enhanced editing toolbar) and (Show edit toolbar) is checked, with these settings I have what I assume is a more basic toolbar which at least allows me to do some editing. I tried enabling the enhanced toolbar today to see if maybe it would work and what I noticed is that the first time I load a page to edit in the page namespace everything is fine. If I refresh the page or click on any other page the problem with the two toolbars and no proofread tools persists from then on. I tried logging out and back in and the problem was still there. I tried restarting firefox and the problem was still there. I tried rebooting my computer and the problem was still there. But as as I said there was no problem with the first page I tried to edit this morning. I also tried upgrading firefox from 29 to 32 today but that didn't help. Jpez (talk) 04:20, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
@Jpez: Sorry for not clarifying "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy toolbar. I assume you are using Windows. The problem is with our Mediawiki software update of Tuesday. It was mucked up somehow. The Mediawiki programmers test the software on all browsers, and this problem may have to do with local modifications to our English Wikisource. The problem is that in other browsers and Firefox in Linux work fine, (see my comments above). There is nothing we can do until someone in the know will look at it. — Ineuw talk04:35, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
No worries @Ineuw: I'm not complaining I'm happy enough with the basic toolbar myself, I'm just trying to help whoever may be able to troubleshoot. I'm using Linux, not windows and still have the problem. Jpez (talk) 04:47, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
T88027 seems to be the root of the problem(s) along with a few subsequent tweakings/changes. Looks like in the attempt to "log" WikiEditor based edits, some(?) one(?) of the module dependencies no longer jibe. Adding the 'schema.Edit' module for those who customize WikiEditor in some fashion seems to rectify the problem however. I added it to the OCR gadget as well but I'm not sure if that will halt the double loading of the WikiEditor toolbar or not. More when I find it. -- George Orwell III (talk) 09:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
The djvu file is jiggered and needs reloading. EB1911_-_Volume_26.djvu (0 × 0 pixels, file size: 95.2 MB, MIME type: image/vnd.djvu) — billinghurstsDrewth11:20, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
On a separate note re the work. You seem to be doing a whole lot of wikilinks that are not apparently native to the work. Generally the practice that we have had in such encyclopaedic works is to wikilink where there is a q.v. indicator. If you utilise so many template transclusions you will also run into the template expansion limit and it will simply stop. Also, for intermediate pages, there is no requirement to use section tags, we would generally only use section tags on partial pages on the first or last when using <pages>. — billinghurstsDrewth11:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [40]
VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [41][42][43]
When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [44]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [45]
I've noticed when downloading texts in the past in the epub format and reading them in my ereader that the text alignment was not justified. I didn't pay much attention to it until today.
Personally I don't like reading the main text of a text that isn't justified and it puts me off to be honest, also as we try to remain as pure and true to the original text as possible I think this is a major issue. If text is justified in the original (which I believe most texts if not all are) I think it should also be transcluded as such.
I didn't pay much attention to this issue until today when I did the first transcluding of some chapters I've been proofreading where I saw that the text alignment when transcluded isn't justified. You can see the difference here where I tried justifying the text with the justify template I found. From pages 1 to 8 I've used the justify template in their page namespaces and from 9 to 24 is how the text is usually transcluded. When justified the text looks quite nice when transcluded except that the pages don't blend as you can see when each page commences. Is there a way to fix this?
I had a quick search and couldn't see this issue being discussed before. I think this an issue that we seriously need to look into.
There are positives and negatives. You've mentioned one of the positives: a professional and readable look. However, one of the negatives of text justification is that, when there are images present or when the reader is using a mobile device with a narrow screen, the justification forces giant gaps in the text, which looks unprofessional. This is one area where the change in medium from physical book to electronic one means that we really cannot be faithful to the original. An electronic book cannot (and should not) enforce a certain page width and certain line breaks. We do not have the technology to insert hyphenation and other features that allow justified text on the printed page to look the way it does. If we want justification, my feeling is that it should be an option selectable by the end-user, and not something forced onto every reader. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:20, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Jpez: As far as I know, at present there is no rule here which prohibits justified text. I am not going into the pros and cons, because your primary question seems to be about how to do it. This should not be done in the page namespace, that won't transclude properly. But this can be done in the main namespace, by wrapping the transclusion as under:
Thanks Hrishikes I'll give it a try, though I agree with EncycloPetey that it shouldn't be forced on end-users. I think it would be good if we could toggle it on off somehow. Personally I don't mind some of the extra long spaces that come sometimes from not being able to hyphenate random words automatically, I prefer this to the left aligned text which just doesn't look right for me and bothers me. Jpez (talk) 04:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure that Hrishikes' suggestion is a good idea. The result would be to wrap divs with different text-align attributes inside this overall one. There is a way to carry justified text over between pages in the Page: namespace using the alternate forms of {{justify}} covered in the template documentation. However, my preference is to keep the {{justify}} template for particular layout purposes e.g. for a quote at the beginning of chapter like I did on Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/265. For general mainspace use, justified text is already built into Layouts 2 & 3. It's just on Layout 1 (the default) that a ragged right margin appears. See Help:Layout for more info. Quite how the various layouts translate into epub I'm not sure. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Even though I've played around with the layout button I never noticed that it justified the text until now. I was hoping it would come out justified for the epub export as well but sadly it didn't. Hrishikes suggestion worked fine with the text I'm working on and hasn't bothered any of the other formatting. I also tried exporting it to epub and it looked very nice on my ereader which is a nook simple touch. Jpez (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Every reader is accustomed to justified text, that being the norm for printed matter, which everyone has read, at least in school. Apropos ebooks, those marketed online by Amazon and Barnes & Nobles generally have justified text. I have a huge collection of English ebooks in epub/mobi/pdf/pdb/lrf/rgo and other formats, all of which have justified text. Unjustified text may be convenient for a few readers (I don't know), but that is certainly not the majority position, else the Amazon people would have taken note. Unjustified text is generally adopted for original online writing; but Wikisource works are generally recreations of printed matter, so there is not sufficient reason to deviate from this universal feature of the original books. Hrishikes (talk) 01:23, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
I totally agree with Hrishikes. I just quickly scrolled through a few commercial ebooks I have on my Nook simple touch and only found one single hyphenated word, which word was 're-arranging'. Of course all books were with justified text. Although I used Hrishikes suggestion to justify the text on the book I was working on, and it looked beautiful on screen and on the epub I downloaded and I was very happy, I ended up removing the text justification in the end since not everyone agrees with using it. Jpez (talk) 04:21, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia Signpost interview
I figure to be trying to start a regular "column" in the w:Wikipedia Signpost detailing activity at other WMF entities, maybe initially on a one-story a month basis. The first such piece is an interview with, pretty much, anyone interested in taking part, which can be found at w:User:John Carter/Wikisource column. I figure to eventually start one such userspace page per relevant WMF entity which can be reused for future columns on either a regularly-scheduled or as needed basis. This first piece may not run for several weeks yet, which might not be to our disadvantage, as it gives those involved a chance to put together a piece which they could use to best promote wikisource and/or encourage other wikipedia editors to become involved. Any input is more than welcome. John Carter (talk) 17:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@John Carter: I am comparatively new here, joined this site last year. I am working in some specific areas, info here. If you are interested, you can send me some questionnaire. Hrishikes (talk) 05:07, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Ideally, the Signpost interviews are supposed to include comments from as many people as possible. So @Charles Matthews: who I know is active in both projects would be very useful as well, as would anyone else who chooses to respond. John Carter (talk) 19:39, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
For those who have an interest in the linking metadata (authority links) that we utilise on author pages (predominantly) and works, there is an interesting blog post where VIAF discusses their decision to migrate their linking from English Wikipedia to Wikidata. The announcement and the resulting comments are worth perusing.
For Wikisources it should have an advantage as the Wikidata landing page displays all existing articles (where linked) on the Wikimedia platforms, and that it includes any links that we have for English and other language Wikisources. This is instead of someone landing at English Wikipedia, and then needing to stumble upon the enWS link.
Comment This change increases the value of our authors/works being added to Wikidata, and emphasises that we need to continue to develop our strategy for data additions. One could say that we have been somewhat reactive in doing tasks at WD to our works/authors, and pretty much leaving the WD people to determine what we have and how. — billinghurstsDrewth01:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [46]
You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [47][48][49]
All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [50]
You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [51]
VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [52]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [53]
You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [54]
You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [55]
You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [56]
VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [57][58][59][60]
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 1 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
I apologize if this has been brought up before. I searched the archives but couldn't find mention of it.
I was trying out the mobile view yesterday. Besides the normal formatting issues that come with the mobile view, I noticed that the navigation footer is missing in the main namespace. In my personal opinion, I would consider this a must for Wikisource. Right now if you read to the bottom of a page, you are required to scroll all the way back to the top of the page to move on to the next page. Is this something that is already being fixed, or does a request have to be made? Thanks, The Haztalk15:58, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
Its just one of the many things on my "to-do" list but addressing this first requires resolving some "layout" issues with the mainspace navigation header template itself. Spend some time in Mobile Mode and really go through some of our existing body of mainspace works; you should soon come to realize (as I have) the current previous & next design in our header frequently skews any hope of consistent, "centered" title, author, & like info that the header template typically retains for us. And since the footer template is based on the header template (in a nutshell), there is little to no point in porting the footer over to mobile mode until these mainspace navigation header "[re]design" questions are resolved in a desktop view forum first. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:40, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
No worries. I realized what you meant after I wrote it. Hence my other mention at {{block center}}. I'm not sure how much play we have with the CSS used here, but what about using a stylesheet that has media queries to create a responsive header template? I know we can't write the queries inline (nor would I want to), so I'm asking if we can write them somewhere else to adjust the CSS for navigation. The Haztalk23:55, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I would LOVE to "pretend" this is day one of Wikisource and start with a "clean" primary .css file (or sets of .css files) to accomplish what you've describe and more. And I have taken some small steps with that 'ultimate' goal in mind already; I have recently moved all the pre-existing .css files to be less old-school, unintelligent MediaWiki:Common.css centric and more resource loader "governed" -- primarily aimed to result one day in a refined & streamlined MediaWiki:Gadget-Site.css file (then leading to 2 or 3 other .css files as needed).
The main hurdle I'm now faced with - to put it bluntly without intending insult - are the 2 or 3 dozen old-timers around here who still use (or think they use) all the current crap currently defined in our .css files. Beyond that is the issue with Mobile Mode; it uses a completely "foreign" skin than any desktop view can AND no .css file or files are automatically employed from desktop view to mobile mode -- and THAT means whatever "we" do here needs to styled inline to remotely render the same over there for the immediate future (the perfect example - our mainspace navigation header... even after my recent re-write to be all div based!!). Thoughts? -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:54, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh well that's perfect then. No need to change a thing. ;-) I'm surprised that Mediawiki uses a completely separate CSS file for mobile. I never even thought to check that. There's only so much we can do inline, and of course that itself would be a hack. I can't say I have any ideas, but that's mainly because I don't know what's possibly on this site and what's not. I'll have to think about what to do here. The Haztalk14:28, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Possibility of a "Sister projects" report in the Wikipedia Signpost
Hello, all I'm a volunteer at the Wikipedia Signpost, the Wikimedia movement's biggest internal newspaper. Almost all of our coverage focuses on Wikipedia, with occasional coverage of Commons, the Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki, Wikidata, the Wikimedia Labs; we have little to nothing to say about Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, or Wikivoyage. I'm interested in writing a special long-form "sister projects" report to try and address this shortfall. Is there anyone experienced in the Wikisource project with whom I can speak with, perhaps over Skype, about the mission, organization, history, successes, troubles, and foibles of being a contributor to this project? If so, please drop me a line at my English Wikipedia talk page. Thanks! ResMar21:04, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: If no one else puts their hand up, happy to talk to you via Skype (though it is not on by default); strine-warning and at +10 time. You can always catch me in IRC as sDrewth, #wikisource or #wikimedia-stewards and ping me — billinghurstsDrewth03:31, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
The advanced toolbar icons of bold and italics has undergone yet another change. B to A and italics went from I to A. Why? Who was bothered by this? — Ineuw talk21:53, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
Personally, I'm at the point now where I manually force most everything WikiEditor toolbar-button wise but my first recommendation regardless is to wait until after the usual Tuesday wmf core update to pass before filing a bug over it (it might fix itself). At the same time, you might want to triple check your language settings and your universal language selector font & input settings (access typically found via the little gear icon next to Language menu for the latter two; user prefs for the former). -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:29, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
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 join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [62]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [72]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [73][74]
You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [75]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [76]
I would like permission to correct the Charinsert macrons' character order (and any other character set) because now they are in reverse order.
It should be capitals first and followed by the matching lowercase as nature intended. Furthermore, if possible, I would like to insert two spaces between the characters using    if possible, because some are too close to another to click on.
@Ineuw:: I assume you are objecting to the placement of lower case before upper case, but be aware that there is no consistent order in the Charinsert right now. Some listings have the uppercase letters first, while others have the lowercase letters first. The macrons line is just one of those that has lower case given first. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks AuFCL. The issue came up for me because there is no order and there should be. Uppercase, followed by lowercase. I was looking for characters and it confused me. This problem existed with the Hebrew character order as well until someone from the language group corrected it, because I didn't know that it's a site matter. I don't mind re-ordering them and not asking someone else to do it.— Ineuw talk01:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
For the ordering, it seems like your preference rather than rightness and wrongness. It is a listing plain and simple. Nature isn't involved. — billinghurstsDrewth03:26, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Sorry to disagree but there is a character order (in Unicode). Lowercase Ä ä always follows the uppercase. There are two issues here. Somebody assembled the list backwards and also included characters with combinations of diacritics on the same row, like the combination of a macron and an accent -> Ḗ.
I propose that these esoteric combinations should be listed on their own rows or separated as the Accents are: acute and grave.
I've taken the initiative and reordered some character sets, but some are "made up" and don't exist in the Unicode set. e.g: the lowercase ẗ with diaeresis has no matching uppercase character but it can be combined, in fact most characters can be combined diacritics. — Ineuw talk05:34, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Stewards confirmation rules
Hello, I made a proposal on Meta to change the rules for the steward confirmations. Currently consensus to remove is required for a steward to lose his status, however I think it's fairer to the community if every steward needed the consensus to keep. As this is an issue that affects all WMF wikis, I'm sending this notification to let people know & be able to participate. Best regards, --MF-W16:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Questions about some formatting changes since being somewhat inactive
1. When editing in this space, I see double editing toolbars (not customized). My customized toolbars are correct in the Page namespace, however... @George Orwell III:?
2. See how there is now an "extra" line space between a poem title and the text when using {{block center/s}} as opposed to {{block center| See: Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/77 for differences. Not sure what changes have been made to bc/s & e, but it makes text formatting inconsistent now...
3. Lastly, in two sections of my User page (Top section & Activity section), using a pipe used to separate items/text into two columns. This no longer is the case. What is an easy alternative to using a pipe (if that's the right term)?
That's not just on Wikisource. It seems to be an issue Wikimedia-wide. I definitely get it on Commons and WP as well. However, it was mentioned above if you want to read more.
Fixed. Not sure why WS was putting in a line break there though.
Just FYI, that template already has a title parameter, so you might prefer to use that instead anyway. See below for an example from the page you were referencing.
Interesting. You were essentially hacking the fact that the template was originally based on tables. You will want to use {{multicol}} or {{div col}} to get actual columns. You may prefer to use {{Float left}} as that should handle what you're trying to do even more dynamically.
Promised example:
First line:
{{block center|title={{larger|BERRYING}}|{{fqm|'}}{{sc|May}} be true what I had heard,—<br />
BERRYING
'May be true what I had heard,—
Earth 's a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force,'
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the river-side.
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me.
I said, 'What influence me preferred,
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?'
The vines replied, 'And didst thou deem
No wisdom from our berries went?'
I hope you don't mind, but I just changed your user page back to using tables for now (the quickest way to get exactly what you had). Feel free to change it to suit your needs. The Haztalk22:51, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
@Hazmat2:But your recent tweak of block center now sends first/last line spacing askew. See poem above. In my opinion, block center rendered fine as it was... It was bc/s/e that had too much space... Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Yeah that was Mediawiki inserting an extra paragraph mark. I've come across that before, but forgot to adjust for it when I thought I was actually fixing it. All set again. Thanks for letting me know. I triple-checked the two different templates and they both work correctly now. The Haztalk23:10, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
@Londonjackbooks: As for the continued generation of non-customized, double toolbars - I'm giving things one more chance to see if anything in tomorrow's core update fixes things on this front all by itself. If not, I'll have to tangle with the developer bureaucracy a bit more forcefully to either fix it asap or revert the changes that introduced the behavior in the first place (and FYI - I will be calling for "back-up" from you folks if need be at that point as well). -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes it's enabled, and what I've noticed is for the first page I load the OCR button is there, but after each subsequent page load it disappears. Jpez (talk) 05:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
Which toolbar are you using; 'classic' or WikiEditor? If WikiEditor, make sure the 'show [classic] edit toolbar' option is not enabled in your preferences.
And fwiw, time is running out for both the classic & Wikieditor toolbars so "fixes" are likely to be fewer and farther in between in the future for one or both of the current editing toolbar interfaces. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
After playing around with the settings it turns out 'Enable wizards for inserting links, etc' option was to blame.' I disabled it and the OCR button is back. Btw I also I tried playing around with the 'live preview' and 'Show preview on first edit' options as I just saw them today and nothing changes either. I have neither a live preview and the or preview on first edit when enabled. These options would be very helpful if they are what I think they are.@George Orwell III: I am using wikiEditor.
Never mind after my first edit I figured out you have to click the show preview button for it to work. I thought the changes were shown as you type live. Also preview on first edit is working now for some reason and I'm happy. Jpez (talk) 03:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
I know this is getting pretty far off-topic but I highly recommend ensuring "Live Preview" remains "off" for all users on WikiSource at least for the immediate future. This option has a very long bad reputation for interfering with both user and system javascript, causing obscure malfunctions in things like "Show changes" (during edit sessions) to messing up Index: page operation etc. etc. etc. Not worth the effort. Just search for "live preview" (on all pages) and you will for certain find plenty of bugs solved by turning this iniquitous option off again (Yep, I have been bitten! My 2¢.) AuFCL (talk) 06:53, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Apart from the language being a (little) clumsy what is wrong with using several invocations of {{Other translations}}? (i.e./e.g. {{Other translations|Index:Anandamath, The Abbey of Bliss - Chatterjee.djvu}}
{{Other translations|Anandamath (Aurobindo)}})
Please pardon if I have missed a fundamental point here.
I don't think there should be more than one available in the template. The way it reads tells me that it points to a single disambiguation page that links to all the versions available. In this case, Anandamath should be a disambiguation page for the three translations. The Haztalk03:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Agree with Hazmat2 here, with the exception that this is not a disambiguation situation rather it's a versions situation. The special header {{Translations}} should be used on the versions page that points to the various translations. See Help:Disambiguation and the notes at the templates for more. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:58, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Apologies, I use the terms interchangeably. Also, the current text at Anandamath is actually titled "Dawn over India" as far as I know. Perhaps we can get a bot to move the pages and then use Anandamath as the "version" page. The Haztalk04:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
No, this example is not specific for this case. There are only two translations in case of Agamemnon. A versions page is fine, but how to link to other translations above the heading of each translation? Repeated invocation of the template, as suggested by AUFCL, will render the language clumsy (as also noted by him). So my original question remains unanswered. Hrishikes (talk) 04:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Actually, I did answer your question. Did you look at the two linked translations, as I suggested? Both link to the versions page, where all other translations will be listed. This is the best possible approach, since the links in the individual translations will never need to be edited; only the versions page will need to have new items listed. This method will work for any number of translations without changing any templates or cluttering the space above the header. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:52, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
What is the wikisource policy about incorporation of amendments to Law pages?
Hi,
en wikisource has page Indian Copyright Law (Indian Copyright act 1957), I want to incorporate year 2012 amendments to this statute. So what is the wikisource policy whether do I start a new page with act with incorporated changes or do I incorporate changes to current page Indian Copyright Law its self. What is the wikisource policy in this respect ?
We have no particular policy to cover this situation. However, it would be best to keep as separate pages. The reason for this is that works that became PD under the original act would have done so with different rules to those that pertain today. I suggest that the root page becomes a disambiguation page and the 1957 version of the act is moved to Indian Copyright Act 1957. The page with the 2012 amendments could be called Indian Copyright Act 1957 (Amended 2012). Have there been other amendments to the act prior to 2012? If so, it is worth considering making pages for the interim versions. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:06, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Additional opinion. We publish what was published. So the 1957 Act is published as it is. If the later Act is published as amendments then we publish the amendments, that said they always generate a new copy of an Act so that would also be publishable in its entirety. We don't update the pages to reflect the law as it is on the day, these are not active legislative pages, they are copies of works at a point of time. — billinghurstsDrewth12:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
1) I suppose we are clear now about So the 1957 Act is published as it is. If the later Act is published as amendments then we publish the amendments this part as agreed.
2) I agree that we need to add User:Billinghurst's above staement to a legal disclaimer for wikisource.
3) I understood User:Billinghurst's statement but still I am not clear enough about following part where logically these are two different things but are not they practacally almost the same >>"....that said they always generate a new copy of an Act so that would also be publishable in its entirety. We don't update the pages to reflect the law as it is on the day, these are not active legislative pages, they are copies of works at a point of time."<
@ User:Billinghurst on this I am waiting for your reply since it will help me improve my understanding.
And now there are some practical things also :
A) When I closely studied (my perception remained that), on internet 'a new copy of act Indian Copy Right Act 1957' after incorporation of 2012 amendment changes is not available (now I have updated it on en wikisource), and most of the laymen are effectively referring to out of date i.e. old version which is neither the complete original of 1957 (since it is not available on the internet) nor the one updated after 2012; These laymen include our own indic wikipedian community too.
B) Here at en wikisource when I closely studied Indian Copyright Law document I realised it is not an original copy of 1957 but effectively a copy of effective copy of the act from 1999 to 7th June 2012 that is the period between two amendments. Which I updated for 8th June 2012 that is effective date of 2012 amendment.
C) For copyright amendment act of 1957, 2012 amendements are 5th amendment law. @ User:Billinghurst if I am correctly understanding your position that "...that said they always generate a new copy of an Act so that would also be publishable in its entirety.." Here do you mean to say that we shall have (six+five= 11) versions of this act that is first of 1957 version then we have 5 versions after each amendment and 5 versions generated versions after incorporation of amendments at each of 5 amendment acts, do you mean to say that all these 5 generated versions be imported in totallity from somewhere but wikisource editors should not update them themselves.
d) i) If the case is as said in above point C; I will need to revert all the changes made by me at Indian Copyright Law in last couple of days. ii) Since indic wikipedians (and for that matter most of Indias online common population) does not have another option for updated copy If I have to remove my changes from here and shift to wikipedia namespace on some wikipedia.
@ User:Billinghurst after taking into account above aspects please do guide me what course of action do you suggest me.
Thanks and warm regards ( and sorry for my bit leanthy post)
That is realy great info (which I did not know) As you said It seems original of 1957 version is at http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/textofcentralacts/1957.pdf this link 1957.pdf is 800+ pages and also 1992.pdf also some 300+ pages and my net or pc is slowing down before comple download. I would be happy if some one can help to break (long PDF) and upload pdfs for individual acts on wikisource. That will be a good and usefull addition.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [82][83]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [84]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Slightly off topic, should we have something like English WP's {{Contains Bengali text}} in this case? It's not a standard script so not necessarily installed by default on computers in the English-speaking world. The Haztalk14:38, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Bengali is a standard script, being the script of the fifth most spoken language of the world, also used for Assamese and Manipuri languages. In MS Windows, the Vrinda font contains Bengali. I don't know about other OS. Hrishikes (talk) 14:46, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Chinese is spoken by a few people as well but that was only standard in Windows within the past few years. I'm fairly certain Bengali is standard as of Windows 7, but I also painfully remember having to install it on any Windows versions before that (one of the reasons WP has that template). However, it was just a question for the crowd here. The Haztalk14:51, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
The font is available in Windows XP SP2 and above, as per here and here. As per my personal checking, it is available in Windows XP/Vista/7/8. I don't know if the situation is different in Western countries. However, I find no problem with the use of the template. Anyway, I would be obliged if anybody could help with the CharInsert. Hrishikes (talk) 16:13, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
I understand. My apologies for not having been more specific. In the US versions of Windows, they were available as downloads, not installed as a standard. For recent Windows versions, it also costs extra (Pro version required) to use any but those as a system language, though that's obviously not applicable. I had to set up languages for my family that don't speak English which is how I came to find all this out. Of note, the few flavors of Linux I use (Ubuntu, Mint, and a few others) don't have them installed by default either. I'm just saying that a good number of people might see little squares instead of the correct script. That was my only point. However, I'm aware that this box also detracts from the "beauty" of the text. The Haztalk16:55, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
A font template won't solve it, you still need to enter the character. I can pick the character from the character map while using laptop/desktop, but the problem arises when I am using android/mobile. Hrishikes (talk) 02:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
If you are working in Windows I recommend you to download this free software Babel Map with which has all the Unicode characters, including Bengali and lets the users to assemble & copy and paste characters.— Ineuw talk05:19, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't require the CharInsert when I am using Windows, as mentioned above. I can pick the characters from the character map. But the CharInsert is handy when using android. That's why I was requesting for inclusion of these characters in CharInsert. Hrishikes (talk) 05:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Billinghurst has just made the same offer I was about to. Just let us know exactly what should be in the list and in what sequence. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Still not getting it. The drop-down list is as before. Showing "Bangla" characters and not the new set added under the name "Bengali". May be the cache problem, which I seem not to be able to remove, after hard purge/null edit etc. Hrishikes (talk) 12:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I am talking about the drop-down menu available on clicking the "Special characters" button on the toolbar. The menu goes on as Latin-Latin extended-IPA-Symbols-......-Hebrew-Bangla-Tamil-..... and so on. The new set named "Bengali" is not appearing even after cache refresh and restoring browser to default. Hrishikes (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
AuFCL is right (of course), we're looking at different sets of symbols. I don't usually use the wikiEditor toolbar and when I do, I've turned off the Special characters button. I'm using the CharInsert gadget (first one under the Editing tools section on the Gadgets page) and it's there that the Bengali characters list has been added. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:15, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
It's a message to the binder to make sure that the fascicle beginning with this page is put into the correct sequence. Binder's marks are not required on enWS, because we are not duplicating the original appearance of a work, but rather are making its content available. That said, some editors are choosing to leave them in, so we need to check other volumes of this series to see what the PSM Project is doing. The equivalent page in Volume 31 (Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/221) has omitted the mark, so I recommend that you do so too. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:47, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
We never keep it. Just omit it from the footer. I saw it on the page mentioned, but didn't want to re-edit the page.— Ineuw talk03:24, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Have a look into the future
Take a look at the envisioned default skin of the future in a mock-up of the Winter Wikipedia article HERE (enter thru the prototype link). You can navigate away from that Winter article only so much in case that was not made clear & not everything "works" as expected either but its pretty robust as it stands today.
Interesting but I didn't see any great value in it. I do not like it being "likely" to give us any grief unless it is something that can worked out in a fairly short time--about a month? Something of value in my view that would be a system of automatic transcription of an entire book into one downloadable file with all pages included. —Maury (talk) 02:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Lucky(?) for us, they seem to be "stuck" on the Wikidata --> languages part(s) and "progress" has pretty much come to a standstill as a result. One can never know if or when such log-jams become clear; diligently checking seems the only sure fire way to know what the latest status might be -- otherwise we'll find our fate out like we always seem to; a notification of a [massive] change just shows up here one day as humble announcement or something. -- George Orwell III (talk) 03:04, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Right at this moment my internet connection is rather bandwidth-constrained. I am still recovering from having my eyeballs "bounced" by the incredibly clunky paint artefacts demonstrated on that page. Right this moment I think it might be unusable (also in my perversity I seemed to hit all the "Not Yet Implemented" interface warnings.)
I'll reserve final judgment for an occasion when a fairer test may be performed (but bear in mind how the thing behaves when not every user has South-Korea-standard connection speeds, Hmm?) AuFCL (talk) 03:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Egads, what an awful Wikipedia-centric idea. This would be highly detrimental to other projects, especially Wiktionary. This monstrosity should be taken out back and shot. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:36, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Well it is a mock Wikipedia article so I can't pass judgment based just on someone's favoritism but I was looking more at the general layout and element settings than anything so content specific as, say, the right-hand info-box overkill present. To me it looks much like Mobile Mode does now; basically -- it is also without "flex"-based margins but with a clunky static header. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Maybe it's because I use widescreen monitors, but I really like the idea of the right sidebar pushing the text to a smaller space. I like widescreens so I can split my screen, etc., but it can be painful to read all the way across at times. I hope it's implemented here, albeit with flexible CSS . I still think the overall look is too much like mobile WP though. The Haztalk21:21, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
The eventual convergence of the default desktop skin(s) with the default mobile skin -- which I believe goes by the name "Minerva" for now -- seems unavoidable as far as appearances go. They might not share exactly the same structure underneath but they will render almost alike at some point down the road (as far as I can tell that is).
I would love to be ahead of whatever the future might hold for us by replacing the current Dynamic Layout scheme with a more "standard" CSS3-Flex approach now to make for a smoother transition at that future point in time while still retaining what we've become accustomed to over the years -- but that would be a lot of experimental work to say the least. The other sticking points for getting something like that done is mostly because Flex isn't "fully supported" in MediaWiki just yet plus there is still way to much IE8 traffic (has no flex support) across the bulk of WP projects the last I heard.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [86]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [87]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [88]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [89]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [91][92][93]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [94]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [95]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [96][97]
I am pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections. This year the Board and the FDC Staff are looking for a diverse set of candidates from regions and projects that are traditionally under-represented on the board and in the movement as well as candidates with experience in technology, product or finance. To this end they have published letters describing what they think is needed and, recognizing that those who know the community the best are the community themselves, the election committee is accepting nominations for community members you think should run and will reach out to those nominated to provide them with information about the job and the election process.
This year, elections are being held for the following roles:
Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the board elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud
The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.
The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 20 to 23:59 UTC May 5 for the Board and from 00:00 UTCApril 20 to 23:59 UTC April 30 for the FDC and FDC Ombudsperson. This year, we are accepting both self-nominations and nominations of others. More information on this election and the nomination process can be found on the 2015 Wikimedia elections page on Meta-Wiki.
Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections -at- wikimedia.org
I noticed that the link isn't working at Public Law 92-261; it displays it as [[Portal:Acts of the United States Congresses/Acts of the 92nd United States Congress|92nd Congress of the United States]] instead of as 92nd Congress of the United States like it should. I didn't know where else to ask, so if you could help me fix this problem, it would be appreciated. Dustin V. S. (talk) 01:56, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
This page was blanked a few days ago by low volume user with edit summary "copyrighted material". I have no idea if it is or isn't but seems a bit sus'. Moondyne (talk) 02:43, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Any CopyVio would have been after-the-fact - there was no actual content beyond an Amazon like blurb on one page and copy and paste of the ToC on the other. Speedy deleted both for lack of any meaningful content. -- George Orwell III (talk) 03:08, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
For what it is worth, even before the blanking this particular per project was "sus'" anyway. I happen to have a much-beloved physical print of Waley's translation (which nowhere admits to a date of translation; but claims to have been translated from a 1921 Chinese print.) Waley died in 1966. Anyway my book contains 30 chapters; but the "copy and paste ToC" GOIII refers to contained something like 99 chapter entries... Need any more doubts? AuFCL (talk) 04:09, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
request for creation of a template available on Wikipedia
Hi. Please note that in Wikisource the footnotes of the Page namespace will be converted to endnotes. I am not sure if you are aware of this, and whether the template will give you what you want. To test it, copy the template into a subpage User:Siddhant/Refn of your account and refer to it as <ref>{{User:Siddhant/Refn|}}</ref>. This may work.— Ineuw talk16:37, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
If somebody does decide to invest the effort of importing this template locally may I further recommend adding (should be fairly trivial) support for follow= which appears to be missing from the WP version. This lack of this feature would not matter greatly there but due to WS frequently transcluding multiple pages would be a significant limitation in this environment. AuFCL (talk) 22:26, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [98][99]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [100]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [101]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [102]
Problems
Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [103]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [104]
You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [105]
You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [106]
You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [107]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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.
GRAPH extension is now live everywhere!
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Starting today, editors can use <graph> tag to include complex graphs and maps inside articles.
Graph tag support template parameter expansion. There is also a Graphoid service to convert graphs into images. Currently, Graphoid is used in case the browser does not support modern JavaScript, but I plan to use it for all anonymous users - downloading large JS code needed to render graphs is significantly slower than showing an image.
Potential future growth (developers needed!):
Documentation and better tutorials
Visualize as you type - show changes in graph while editing its code
Project history: Exactly one year ago, Dan Andreescu (milimetric) and Jon Robson demoed Vega visualization grammar usage in MediaWiki. The project stayed dormant for almost half a year, until Zero team decided it was a good solution to do on-wiki graphs. The project was rewritten, and gained many new features, such as template parameters. Yet, doing graphs just for Zero portal seemed silly. Wider audience meant that we now had to support older browsers, thus Graphoid service was born.
This project could not have happened without the help from Dan Andreescu, Brion Vibber, Timo Tijhof, Chris Steipp, Max Semenik, Marko Obrovac, Alexandros Kosiaris, Jon Robson, Gabriel Wicke, and others who have helped me develop, test, instrument, and deploy Graph extension and Graphoid service. I also would like to thank the Vega team for making this amazing library.
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—Yuri Astrakhan <yastrakhanwikimedia.org>, Wikimedia-L mailing list
) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [32] [33]
Comment This change increases the value of our authors/works being added to Wikidata, and emphasises that we need to continue to develop our strategy for data additions. One could say that we have been somewhat reactive in doing tasks at WD to our works/authors, and pretty much leaving the WD people to determine what we have and how. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Done Index:Indian Copyright Act 1957.djvu, Index:Indian Copyright Act (3rd Amendment) 1992.pdf, Index:Indian Copyright Act (6th Amendment) 2012.djvu, Index:Indian Copyright Act (5th Amendment) 1999.djvu, Index:Indian Copyright Act (4th Amendment) 1994.djvu, Index:Indian Copyright Act ( 2nd Amendment) 1984.djvu, Index:Indian Copyright Act ( 1st Amendment) 1983.djvu. Hrishikes (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Done Refresh your cache and it should work. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 10:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
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