Could I propose you to look into the Gujarat Riots page.It is hardly neutral and at this point of time it reflects the opinions of BJP sympathisers who have two fold agenda:
1. Mix it with the Godhra train fire episode.BJP has been promoting the line that it was a natural repurcussion of the burning of train while the media and secularists tried to separate the two. (http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE14Df01.html)
2. Showing that the events were beyond control of Narendra Modi the chief minister and improving his image when his actions and inactions were decried in national and international media and he was denied visa to the US on these grounds
Ideally the presentation of the article should be:
1. Summary
2. Causes
3. Effects
4. Point of view of Hindu organisations and BJP
5. Point of view of Indian National Human Rights Commission
6. Point of view of International Human Rights Organisations and Governments
6. Enquiries into the incidents and their reports
7. Criticisms of the enquiry by BJP
8. Arrests and Court cases
9. Present Scenario
Thanks - there are some users who have presented their blatantly biased POVs on talk pages - they should be removed from editing
Hello, Bakaman. If you look at the edit history, you'll see that it was 62.189.60.30. Also, I didn't make the above-referenced proposal to please that particular user, but because I thought I might be able to help. Editing is now underway at 2002 Gujarat violence/2006 revision -- I hope you will participate according to the guidelines on the article's talk page.
One thing I might request you to do is kickstart the project ONLY when Netaji gets back. It is an article he cares about, and since I have Wikiproject:Bengal taking most of my time, he is usually the only person who moves the article from anti-Hindu stance to just facts. Right now, sorry to say, but the article looks like it was written by the Pakistani government. I have deleted some inflammatory lines. If you have any influence over terryJHo, please tell him not to make the page extremely POV, other than that I have to say you are a brave soul. BakamanBakatalk04:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I guess using "cesspool" was too adventurous but calling women and children Hindu zealots is extremely POV. I made some changes to the article and decided not to comment on the talk page anymore because of hounding by certain users that hate me. I will try to balance the article with sourced and fact-based edits.BakamanBakatalk
I have been working to cite sources. Could you tell me what "NC" means? TerryJHo has suggested that the whole attack on the train and riots were a conspiracy. Actually, just look at the article talk page its easier to sort through. BakamanBakatalk15:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like you to note this edit justifying the death of civilians in mass killings which the British daily Guardian referred to as "rightly described as Genocide" [1]. I suspect if edits from these editors could ever be neutral and encyclopoedic. Are there no guidelines/ actions on WP against such hatemongering. 62.189.60.3017:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• RE: Johnny Lee Clary - Please help
Hey there, my name is Nick, my username is Potters house and I have encountered a problem with trying to provide any information about Johnny Lee Clary. I have posted this post off to other staff members also. I am not sure if this is the best route to resolve this, but can think of no other way.
The article Johnny Lee Clary has been deleted. I have known Johnny through telephone conversations and email for a short time now (about 3-4 months). He recently came and shared his life story in for our church group for the first time just two weeks ago. Before I met Johnny I became interested in his story i.e. his conversion from the head of the KKK in the US, to being a Christian Minister who now teaches against race hate groups. I found the article Johnny Lee Clary as it still is today, deleted, except for some small talk. If you read the talk you see what I have said at the time (notice I have gotten no reply, probable my fault as I don’t know heaps about WIKI policy). From my understanding Johnny Lee Clary was posting as The KingOfDixie and looks like he tried to change a few things on Wiki concerning the KKK. While this is a controversial subject, Johnny being the former leader of the KKK would probably know a thing or two and be able to contibute, but that’s another story. He eventually made an article about himself i.e. Johnny Lee Clary. Johnny being quite new to Wiki and ignorant of rules of conduct found himself at odds with some admins and had his site deleted.
Whilst observing Johnny over the last 3-4 months I have noticed that he is very outspoken against race hate groups such as the Neo Nazis, Skinheads, KKK etc. This, more often than not, lands Johnny in the hot seat. He has experienced persecution from racist groups for his departure from the KKK and voiced opinions against these racist organizations on his webpage, www.xkkk.org. Johnny has also received multiple death threats.
Because of his bold stance against these racist groups Johnny has become accustomed to hatred directed at him by those same groups. Johnny concluded that perhaps the guy who deleted the page Johnny Lee Clary was a white supremist. I am hoping to clear this up. Before he told me this, I started to create J L Clary, after hearing nothing from posting in user talk on Johnny Lee Clary's article. I wasn't 10 minutes into the J L Clary article when it was issued a deletion notice, and then before I had time to reply (about 5 minutes) it was deleted! I was amazed. I told this to Johnny and he said the main reason he was told that he couldn't have an article was because he was not prominent enough.
When David Wilkerson came to our town hardly anyone knew or cared, yet David Wilkerson is allowed an article (and rightfully so), but more people know of Johnny. As to whether he is famous or not, just Google search him and see all the TV interviews and radio interviews he does. He hangs with some of the most prominent Christian leaders in Australia. Besides this, just being the former KKK leader should be enough for an article (he doesn't even get a mention in the KKK one, and would be deleted). He was also a Pro Wrestler. So he is prominent in Christian circles, he is prominent amongst race hate groups, and he is also prominent in the WWE wrestling.
Johnny asked me to test the waters for him to see if he was being persecuted by someone from a race hate group. So I created some sites, John ClaryWade Watts and Operation Colorblind - the name of Johnny's Ministry. These have been fine until yesterday. I cannot understand why these sites are just issued a deletion notice? Just because they mention JLC? I was hoping to discuss these things but they are just deleted. The one on Wade Watts is about a black gospel preacher who was one of the leaders in the civil rights movement in the US and was good friends with Martin Luther King. He took Johnny Clary under his wing and even ordained Johnny as a minister (to this day Johnny is the only white man ordained in the All Black Baptist Church). But his article is up for deletion because I mentioned Clary and had a link.
That is why I am writing to you to see if you can help. It seems to me that the person(s) deleting all articles which even mention Johnny Lee Clary has an agenda. I thought that wikipedia admins had to keep a neutral stance on every article. It seems like this guy has a vendetta against JLC. Why delete the Wade Watts article. That is guilt by association and could be proof that all deletions are because of racial discrimination! I hope this is not the case and would think that it is politically motivated, as Johnny is a strong supporter of George Bush and Antaeus Feldspar of Kerry.
My hope is that Johnny will be able to have an article like any other famous person, minister, former KKK leader, or pro wrestler, and that Johnny and anyone connected with him and his ministry will in future have certain rules set in place that do not allow the wholesale deletion of the articles associated with him, but that they will be at least discussed.
I thank you for reading this long winded post. I have only been using WIKI for about a year myself so I need your help, I don't really know what else to do. I hope you can help. I personally think that Johnny's story is one that is beneficial to the cause of reconciliation between races and to the3 unity of society as a whole. It would be a shame if WIKI became known for having covert racists. Of course I hope that this is a misunderstanding and that all will be cleared up soon.
Also note his contributions:
Featured articles:
· African American literature -- My first featured article. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback. While I didn't start the article, I obsessed on it for an entire month and wrote most of the copy.
· Ku Klux Klan -- I began work on this article after it became a featured article. Since then I've mediated several editorial disputes on the article (including one of which kept the article from being delisted as a FA) and made a large number of edits. Potters house00:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC) Nick.[reply]
This topic has been heavily discussed on the talk page and a consensus has been reached. Then you just came and added deist without any evidence or saying anything on the talk page. Can you please show me where Washington says he is a deist? Unless you can provide it you are adding an opinion. Historians do not say he was a deist they simply do not know.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but looking at the talk page I can see no such consensus. Also, if you compare the current version with one from July 30 I believe that I have simply been one of many people to restore what has long been the general consensus about Washington's beliefs.
Also, I didn't "just come and add deist without any evidence or saying anything on the talk page" -- I simply restored information that someone who was not logged in removed in the last few edits -- again, as have many other editors.
Sry but an anon editor added deist to the infobox with absolutely no source whatsoever while Washington's religion wasnt listed for at least over 3 months for a reason. He added it from august seventh (Today):
If there is a source where Washington says he was a deist I will not touch it but until then it needs a source. Anon editors cant just come in and change big info without sources.
Both sides agree that the subject is a matter of debate as well as historians do not know. I dont understand why you keep reverting.
You asked me for advice on what I think regarding the reverts to the Truck article. The anonymous IP 65.87.105.7 added the word 'human' to create the sentence "A truck is a motor vehicle for human transporting goods." Regardless of the fact that this sentence does not flow as well, it makes it unclear if the truck transports goods for humans, or is for humans to transport goods. You reverted this change back to the original sentence, a change which I support. The anon IP came back two minutes later and made the same edit again [2] - which I promptly reverted back to your edit. The note you left on my talk page says "I do take an accusation of violating policy rather seriously", but I have in fact reverted the anonymous IP 65.87.105.7. The edit summary (automatically inserted and not of my creation) was directed at him, not you. I am sorry for any confusion this revert may have caused. --Llort12:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply, Llort. I now see what you mean. I've been inactive for a while, so I'm trying to be sensitive, but I was oversensitive in this case. Also, I haven't been around for the development of many of the automated editing tools, so I didn't really grasp the "good faith" part, but it is now clear. I'm sorry to have bothered you about it. Thanks again, BCorr|Брайен12:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand completely since my edit wasn't about the rfa itself, but I won't revert. Thanks for your courteous note. Attic Owl15:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again -- yes, your edit wasn't part of the RfA dicsussion, but that's actually the point. When there's a note asking that an archived page not be modified, it applies to the entire page -- otherwise the integrity of the page can be called into question, and there's also the slippery slope regarding what edits are acceptable: small notes? typos? misstatements? clarifications? changes of mind? And thank you for your courteous note.
Brian, it was great meeting you too. Have seen your name since the beginning of the Wikipedia epoch, so am glad to have a real-life meeting. Hope you don't mind if I contact you about your views on the early history. Cheers! -- Fuzheado | Talk11:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input. I did not mean to sound "final" as you put it. I merely said that I think all sources need qualification so that bias is not there. Since many sources ARE biased (liberal socialists, secular fundamentalists and radical Islamists vs hindu sources) we must be careful of this terrotory.Thanks and have a nice day.Netaji23:50, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would rather ask this user to mention all the sources that he considers as neutral and then we can have a detailed analysis of who is wrong and who is right.A secular fundamentalist would probably be more neutral than a Hindu or Muslim fundamentalist.Do you agree BCorr TerryJ-Ho
• Civility
Yep, this is certainly civil. "move La Vérité to Truth#Classical philosophers section as per talk. Note: This is not removing the picture, as that would be in violation of User:Jim62sch's edicts". Primary point is that I despise censorship, and everytyime I see someone try to remove that picture I am reminded of Ashcroft having several statues covered because the showed, gasp, a breast. I assume you were also refering to my edit on the AfD for Truth Theory, yet there was certainly nothing uncivil in that edit -- Google is over-relied on. Additionally, I was hardly just responding to you, but rather making a point re Google and it's use to defend articles on Wiki. Sorry if you took it as incivility, but that was not the point. •Jim62sch•12:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BTW: I know that you're a good editor, you needn't defend yourself regarding that (at least not to me). I just get miffed about certain things and sometimes type in a fit of pique (or high dudgeon).
Oh, one other thing, this "(remove misleading faux infobox opinion about La Verite which has been placed into a box as if it were some official Wikipedia policy infobox)" was Jon Awbrey's, which everyone more or less agreed upon. •Jim62sch•13:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply, Jim -- I appreciate it. I also apologize for my edit summary -- I was a bit testy, and I didn't need to mention you in it or refer to an edict.
I made an (erroneous) assumption that because the wording in your reply was similar to the infobox that you had created that as well. I am also sorry about that. I understand your position on these issues and detest Ashcroft (and Gonzalez) as well.
In terms of the picture, I had never though of any implications there might be from its presence on this page -- I just like the colors and the subject, and I really enjoyed my drive on the day I shot it (driving from Houston to Anderson, South Carolina in one day, via the SE corner of Oklahoma -- my only time in that state).
What I removed from the squid and the whale article was unfounded speculation with no textual verification that made the article unencyclopedeiac,as was that on the Andre 3000 article (speculated details about a celebrity's personal life taken from thier ability to ACT on a show are not wikipedia-worthy), and the description on Affirmative action as positive discrimination constitutes NPOV. Simple edits to articles, which anyone reading them with a certain degree of scrutiny might make, do not merit a talk page topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.192.235 (talk • contribs)
I'm afraid you still need to use the talk pages and edit summaries and not simply delete information without explanation or comment. This is especially true as you are editing without an account. Thanks again, BCorr|Брайен20:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please re-read my edit summaries and the talk page (over the last few months) for the article. Also, I find it strange that you would use the term "vandalism" for my reverting to an older version to restore information that was part of the article being listed as a candidate for a good article, while not immediately restoring the dozens on in-line links. In any case it's been cleaned up now. And you might think twice before long-time editors of vandalism. Please see Wikipedia:Civility for more. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен17:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your recent edit summaries were misleading - in both cases, your revert was removing information; you weren't reverting the removal of information. None of Justforasecond's edits yesterday or today removed any information from the article. The fact that the article was a candidate for a good article and that you have been editing the article in question make your actions in removing significant amounts of information that much more questionable. Argyriou18:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looking back at them I can see why you might say this, but here is the situation. I'm including screenshots of the diff of this edit(with the summary "restore deleted information from the article and remove POV additions. I don't have time to re-add the web references now, but I will do that later today") that I made on my screen, it looked as though my edit (on the right side of the page) was adding in significant chunks of text. I did it quickly, and didn't look carefully through it to see that the balance between the left and right columns was uneven, making it look clearly like I was adding a lot back in, and simply removing some links to external (from Wikipedia) web pages.
I will be more careful in the future, but I will continue to watch the article for balance and to help keep it from turning into an article that focuses primarily on the criticisms of Dellums as hypocritical and as a sell-out. BCorr|Брайен22:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why did you use automated anti-vandalism tools here? The editing seemed to be a quite reasonable attempt to improve the article. Jkelly22:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. It seemed like a questionable set of edits with a somewhat obnoxious edit summary, and was from an anon IP on a very prominent page. I did think about leaving or reworking it, but the removed information from the first edit, I felt, ought to stay in the article, and the second edit I thought was not well written and its point was a bit fuzzy, so I went for the revert button. Perhaps it was a bit "the easy way out", but it was a judgment call on my part. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен22:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for removing my note on the Open Tasks page.. I have no idea how that one happened. Was trying to leave a note for an anonymous user... --Bobblehead23:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No problem -- sometimes the database does weird things. There was a while when notes on talk pages for one anon IP would show up on a completely different page. The mystery of the wiki.... BCorr|Брайен23:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When an user is engaged in what is approaching a revert war (as you were in the article as is demonstrated in the article's history, using the revert tool (a.k.a. "admin rollback", and which automatically does not give a separate explanation other than reversion to the prior editor's version) is reasonable and justified. You made the same basic edit 16 times in less than a month despite a number of different editors removing your edits as Nor following NPOV. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен17:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• hi BCorr
Hi BCorr. If you have noticed my comments have been very civil. But some guys seem to act like big daddies around here, having their own vested pre-concieved notions, stalking the users who do not adhere to their diktats, don't u think so?
Violates the spirit of Wikipedia to some extent I would venture to say.
--Geek197512:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if calling someone a fascist is violation of Wiki-etiquette, fascism is a doctrine, some subscribe to it and advocate it, some don't.... should'nt be an offence, or am I wrong here? --Geek197507:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What a load of bull from Geek. He knows perfectly well TerryJHo meant "Nazi". He called the democratically elected president of India a fascist also in the same page. I request that you confront him and tell him and his tag team buddy Geek to stop name-calling. Also just because myself and Netaji do not subscribe to his POV, he has tried to get me indef banned. BakamanBakatalk14:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that this looked like a commercial plug, however I would like to point that the recipes are not the products, these are free recipe developed kindly by professional cooks:
So it appears to me that you are not consistent in your strategy, either this is authorized or not. If it is not then fair but remove the other commercial plugs. If it is permitted please reinstate my link.
Is is against policy. I noticed your addition and it did merit removal. However, I didn't go through and check all the links in the article. That in no way means that other commercial links are OK. We're all just volunteers here, and we notice and fix what we can. I will go back and remove the link you mentioned, now that I'm aware of it. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен19:02, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. I left you a welcome message on your talk page.
I am new to editing articles in Wikipedia, so please forgive me for my mistakes. I read the Wikipedia:Spam page that you recommended. When adding the Hospitality Club link to the article, my intention was not to promote a site. I only thought that as the Hospitality Club is a peace organization, it should be mentioned in the peace article. After all, the Hospitality club has peace building as an objective and this is related to peace in general. That's why I added the link.
Thanks for your reply. There have been a number of people in the past who are connected to hospitality services and have shared your feelings about puttings links into the peace article. The general consensus here is that despite the goal of building goodwill and peace, these links do not belong in that article. The other issue is that generally external links are to provide more information on a topic, but not as a way to drive traffic to the external site. While it is a judgment call in some cases, sites with numerous Google ads or other revenue-generaing links (such as the one you added) usually don't make the cut unless they are extremely relevant to the article -- such as the AFS hospitality link you added to the AFS article.
I removed the deist from the info box because there was no information or source on it. So its ok to have unverifiable information on wikipedia? What kind of encyclopedia is this?
Having read the article on Wikipedia in the New Yorker, I was inspired to look at the history behind my entry, and noticed your quick and timely removal of the awkward slam inserted into my profile. I wanted to say I appreciate it, and was curious as to how you could identify and fix it so quickly.
Also, I have a question. The last item of my profile was added immediately upon a legal trouble I had last fall. I decided to leave it up, as recent news that was germane, but thought that, after a year, I would see about having it taken down, replaced with information about the book I am writing for Dutton on the subject. Would this be appropriate? I don't want to be accused of whitewashing my profile, on the other hand I don't think that means I have to leave insignificant negative slurs up -- the case was dismissed.
Neil Steinberg
Dear Neil,
Thanks for your note. I think I was probably just checking the recent changes to articles and noticed that someone who wasn't logged in made an edit wihout a summary, and when I looked at the article about you -- as you saw in the history -- the previous edit added in material that was neither neutral or terribly informative, so I removed the whole thing. A lot of the volunteer editors and administrators (like me), do our best to check for vandalism and biased editing when we have a bit of time. It's actually an important part of the culture of the "Wikipedia community."
In terms of the article about you, I would say that you should not edit it yourself unless you create an account and log in, and then first leave a note on the article's discussion page (talk page) explaining the proposed change. Even then, you might want to wait a couple of days, and then change only things that are completely incorrect. Alternately, you could leave a note on the talk page asking someone to make the change. But you are right to be careful and ask -- as you know, many people (including some of your colleagues in the media) assume that anyone editing their own entry is up to no good.
And finally, I will look at the article carefully and see if I (as an unbiased party) think I should edit it.
There is no correspondence between geek, terryjho and myself anymore. This is in response to his hate attack of me [5] and his vandalism of my user and talk pages. I am sorry to bring you this news but I feel it is necessary. The only Muslim user I will discuss with (at the moment) is Bhaisaab. I am really shaken by the past couple of days on wiki.(look at my talk page/talk page history)BakamanBakatalk22:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
User:SqueakBox doesn't like me. He has insulted me in the past and, recently, he was blocked for posting the following insult in his user page: "My greatest achievements here [...] have been [...] and restoring José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero from the POV of another user who claims to write about saints." (See the entry for August 21 in his block log) My nick, Hagiographer means just that, "to write about saints", so it's clear that comment is a direct attack against me. Furthermore, when I came to the article about Zapatero SqueakBox had already been banned from editing Zapatero's editing articles by the Arbitraton Committee (what can he restore?). And, in fact, I've never contributed or deleted information from any of those articles. I simply reverted some vandalism SqueakBox introduced as part of his harassment campaing against other user who was also banned by the same Arbitration Comittee decision. So, that paragraph is pure slander.
Taking WP:NPA into account, I believe that paragraph should be deleted or, at least, marked like what it is, a personal attack. I did just that [6]. However, SqueakBox removed it and User:Guettarda protected the page here. SqueakBox has had a lot of problems with other users and, sometimes, Guettarda has taken part in them. For example, in User:SqueakBox can be found a barnstar given by User:Guettarda in which he says that SqueakBox has gone beyond the call of duty in his fight against "strange" people in the article Javier Solana. WP:NPA states clearly that comments must be about content not users so it's clear that Guettarda and SqueakBox have cooperated in, at least, dubious actions against other users. It's also clear Guettarda is biased in favor of SqueakBox. In this edit in my talk page, he implies that I like looking for conflict, that I'm obsessed with SqueakBox that I've to settle down and so on, all violation of WP:AGF and unpleasant remarks.
It mustn't be forgotten that according to WP:OWN, user pages belong to everybody and I don't believe a wikipedian has any right to transform his user page in a platform to attack other users. So Guettarda's supposed protection of SqueakBox's user page (really of SqueakBox's insults) is very difficult to defend in my opinion.
I'm simply asking fair treatment. I don't believe I have to see how the Wikipedia is populated with insults against me. I believe SqueakBox can contribute useful edits without transforming his user page into a gallery of attacks. So please, either unprotect the page so WP:OWN can be applied, or remove the negative comment or mark it as a personal attack untolerable in the Wikipedia or, at least, explain to me why I have to bear that kind of treatment. SqueakBox has been blocked for that unpleasant remark, What is the use of blocking him and then keeping the insult? Thank you. Hagiographer07:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Question from Boston Globe
I'm a reporter for Boston Globe writing a story about Wiki entries for local cities and towns. Interested to talk to contributors to articles. I saw your user name on the Newton history page. I'm on deadline, alas. Please contact me at thomascaywood@xxxxxxx.com by Sunday, Sept. 17, if you'd be willing to do a brief telephone interview about Wiki. Thanks! Thomas
Hi. I recently did a bit of an overhaul on the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge entry, including setting your picture (ZakimBridge20040307.jpg) at the top of the infobox. I was wondering where you were when you took the picture, so I (or you, or anyone else, for that matter) could give it a more descriptive caption than just the name of the bridge. It's obviously up the Chuck (heh), but I don't know if you were on a boat or another bridge (the Longfellow, maybe?). Either way, it's a great picture. Thanks. JayDuck04:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could you figure out what is going on with this. It has been protected for almost 3 months now, with this fork, and I don't know whether the fork is good to go, etc. —Centrx→talk • 16:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
help
help
Hi, i need your help
One of your admin, Doc glasgow , is threatening me and blocking my account. We have a dispute in the definition on living person.
Please contact me for more information.
Thanks
Senatorto
Race and intelligence
I don't know if you've looked at the article Race and intelligence recently, but it has over the years become a stockpile of information to support the genetic hypothesis. Myself and a few other editors have been working hard over the past few months to add more information about environmental factors, and other aspects of this topic, such as media portrayal to try to balance the article. I notice that you were active in the early debates on this article, and I'm hoping that I can convince you to come back and get involved again. What do you say? futurebird18:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just found the Lillian E. Smith page. It's very nicely done. I'm no good at using Wiki world bread crumbs. Could you point me to the person who put the page up so that i might thank them.
Robert Fichter, for the Lillian E Smith Foundation
You are being recruited by the Money and Politics Task Force, a collaborative project committed to ensuring that links between government officials and private-sector resources are accurately displayed in relevant entries. Join us!
Thanks for uploading or contributing to Image:WilliamSloaneCoffinJr-pressphoto.jpg. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use. Suggestions on how to do so can be found here.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Rettetast19:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the ever-evolving photo policies. I didn't see this in time, but I have replaced with a new image with a proper license. Thanks for your work! -- BCorr|Брайен11:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
User:Bcorr/Plautus
User:Bcorr/Plautus appears to violate current WP norms against posting emails and against maintaining pages of evidence on other users ("attack pages"). Since you do not appear to be very active anymore, and since the case is long since settled, I'm going to take the liberty of deleting the page. Please let me know if you object. ·:· Will Beback·:·04:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Will -- I really don't log in enough anymore -- I usually just fix things on the fly as I see errors. It's not a big deal, but thank you for letting me know. -- BCorr|Брайен01:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Orphaned non-free media (Image:WilliamSloaneCoffinJr-BiographyCover.jpg)
Thanks for uploading Image:WilliamSloaneCoffinJr-BiographyCover.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! As a bureaucrat on Wikipedia, I'd very much appreciate it if you would fill in your details on the newly updated Bureaucrats page. Thanks! Majorlytalk14:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Second response available. I will assume from this point that you will continue to monitor that location until we reach a resolution. Cheers, Hertz1888 (talk) 04:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Data Crystal
Me and my mate were wondering if there is any way of taking over (becoming a bureaucrat) on this wiki: Data crystal , we are asking you because it has been inactive for a long time, and we were hoping to try and take over to help fix it up. I have tried asking people on this wiki but no one is ever on besides me, the only other contributions are random IP addresses that spam the articles (even more then they already are). If you could please reply on my talk page it would be highly appreciated, thanks (This message has been sent to most bureaucrat's). --MỸŠŦЄЯỸЊӘҒҒ (talk) 13:48, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Re-evaluation of bureaucrat status
Hi there! I'm posting to inform you of an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrat removal, which is of relevance to you as an en.wiki bureaucrat. The discussion centres around whether bureaucrat status should be considered a 'lifetime' appointment like administrators, or whether bureaucrats should be subject to periodic reconfirmation in a manner more like the stewards. There is also consideration for a separate re-evaluation of the status of those bureaucrats who were promoted in the early days of wikipedia, when the standards at RfB were significantly lower than they are currently, and whether such users still retain the explicit trust of the community.
As an "inactive bureaucrat" (one who has not performed a 'crat action in the past year), we're particularly keen to hear your thoughts on these issues; in particular the following:
Do you consider yourself to still be a wikipedia bureaucrat in spirit, or is the flag essentially just a legacy? Do you have any intention of ever returning to being an 'active' bureaucrat?
What do you consider your position to be in terms of your 'mandate' from the community, in comparison to more recently-promoted bureaucrats?
Would you be amenable to surrendering the bureaucrat flag, or participating in a reconfirmation RfB, if asked to do so? In what circumstances would you consider such an action?
Your thoughts on these, and any other comments you may have, would be very much appreciated. We have set up a section on the discussion page, Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrat removal#'Crat comments, for such responses.
Have facts on origin/meaning of name of SANE and earliest history
I have some extremely early documents on the origin of the name SANE (My father was a founder). I don't have the time nor energy to fully edit the Wikipedia article, but would like to discuss them with you since you contributed some "debunking' of the acronyms. Can we connect via email (or god forbid, the telephone)? You may reply to my talk page (but I may forget to check it) or via "jeremy_r" at yahoo (you know the rest). Thanks. --Techguy95 (talk) 03:39, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A new king of admin
Hello! I came about your name in the list of bureaucrats and was wondering what you think about this proposition, not necessarily in its absolute form but the general idea? Thanks!--It's me...Sallicio!23:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Bcorr.. I see that you made {{LoC Country Studies}}. Was there something wrong or inadequate about {{Loc}} (other than the name?) If not, perhaps we can simply redirect LoC Country Studies to LoC, or copy over the template. Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 16:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
D'oh! -- I had never run across it, so I didn't even think to check. Thanks for catching that (even though I was proud to have figured out how to make it based on the CIA one).
Hi, I noticed this edit to the article (removed (widely reprinted) "D." vandalism - Theodore Roosevelt didn't have a middle name). Since I noticed that you are the one who added the initial, I thought you might want to have a look. -- Luktalk08:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
{{cite web |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=SjYAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=%22Theodore+D+Roosevelt%22&source=bl&ots=_8Nlup6H4N&sig=B390EmU_dR22cVnvWOPqrW4cHkc&hl=en&ei=KALESdSiBOffnQfd7YnCDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result |title=Origin and History of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America |accessdate=2009-03-20 |last=Sanford |first=Elias Benjamin |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1916 |format= |publisher=S.S. Scranton Company|page=162}}
I'll go back there and leave a note for the editor in question.
I don't think it's a typo. I found it after discovering that his son Theodore Roosevelt Jr. more conclusively had the middle initial "D". This is demonstrated by the fact the the U.S. Department of the Navy lists him as "Theodore D. Roosevelt, Jr." in a list of Assistant Secretaries of the Navy at www.history.navy.mil/library/guides/rosters/assist_sec_navy.htm. While the NPS page is somewhat compelling, I wouldn't say it is enough to contradict the other sources, and the New York Times article is written in a rather humorous tone and makes a point about how the print media are often inaccurate, and I don't think it really is proof that TR didn't have a middle name.
That list is the only source on a search for "Theodore D. Roosevelt, Jr." and lists Theodore Roosevelt himself without a middle name. But David McCullough's Mornings on Horseback also explicitly states Roosevelt did not have a middle name" on page 19.
(His father being the original middle nameless Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt actually Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. being the third Theodore Roosevelt.)
The Chautauquan, p. 484; Published by M. Bailey, Publisher, 1895 (note carefully that the caption "President Roosevelt" underneath the iconic engraving refers to his being president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, not of the U.S.) In this, he is clearly identified as "Theodore D. Roosevelt," and there is not a reasonable doubt about its accuracy.
As I pointed out above, similar searches - such as for Theodore B. Roosevelt - return similar numbers of results (in fact, the search for Theodore B. Roosevelt returns more contemporary results), and it returns no relevant scholarly works. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox does not contain a reference to "Theodore D. Roosevelt," although the Google Books return places it there, and the return in The American Nation: a History of the United States from 1865 to the Present is a misparce of an image caption. If we are going to give Theodore Roosevelt a middle initial, B. would be the best choice, but the New York Times article that mentions the invention of a middle initial for TR (how, exactly, does the Chautauquan mention undermine the NYT article, aside from the use of a D. instead of a B.?) and the unequivocally middle-nameless Elihu Root I think supersedes "reasonable doubt" as to the accuracy of only two contemporary citations. Further, I am completely unable to find a name the "D." would refer to.
I'm not sure how useful a source Google Books is for determining Theodore Roosevelt's middle initial. I just ran through all the possible middle initials and the only ones Google Books didn't turn up (admittedly often frivolous, but still published and archived) results for were "Theodore K. Roosevelt," "Theodore U. Roosevelt," "Theodore X. Roosevelt," "Theodore Y. Roosevelt," and "Theodore Z. Roosevelt." Ultimately, I think the existence of Theodore Roosevelt's middle name or initial is unverifiable at the moment.
I noticed you left a friend request on Facebook for me, saying "it's Bcorr from Wikipedia." I haven't spent much time editing Wikipedia in years, but after looking you up I'm guessing you thought I was Sam Spade? When I used to edit, I was Asbestos.
— Sam Fentress 12:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.24.222.22 (talk)
Hi Asbestos -- I definitely knew that was you! I always appreciated your work and calm demeanor (I guess that goes along with the username). And BTW, unfortunately Sam and I weren't the best of wikifriends. In fact, he was the only editor that opposed my appointment to the Mediation Committee.
Thanks for the notice and apologies -- I should be more careful about drive-by editing! Looks like it's already been taken care of now. BCorr|Брайен14:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. I was wondering why there wasn't an image there.... I'm afraid that I just haven't kept up with all of the policies regarding images. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен21:07, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello!
Consider this a Brian-to-Brian greeting! It's always good to see another fan of Star Trek and vintage computers out there. I remember borrowing a TRS-80 from my grade school for a weekend and running some sort of program which animated a tap-dancing alien (I don't remember anything more about it than that!), but my own very first computer was a TI 99/4A. I ought to dig it out and play with the speech synthesizer some more. :) Happy memories! I tend to delete stray email messages unread, or I'll bounce them unread, by the way - you wouldn't believe how much misdirected email I get to my address. Best to have plausible deniability, I always say. :) - Brian Kendig (talk) 16:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Social Credit Article
Hi Bcorr:
I have made several changes to the Social Credit article, and would like to remove the neutrality tag. When you have a chance, can you please look at the article, and either remove the tag, or make suggestions for changes?
Hello Bcorr! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 7 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:
Can you please help me in deciding whether to stay at Wikepedia?
Hello,
I am new to Wikepedia. MY first article was named for speedy deletion while I eas still working on it. Later on the same person nominated the same article again for deletion the second time based on same grounds. MY experience has not been good as my head was bitten off at the very beginning.
My reason for contacting you is because you have links on your page for newcomers and seem to communicate well.
I am trying to understand this consensus policy at Wikepedia. COnsensus is great as long it is informed consensus. Hypothetically if a handful of buddies get together and vote on Wikepedia that earth is flat, then consensus means WIkepedia to say earth is flat. What happens when consensus is based on false premise?
Anyways, I will apreciate if you can enlighten me on this consesus issue. My experience so far is based on only one page titled Nigam Arora, the article that is now nominated for deletion. I have started a second page Radiation Monitoring in Nuclear Plants
As you may be able to tell, I am quite concerned about consensus that is not informed or based on lack of due dilligence. It appears that if something does not appear on first few pages of Google, it is deemed unverifiable. What happened to going to libraries? Google is great but does not show older references. References before 2000, are sparse at google. Also google does not include references fro subscription sites. Google also lacks in international coverage.All of the older paper based magazines, journal and newspapers are notavailable online or in digital form.
I Like Wikepedia and would like to contribute, but am greatly bothered by a process that seems to give weight to consensus no matter how ill informed or manipulated the consesus is. I DO NOT WANT TO BE A MEMBER OF FLAT EARTH SOCIETY; I am not saying that Wikepedia is a flat earth society, but rather trying to understand how to deal with editors when they do not do due dilligence and forcefully proclaim their ill informed opinions as facts.
I would request that you read the following comment and consider removing the tags from the Pantheism article. All edits and reversions by me since January 2000 have been made on the basis of very careful academic accuracy. If the article looks way better now, it is because of this approach. The revisions and reversions I have made are not at all POV - I am extremely careful to avoid that. The major types of pantheism are presented in a neutral fashion without bias towards any one version. However, it is very important to keep in mind the distinction between pantheism and panentheism, which is not at all the same as pantheism.
Many of the people occasionally popping in to edit this article are unregistered. Many of the changes they made have been unsourced, inaccurate, and very clearly written off the top of their heads. Any article on a religious topic in Wikipedia attracts a lot of unqualified attention and revision. The space provided to explain an edit is very brief and so I give brief explanations. If you think I should explain every reversion in detail in the Pantheism talk page, please say so, as it is easy to do so. However, I think it is questionable whether inaccurate or POV changes by non-registered passers-by merit such treatment. --Naturalistic (talk) 23:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
COPIED FROM PANTHEISM TALK PAGE: The old conflict stemmed from the fact that the two most frequent editors were 1. An opponent of Pantheism and 2. A persistent troll who has been banned many times from Wikipedia. The conflict was with one or two heroic people attempting to restore accuracy and non-bias to the article. These people eventually gave up because the two editors just mentioned would revert the material sometimes within minutes of it being edited, time and time again. Right now I would urge that you think carefully before restoring the POV removals since January 2010. To do so implies that they were removed for POV reasons, so you would need to establish that. It would be a disservice to Wikipedia readers, who currently have a reliable version, to subject them once again to inaccurate material. Most of the editors whose material was removed were passers-by who rarely appear again - so "reaching agreement with them" will in most cases be impossible. There was also POV material being inserted by people pushing a pandeist or panentheist agenda. With edits that are inaccurate, how can there be agreement? If you want to list the removals that bother you, then I will address every single one of them or discuss them with you. --Naturalistic (talk) 00:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Naturalistic (talk • contribs)
Thank you for your note, Naturalistic. I appreciate your explanation and I think it makes sense. I do think it would be quite helpful to add even a few words to your edit summaries giving an indication of why something removed was POV content or how the edit promotes NPOV. Having limited familiarity and knowledge of the topic, it has not been clear as I look at the edits and reversions. Also, I do have a sensitivity to situations where it might appear that someone is "guarding" an article, but it isn't clear to what end or with what understanding (even assuming good faith) -- perhaps based on my own tendency to do the same in my early days as an editor.
Thanks for uploading File:WilliamSloaneCoffinJr-BiographyCover.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. +Angr18:07, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
deleting the account
Hello!
I have a global account Impro, which is occupied by the English Wikipedia. I would like to make corrections in the English Wikipedia. Could You help me to take account Impro in English Wikipedia? My main account - in Russian Wikipedia Impro. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Impro-en (talk • contribs) 13:26, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
please help
hello! I am member of the Georgian Wikipedia. I have a Global Account in the name of David1010 but I can not combine it with other accounts. I do not remember my password or e-mail. Maybe you can help me to join the english account with other accounts. User:David1010--94.137.169.234 (talk) 11:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A discussion has begun about whether the article Álvaro Moreno (comedian), which you created or to which you contributed, should be deleted. While contributions are welcome, an article may be deleted if it is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines for inclusion, explained in the deletion policy.
You may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Gigs (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Brian! Could you help me to explain: if I'm the only author of a flash site, can I upload its photos to commons.wikimedia, or thus I would violate the Adobe's copyright? --Søren 21:07, 7 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceroi (talk • contribs)
The New England Wikimedia General Meeting will be a large-scale meetup of all Wikimedians (and friends) from the New England area in order to discuss regional coordination and possible formalization of our community (i.e., a chapter). Come hang out with other Wikimedians, learn more about ongoing activities, and help plan for the future!
My account was just created today, but I no longer want to use it so, since I can't delete it, is there a way I can change my username from KimCyanide to (NoName)? If you can do this, thanks a lot!KimCyanide (talk) 12:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)KimCyanide[reply]
The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)
Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.
Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow
In this issue:
Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
Research: The most recent DR data
Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
You're invited: Ada Lovelace, STEM women edit-a-thon at Harvard
U.S. Ada Lovelace Day 2012 edit-a-thon, Harvard University - You are invited!
Now in its fourth year, Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and related fields. Participants from around New England are invited to gather together at Harvard Law School to edit and create Wikipedia entries on women who have made significant contributions to the STEM fields. Register to attend or sign up to participate remotely - visit this page to do either. 00:08, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Lupus Bellator
I've given him a formal warning about his use of minor edits (I see he made one after being asked not to in an edit summary) and have reverted a number of his edits. Clearly an editor with a pov agenda on race. Dougweller (talk) 09:53, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your note, and know that it can be tough for an excited new editor. I'm happy to try to be of help as you navigate your way around the wiki! And by the way, it is great to see you keeping these items on your talk page: although you have every right to blank it, it helps others know that they are in dialogue with you much better than edit summaries do.
My problem was just my sheer stupidity. I'd done a complete history clear and purge because of another problem, and thought my admin tabs had disappeared. In fact, the had just reverted to a drop-down instead of the tabs I had originally selected. You said you were using a custom skin, does the problem persist in Vector?
Crat statement draft
Hi Bcorr
Following the drama at BN, I'm trying to come up with a statement all Crats could agree to. Please take a look, below.
I am quite content to do this onwiki -we have always worked transparently, except where secrecy is essential (ie RTV). I think we should be able to wordsmith a statement acceptable to all, and I think it's an important thing to do.
In my opinion, this issue has come about through an unfortunate proliferation of documentation: policy, guideline, how-to etc
I am not convinced that there is community consensus on all of the points encapsulated in those various pages
I am unhappy at what may be described as some or all of: inconsistencies, inaccuracies or lack of clarity in that documentation
I do not believe that any of the issues we have faced have been caused by Crats trying to widen their powers
I would like to see the issues clarified, based on consensus, and for the documentation to be updated accordingly
I'd like to thank Griot-de for generously withdrawing the rename request
Hello, Bcorr. Can you help me to usurp my own (inactive) login? I've usurped it in my native wiki and I would like to unify my name (Ceroi to Søren). --Søren 23:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceroi (talk • contribs)
is missing a description and/or other details on its image description page. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors make better use of the image, and it will be more informative to readers.
Hey Bcorr! We've just deployed some fixes to the VisualEditor. These include:
"Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you're looking at (bug 49943)
"Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you edited last time if this is your second edit (bug 50441)
VE edit section links will load the latest, not original, version in diff view preview (bug 50925)
<big><big>Foo</big></big> and similar repeated tags will not get corrupted any more (bug 49755)
In the meantime, testing is proceeding well, and hopefully we can get some more fixes out over the next couple of days. If you're interested in helping out, we have a set of open tasks we'd really appreciate your assistance with :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
VE newsletter
Hey Bcorr
We just deployed another VisualEditor release; bugs fixed include:
Firefox 13/14 has been temporarily blacklisted, to avoid the insertion of broken links [[./that look like this]] (50720)
Changing a reference in a template should no longer produce the bright red "you don't have a references block!" error (bugzilla:50423)
Notices are now shown if you're editing a protected or semi-protected page (bugzilla:50415)
The template inspector will no longer invite you to insert parameters that are already being used (50715)
Parameter names in the template dialogue now word-wrap (50800)
The link inspector will not show in the top left if you hit the return key while opening it (49941)
Hitting return twice in the link editor will no longer introduce a new line that overwrites the link (51075)
Oddly-named categories no longer cause corruption (50702)
The toolbar no longer occasionally covers the cursor (48787)
Changing the formatting of text no longer occasionally scrolls you upwards (50792)
Not specific bugs, but other things; cacheing is now improved, so people should stop seeing temporary breaking when the VisualEditor updates, and RTL support has received some patches. I hope this newsletter is helpful to people; I'll send out another one with the next deployment :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
VE newsletter
Hey Bcorr! Another set of patches :). Today we have:
Required template parameters are now automatically added to new templates (50747)
Templates with piped links now display correctly when you alter them (50801)
If your edit token expires, you're now informed of it (50424).
You still won't be able to save - that's due to be fixed on Monday :).
Hey Bcorr; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:
If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
Links now don't extend over space/punctuation/workbreaks when you type (bugzilla:51463)
Users with the "minoredit" preference set get working functionality (bugzilla:51515)
You can tab to buttons in dialogs, including the save dialog (bugzilla:50047)
We now show the <newarticletext> (or <newarticletextanon>) message as an edit notice (bugzilla:51459)
You can scroll dialog panels like in transclusions' templates' parameter listings (bugzilla:51739)
Templates that only create meta-data and no display content at all (like Template:Use dmy dates) now can't be deleted accidentally or deliberately, but still don't show up (bugzilla:51322)
Quick tip: Need to wikilink a word in VisualEditor? Select the word and type Control+k or ⌘ Command+k to enter VisualEditor's link tool without taking your hands off the keyboard. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Keyboard shortcuts for more time-saving keyboard shortcuts.
It's been almost two weeks since the last newsletter, and a lot of improvements have been made during that time. The main things that people have noticed are significant improvements to speed for typing into long pages (T54012), scrolling (T54014) and deleting (T54013) on large pages. There have also been improvements to references, with the latest being support for list-defined references, which are <ref>s defined inside a <references> block (T53741). Users of Opera 12 and higher have had their web browser removed from the browser black-list, mostly as a result of work by a volunteer developer (T38000). Opera has not been fully white-listed yet, so these users will get an additional warning and request to report problems.
Significant changes were made to the user interface to de-emphasize VisualEditor. This has cut the use of VisualEditor by approximately one-third. You can read about these at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates/August 1, 2013, but they include:
Re-ordering links to the editors to put "Edit source" first and VisualEditor second
Renaming the link for VisualEditor to "Editbeta"
Disabling the animation for section editing.
Changing all labels for the classic wikitext editor to say "Edit source", regardless of namespace.
There have also been many smaller fixes, including these:
Horizontal alignment of images working correctly on more pages (T53995)
Magic JavaScript gadgets and tools like sortable tables will now work once the page is saved (T53565)
Keyboard shortcut for "clear annotations" - now Control+\ or ⌘ Command+\ (T53507)
Fixed corruption bugs that led to duplicate categories (T54238) and improper collapsing when multiple new references were added in a row (T54228).
Improvements to display elements: The save dialog in Monobook is restored to normal size (T52058), pop-up notices on save now look the same in VisualEditor as in wikitext editor (T41632), and the popup about using wikitext has a link to the definition of wikitext that now opens in a new window (T54093)
Most of the Wikimedia Foundation staff is traveling this week and next, so no updates are expected until at least August 15th. If you're going to be in Hong Kong for Wikimania 2013, say hello to James Forrester, Philippe Beaudette, and the other members of the VisualEditor team.
Did you know?Parsoid is a tool that translates between the raw wikitext that Wikipedia articles are stored in, and the HTML/RDFa that VisualEditor uses on your screen. If you see chess pawn (♙) or snowman (☃) icons in an article, it usually means that Parsoid has encountered something confusing in the wikitext markup. Please report these problems to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Both VisualEditor and MediaWiki were upgraded recently. For VisualEditor, this is the long-awaited post-Wikimania update with many bug fixes and enhancements. Work also continues on speed at opening and during use, as well as on the bugs reported here and at other Wikipedias. The full report is at Mediawiki.
References are displaying properly, even when nested (T52749) or in image captions (T2000. Reference lists are now always fully populated with references (bug 50094). Firefox users can insert an existing reference in the first paragraph (T54159). Opera users no longer see corruption of categories when a reference was added (bug 50385).
Stray spaces are being stripped from the start of paragraphs to end one of the common <nowiki> problems (T53462). We also fixed a round-tripping bug that caused desirable whitespace in templates (used to make templates more legible, e.g., by putting each parameter in an infobox on a separate line) to get corrupted (bug 51150).
Wikilink handling was improved. Users are not allowed to create internal links to invalid titles (titles that are actually impossible due to limits on acceptable character combinations in titles, not redlinks) (T35094). You can extend wikilinks, but it won't do so over a wordbreak (like a space) (bugs 49931 and 51463).
A handful of fixes to the user interface were made. The toolbar doesn't float over personal tools after opening a dialog or the inspector (T54441). Toolbars were also re-written to be collapsible/expandable, with room for more icons. Buttons in dialogs can now be activated using the Tab ↹ and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ key commands (bug 50047). This saves time for editors, because you don't need to take your hands off the keyboard to click a button. We fixed a handful of bugs that affected only certain articles or certain browsers, including toolbar buttons in Firefox (bug 51986) and dialog panels that didn't always scroll correctly (bug 51739). Bugs with undo/redo getting confused have been fixed (T54113).
Images, in addition to getting references displaying correctly, also saw improvements with a set-empty |link= parameter no longer corrupted (51963). We corrected thumbnail images' display so that they look don't wrong in some contexts (bug 51995). Inserted images no longer explicitly set their alignment, but instead inherit the default position in compliance with the Manual of Style (bug 51851).
More edit notices, warnings, and metadata like information about Pending Changes on an article now appear as appropriate (bug 49699). When new articles are created, users are now shown the <newarticletext> message (bug 51459). VisualEditor now handles templates that set "meta" items (like a category) and nothing else better (bug 51322). If the database is locked when a user tries to save with VisualEditor, they now get a message telling them as such and an opportunity to try again, rather than a silent failure (bug 51636).
When you save the page, having the default preference set to "mark all my edits as minor by default" no longer overrides the setting in the save dialog (bug 51515). If you open VisualEditor from a section edit link, the section's title will be pre-filled in in the edit summary box when you go to save it (bug 50872). The size of the save dialog box in the Monobook skin has been fixed (bug 50058). Also, wikipage content handlers like sortable tables are re-run automatically after saving (T53565).
A very early version of the mathematics equation editor is now available for testing on mw:Mediawiki. If you would like to help improve the user interface for math editor, please test out the extension at mw:Mediawiki:Sandbox and leave your comments directly at the discussion page for the Math Node User Interface at Mediawiki. You should be able to use your regular username and password should to login to Mediawiki.
Здравствуйте! Я провёл последний год в армии и немного отстал от жизни в Википедии, из-за чего пропустил глобализацию аккаунтов. Наибольшую активность я имею в Русской Википедии как User:Сидик из ПТУ, но в 2006-2007 совершил немало правок и здесь как User:Sidik iz PTU. Теперь мне хотелось бы именно этот профиль с историей правок иметь в качестве части глобальной учётной записи в энвики. Подобное мне уже помогли сделать в Commons, так что прошу и Вас: переименуйте пожалуйста User:Sidik iz PTU в User:Сидик из ПТУ, после чего я, наконец, объединю свою глобальную учётку с местным и Commons аккаунтом. Сидик из ПТУ (talk) 10:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
VisualEditor newsletter for September 5
Did you know?
You can search for images directly in VisualEditor. Click the media icon, which looks like this:
Then type a few keywords into the search box. VisualEditor will search Commons for images or other files whose titles or descriptions contain those words, and will display thumbnail pictures of them for your review. Click one time on the image you want to insert in the article.
This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Wikipedia received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.
Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.
A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".
In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).
Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Capitol Hill (Salt Lake City), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Utah State Route 89 (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
You can edit a page's categories in VisualEditor. Click the "Page settings" button (next to Cancel/Save) in the toolbar to open the category tool. It will show you a list of the current categories for that page.
To add a category, type the name of the category you want to add in the search field. To remove an existing category, click on the category in the list and then, in the dialog that opens, click on the "Remove" icon (trash can). "Options" will allow you to set a default sorting key.
VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.
As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.
In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).
In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.
Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).
Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.
Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).
Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
You can create and edit multi-level lists in VisualEditor. The first two icons let you set or remove list formatting.
The last two are used to increase or decrease the indentation level. This can also be done from the keyboard, by using Tab ↹ to indent the list and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ to outdent it.
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".
The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).
There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).
Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new feature (currently working only in some browsers), "Switch to source editing". By choosing this item, you can move directly into the wikitext source editor without saving. This is particularly useful if you need to make significant changes to tables, image galleries, or other elements that are not currently supported.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.
A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through /wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit and /enwiki/w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ($wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)
Looking ahead:
VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
Public office hours on IRCto discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new drop-down menu that contains all character formatting: bold, italics, subscript, superscript, strikethrough, computer code, underline, and the ability to remove all formatting from text.
For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read the user guide.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
Auto-numbered external links like [7] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally. To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name. For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor. This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.
Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter).
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
You can easily re-use references by going to the Insert menu, choosing "Reference", and clicking on "Use an existing reference" in the lower left corner. A list of all references, their numbers, and their ref names (if any) will be shown. You can search the list for any author, title, date, or other keyword. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.
The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.
A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog. When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name. If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g. ==section headings== in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML.
You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext. It will see significant improvements at a later date.
Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at T53734.
Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting (dir="rtl").
You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March
Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March - You are invited!
New England Wikimedians is excited to announce a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that will be taking place at colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts as part of Wikiwomen's History Month from March 1 - March 31. We encourage you to join in an edit-a-thon near you, or to participate remotely if you are unable to attend in person (for the full list of articles, click here). Events are currently planned for the cities/towns of Boston,Northampton,South Hadley, and Cambridge. Further information on dates and locations can be found on our user group page. Questions? Contact Girona7 (talk)
Notification of automated file description generation
Your upload of File:CambridgeTripleDecker.jpg or contribution to its description is noted, and thanks (even if belatedly) for your contribution. In order to help make better use of the media, an attempt has been made by an automated process to identify and add certain information to the media's description page.
This notification is placed on your talk page because a bot has identified you either as the uploader of the file, or as a contributor to its metadata. It would be appreciated if you could carefully review the information the bot added. To opt out of these notifications, please follow the instructions here. Thanks! Message delivered by Theo's Little Bot (opt-out)14:49, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
Did you know?Click this image to see the details.
The template dialog has been simplified to make it faster and easier to add parameter data. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (T56361).
Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__, and more. New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+Sshortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.
The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.
Looking ahead: Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.
Hi Bcorr! As I am a zhwiki user,my username is in Chinese.I want to change my username into English but I'm not an autoconfirmed user so I cannot edit the page WP:Changing username.Do you know where can I send a request of changing username?--昏君 (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi 昏君 -- do you have a proposed username? If so, I can add the listing on your behalf. Or instead, you could wait until you qualify and are autoconfirmed: most English Wikipedia user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits are considered autoconfirmed. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен18:21, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square
Dear Fellow Wikimedian,
New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested.
Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)
VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014
Did you know?
You can use VisualEditor to make redirects. First, remove any unwanted content from the page. Then go to the "Page options" menu (next to "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽") and choose the "Page settings" item. Click the box to "Redirect this page to". In the box, type in the name of the page that you want to redirect this page to.
You can also set or remove categories for the redirect in the "Page options" menu. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.
In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing Return. This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "Move" item is currently housed). On the English Wikipedia, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "Edit source" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "Edit source" and "View history" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.
The drop-down menu is on the right, next to the search box.
Looking ahead: A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
On May 3rd, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts will be hosting a Native American and Chinese Art edit-a-thon from 9:00-5:00 pm. You are more than welcome to attend, as there will be free food and drink, and an outing afterwards. If you are interested, please sign up here, as we would love to see you there!
If you have any questions, please leave a message at Ed Rodley's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.
Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons
Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England
As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows:
We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time.
If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.
VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014
Did you know?
The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.
Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.
There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this: <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.
Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!
After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested:
If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.
New England Wikimedians summer events!
Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!
After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested:
If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.
VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
Did you know?
The character formatting menu, or "Style text" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.
Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "date" for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and "boolean" for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like {{citeweb}} → {{cite web}}) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.
Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the "Page options" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.
The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.
Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.
The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.
Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.
If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact me if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).
The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.
The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).
I've just read your user page, and I'm wondering...
What dialect of English does your idiolect most resemble? I'm a New Englander, and my parents are New Englanders, so my dialect is unsurprisingly a New England dialect.
But you said you were raised in Michigan, specifically Detroit. Now I don't know much about Detroit's dialect, but I have heard the speech of someone from Michigan. They seemed to have a semi-merry, Mary marry merger in their speech, but otherwise it sounded like a standard Northern dialect. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An important message about renaming users
Dear Bcorr,
I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.
As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.
Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.
The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.
Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.
In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.
Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
Did you know?
TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.
VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.
It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.
Recent improvements
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.
The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.
VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.
The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)
Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [9] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.
Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill featuresfor citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.
The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.
You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Also, user experience researcherAbbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!
Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).
Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.
You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.
You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".
Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1. " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.
If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.
You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.
Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
The Editing team plans to add auto-fill featuresfor citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.
Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.
Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.
Recent improvements
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:
starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray.
The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.
Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).
Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
Looking ahead
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill featuresfor citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.
We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.
Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.
With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:
Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:
After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.
Recent improvements
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.
The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill featuresfor citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.
Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.
Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.
The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.
You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.
The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.
Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.
Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).
Looking ahead
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.
The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.
Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:
The link tool has been re-designed:
There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill featuresfor citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.
The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).
The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).
Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).
The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.
The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the past, I've been hesitant of such proposals but I believe that if the bureaucrat group as a whole is seen to be actively engaged, the community may be more willing to grant additional tasks to the position.
Please let me know your thoughts. I'm not sure if this actually applies to any of us, but if you have not acted as a bureaucrat in over five years, you might consider requesting removal of the permission or otherwise signalling that you intend to return to bureaucrat activity. –xenotalk14:22, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.
Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).
Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.
In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
Bureaucrats are expected to exercise the duties granted by their role while remaining cognizant of relevant community standards concerning their tasks. In addition to the "Inactive bureaucrat accounts" requirements, if a bureaucrat does not participate in bureaucrat activity[1] for over three years, their bureaucrat permissions may be removed. The user must be notified on their talk page and by email one month before the removal, and again and a few days prior to the removal. If the user does not return to bureaucrat activity, another bureaucrat may request the removal of permissions at meta:Steward requests/Permissions. Permissions removed for not meeting bureaucrat activity requirements may be re-obtained through a new request for bureaucratship.
^Bureaucrat activity is widely construed and includes acting or commenting as a bureaucrat at any venue including WP:BN/RFA/RFB/RFBAG/BRFA and responding to requests in their capacity as a global renamer or subscriber to the bureaucrats' mailing list or signalling that they remain actively engaged and available for bureacrat tasks.
”
To assist with the implementation of this requirement, please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrat activity. Modeled after Wikipedia:Inactive administrators and similar to that process, the log page will be created on 1 September 2015. Bureaucrats who have not met the activity requirements as of that date will be notified by email (where possible) and on their talk page to advise of the pending removal.
If the notified user does not return to bureaucrat activity and the permissions are removed, they will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFB. Removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon the affected user in any way.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. –xenotalk
The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta.
This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.
This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.
We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.
Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheetmusic in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
Notification of pending suspension of bureaucrat permissions due to not meeting bureaucrat activity requirements
Following a community discussion ending August 2015, consensus was reached to remove the bureaucrat permissions of users who have not participated in bureaucrat activity for three years. As a result of this discussion, your bureaucrat permissions may be removed if you do not return to bureaucrat activity within the next month. If you do not return to bureaucrat activity and the permissions are removed, you will need to request reinstatement at RFB. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past bureaucrat efforts. –xenotalk21:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.
If you prefer having separate edit buttons, then you can set that option in your preferences, either in a pop-up dialog the next time you open the visual editor, or by going to Special:Preferences and choosing the setting that you want:
The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.
The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".
In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)
Testing opportunities
Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
Remember my last editor,
Always give me the visual editor if possible,
Always give me the source editor, and
Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features. If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.
Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
Remember my last editor,
Always give me the visual editor if possible,
Always give me the source editor, and
Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
Am surprised you did not consult me as the originator of this article Pimp tenure before deleting it on 16 August 2014 as "G3: Blatant hoax: None of the given sources provide any verification". The sources were excellent and valid. I would like the article re-instated.(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 19:12, 5 March 2016 (UTC))[reply]
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
How to switch between editing environments
Click the [[ ]] to switch to the wikitext editor.
Click the pencil icon to switch to the visual editor.
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).
If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.
Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.
Recent changes
The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.
The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.
Future changes
The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
User:Dr. Blofeld has created Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Contests. The idea is to run a series of contests/editathons focusing on each region of Africa. He has spoken to Wikimedia about it and $1000-1500 is possible for prize money. As someone who has previously expressed interest in African topics, would you be interested in contributing to one or assisting draw up core article/missing article lists? He says he's thinking of North Africa for an inaugural one in October. If interested please sign up in the participants section of the Contest page, thanks.♦ --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa.01:12, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Extended confirmed protection
Hello, Bcorr. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.
Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.
In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:
Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you. This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
Please consider reactivation at MedCom
This is being sent to you because you are listed as an emeritus member of MedComand an examination of your contribution page suggests that you are still active at en-Wikipedia. MedCom is currently down to three or four active members (there are more than that on the active member list, but some of them have not edited Wikipedia in quite awhile). We have a current case awaiting a mediator which is receiving no response from the request for a mediator sent on the MedCom mailing list a couple of days ago, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Expulsion of Cham Albanians. Would you please consider reactivating your membership, taking that case, or both? If you're interested in doing so and are not still on the MedCom mailing list, please just let me know and I'll reactivate you and add you to the list. Best regards, TransporterMan (talk·contribs) 19:43, 5 October 2016 (UTC) (current MedCom chairperson)[reply]
Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?
Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.
Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[11] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[12]
Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[13]
At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[14]
The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[15] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[16]
Future changes
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
Hello,
Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:34, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A new user right for New Page Patrollers
Hi Bcorr.
A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.
It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.
Hello, Bcorr. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hello, Bcorr. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.
Technical news
When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.
JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Boleyn (talk) 08:34, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Did you know that you can review your changes visually?
When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".
In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [17]
You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [19]
The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [20]
The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the icon) for quicker access. [21] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [22]
You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [23]
Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [24]
The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [25]
A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [26]
There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K on a PC or Command+K on a Mac. [27]
Future changes
The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [28]
The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [29]
Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, Bcorr. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors. Your signature also has an unescaped pipe character. Wikipedia:Signatures says that the pipe character must be escaped.
Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?
Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.
If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [31]
The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.
Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either <references /> or the plain (no parameters) {{reflist}} template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [33]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
Hello, Bcorr. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited The Deserted Village, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Altamaha (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.
The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.
Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.
New and active projects
This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how:📲Try Edit Cards.
Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Looking ahead
Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
Learning more
The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
Hahaha, don't be fooled by the tendency of the Victorians to sanitise difficult topics! Just like they covered up the legs of pianos, so they covered up the meanings of "difficult" words. Often they used the Latin words instead, so that children and domestic servants could not understand. Meretrix is the Latin for "a public prostitute, harlot" (Cassell's Latin Dictionary, Marchant, J.R.V, & Charles, Joseph F., (Eds.), Revised Edition, 1928, p.342, no other options are given, certainly not "damsel" as suggested by the Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction) plural meretrices (From mereo "to earn"). It was more convenient for the sources you quoted to translate them politely, to pretend such women did not exist. The old fashioned term is "whore" in English, and that is how the honest sources translated the word. Pas. Comms. 24 & 25 Edw. I (i.e. 1295/6) is a reference to some sort of state parchment roll, I can't work out what the full name is, such as cal. pat. (calendar of the patent rolls), etc, and these were written in Latin, so "laundresses" is just another polite Victorian translation for prostitutes. If you can give me a copy of the article, I will be happy to confirm all the sources I quoted, as far as I remember it was a very short and well referenced article. This was a very interesting topic. The Japanese had official prostitutes for their soldiers in WW II, and so apparently did Edward I. I have located the text of Blount (Fragmenta Antiquitatis: Or, Ancient Tenures of Land, and Jocular Customs of ... By Thomas Blount, pp.209-11[35]) on this topic. The question is, it may well be controversial, but perhaps deserved discussion in wikipedia? We can of course point out the arguments against the traditional interpretation, but to suppress any mention seems not very helpful. See for example online discussion on this topic at [36] which concludes: "This is an odd one. Wikipedia have deleted their page on the subject, apparently believing it to be a hoax". It has never been a willful hoax, merely a literal interpretation of a Latin word. No definitive answer of the true meaning will ever be available, just opinions. The term "pimp tenure" is certainly out there and I suggest needs to be dealt with here on wp, not just ignored - certainly not dismissed as a hoax. Thanks, Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk Pages
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
a rich-text visual editing option, and
other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited William Booth, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Charity (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.
Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[37]
The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.
New requirements for user signatures
The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.
Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.
Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.
The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.
The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.
Research notes:
As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[38]
The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[39] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
A large A/B test will start soon.[40] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.
When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)
Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.
The key results were:
Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.
These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.
Looking ahead
The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
How we will see unregistered users
Hi!
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:
Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period
Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.
22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
New Hampshire Townships, status
Hello Bcorr! To be brief, I believe the following is some of your work: "In New Hampshire, locations, grants, townships (which are different from towns), and purchases are incorporated portions of a county which are not part on any town and have limited self-government (if any, as many are uninhabited)." Found it on several NH-township articles (e. g. Bean's, Chandler's, Crawford's Purchase, New Hampshire), all the edits dating to 09-30-03. Ok, long time ago. What I need are references, as official and irrefutable as possible, regarding grants, locations etc. being officially classed townships, and how exactly these NH-townships relate to townships in general, as there seem to be differences. I have found Civil_township#Northeastern_states, which is gloriously free of any reference, so it's no good to me, as en:wp is no accepted reference in de:wp. Was hoping you might amenable to help me out here a bit, or point me in some direction. I believe the de:wp representation of the issue might be quite incorrect, and I'd like to be able to check and, if need be, work on that. Regards, --G-41614 (talk) 17:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi User:G-41614! Thanks for your note and I appreciate the question! And next I apologize because I've never gotten great at references (since I pre-date them)!
I. All places, not incorporated as towns, which shall be required to pay any public tax are invested with the powers of towns relating to the choice of moderator, clerk, supervisors of the check list, and selectmen; and all provisions of law applicable to towns and town officers are extended to such places and their officers so far as they relate to meetings for the choice of such officers and to their election, and so far as they relate to the election of county, state and national officers.
II. No unorganized town or unincorporated place, including any such town or place which was previously organized and the organization of which has since been abandoned, shall hereafter become incorporated so as to become vested with the powers of towns, except for the purposes of election of local officers or state, national or county officers, unless such incorporation shall be granted by the general court.
Most of those are located in Coös County, and I think these official government pages may be useful:
Also useful may be these pages from the Coös County governmental website:
Coös County profile: https://www.cooscountynh.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif4291/f/uploads/coos-cp.pdf, which includes this text: "Coös County contains 1,795.0 square miles of land area and 35.1 square miles of inland water area. Based on the 2010 Census population, the population density is 18.4 persons per square mile. Coös County includes one city, Berlin, 19 towns, and 23 unincorporated places, 16 of which are unpopulated. The county seat is Lancaster."
If that's your answer, I'm hard put to come up with an appropriate expression of appreciation and gratitude. Thanks you for your effort & reply, this should help clear things up. Some of these I will have to read carefully, and perhaps use a dictionary. Others - there's eight or nine inhabitated townships, grants etc., not seven anymore, in Coös County, according to the 2020 Census. Which, according to another article you so kindly linked to, isn't necessarily accurate! Ok, that's a new one to me. One of these links brought me right into the regulations where I didn't dare venture before, as I'm no lawyer and my english's never been all that business proof. Anyhow, thanks again! Regards, --G-41614 (talk) 17:45, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for uploading Image:WilliamSloaneCoffinJr-BiographyCover.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
. --Zenman (talk) 07:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Hello Bcorr! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 7 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:
Hello. This message is to inform you that an article that you wrote recently, Charles Pillsbury, has been tagged with a notability notice. This means that it may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Please note that articles which do not meet these criteria may be merged, redirected, or deleted. Please consider adding reliable, secondary sources to the article in order to establish the topic's notability. You may find the following links useful when searching for sources: "Charles Pillsbury" – news · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images. Thank you for editing Wikipedia! VoxelBot 02:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
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icon) for quicker access. [21] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [22]
to start editing.
these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
A large A/B test will start soon.[40] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
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