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Someone suggested at the Village Pump that I boldly create Wikipedia:Extant Organizations/Noticeboard, a noticeboard to discuss articles about organizations that may be subject to non-neutral editing. Basically it's the corporate version of BLPN, where both adverts and attack pages can be brought to the community for broader scrutiny. Except this board does not currently relate to a specific policy like BLPN does, except NPOV, V, etc. (though it could refer to this essay I wrote or something). You participated in the prior village pump discussion that led to consensus for Template:COI editnotice, which is now widely used. Although this noticeboard is not COI-related, I thought you might have an interest in this as well, in whether the noticeboard should be kept and/or in participating in it generally. CorporateM (Talk) 18:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@CorporateM and CorporateM: For starters I'd just call it Wikipedia:Oranizations/Noticeboard as 'Extant' seem like a pretty empty and confusing word out of context. I'll drop by to check on the discussion. Thanks! Ocaasi t | c 23:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
@CorporateM: fixing typo John Carter (talk) 15:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 June 2014

06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library: New Account Coordinators Needed

Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.

It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz@gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd be willing to help as an account coordinator. What do you need from me? Chris Troutman (talk) 00:21, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
@Chris troutman: awesome. For the next week, nothing to do yet, as we are just letting signups roll in. I'll actually be in Las Vegas for the annual American Library Association meeting until July 1st. When I get back that week of July I can walk you through the basics of coordinating an account and then we can process a few existing signups. It's pretty simple. I will send you a ping to set up some time for a quick walkthrough. Thanks very much, Jake Ocaasi t | c 00:30, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
@Chris troutman: could you shoot me a quick email at jorlowitz@gmail.com. (There are just a few small, offline setup pieces: online spreadsheet, privacy agreement, calendar invite, mailing list).
If you still need people I'd be glad to help. I'm a recently retired academic librarian and have time. HazelAB (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Hazel! I'll be in touch next week :) Ocaasi t | c 06:06, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I would also be willing to help if you still need someone.Richardjames444 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:39, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for coming!

Thank you, partner!
Thank you for helping out and participating at the RBMS edit-a-thon this weekend. Myself, and Las Vegas' own Vegas Vic hope you come back real soon! Merrilee (talk) 19:55, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

ALA Annual At Las Vegas

I was sorry to miss your talk. Will you be posting any slides to slideshare.com or elsewhere? TeriEmbrey (talk) 14:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 July 2014

07:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: June 2014





Headlines
  • Belgium report: Bouchout Declaration on Open Access to Biodiversity data; Virtual collaboration in the government
  • France report: Round table in Brussels; Video at Sèvres; 70th anniversary of the D-Day
  • Germany report: Exhibition photography
  • Mexico report: Edit-a-thon of Museo Soumaya; simulthaneous edit-a-thon in Argentina, Mexico and Spain about Spanish Exile; new cultural partner of Wikimedia México
  • Netherlands report: Music edit-a-thon; Library workshops; Videos, maps and Japanese art donations; Wiki Loves Earth
  • Sweden report: Wiki Loves Monuments is being prepared for Sweden
  • UK report: Free Culture; Image releases
  • USA report: A GLAM Day Out! in Philadelphia; Local History at the Local Library
  • Wikimania report: GLAM presentations at Wikimania
  • Open Access report: Open biodiversity data; Automated import of scholarly journal articles into Wikisource
  • Calendar: July's GLAM events
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

The Signpost: 09 July 2014

07:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Medical Translation Newsletter


Wikiproject Medicine; Translation Taskforce

Medical Translation Newsletter
Issue 1, June/July 2014
by CFCF, Doc James

sign up for monthly delivery


This is the first of a series of newsletters for Wikiproject Medicine's Translation Task Force. Our goal is to make all the medical knowledge on Wikipedia available to the world, in the language of your choice.

note: you will not receive future editions of this newsletter unless you *sign up*; you received this version because you identify as a member of WikiProject Medicine

Spotlight - Simplified article translation


Wikiproject Medicine started translating simplified articles in February 2014. We now have 45 simplified articles ready for translation, of which the first on African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness has been translated into 46 out of ~100 languages. This list does not include the 33 additional articles that are available in both full and simple versions.

Our goal is to eventually translate 1,000 simplified articles. This includes:

We are looking for subject area leads to both create articles and recruit further editors. We need people with basic medical knowledge who are willing to help out. This includes to write, translate and especially integrate medical articles.

What's happening?


IEG grant
CFCF - "IEG beneficiary" and editor of this newsletter.

I've (CFCF) taken on the role of community organizer for this project, and will be working with this until December. The goals and timeline can be found here, and are focused on getting the project on a firm footing and to enable me to work near full-time over the summer, and part-time during the rest of the year. This means I will be available for questions and ideas, and you can best reach me by mail or on my talk page.

Wikimania 2014

For those going to London in a month's time (or those already nearby) there will be at least one event for all medical editors, on Thursday August 7th. See the event page, which also summarizes medicine-related presentations in the main conference. Please pass the word on to your local medical editors.

Integration progress

There has previously been some resistance against translation into certain languages with strong Wikipedia presence, such as Dutch, Polish, and Swedish.
What was found is that thre is hardly any negative opinion about the the project itself; and any such critique has focused on the ways that articles have being integrated. For an article to be usefully translated into a target-Wiki it needs to be properly Wiki-linked, carry proper citations and use the formatting of the chosen target language as well as being properly proof-read. Certain large Wikis such as the Polish and Dutch Wikis have strong traditions of medical content, with their own editorial system, own templates and different ideas about what constitutes a good medical article. For example, there are not MEDRS (Polish,German,Romanian,Persian) guidelines present on other Wikis, and some Wikis have a stronger background of country-specific content.

  • Swedish
    Translation into Swedish has been difficult in part because of the amount of free, high quality sources out there already: patient info, for professionals. The same can be said for English, but has really given us all the more reason to try and create an unbiased and free encyclopedia of medical content. We want Wikipedia to act as an alternative to commercial sources, and preferably a really good one at that.
    Through extensive collaborative work and by respecting links and Sweden specific content the last unintegrated Swedish translation went live in May.
  • Dutch
    Dutch translation carries with it special difficulties, in part due to the premises in which the Dutch Wikipedia is built upon. There is great respect for what previous editors have created, and deleting or replacing old content can be frowned upon. In spite of this there are success stories: Anafylaxie.
  • Polish
    Translation and integration into Polish also comes with its own unique set of challenges. The Polish Wikipedia has long been independent and works very hard to create high quality contentfor Polish audience. Previous translation trouble has lead to use of unique templates with unique formatting, not least among citations. Add to this that the Polish Wikipedia does not allow template redirects and a large body of work is required for each article.
    (This is somewhat alleviated by a commissioned Template bot - to be released). - List of articles for integration
  • Arabic
    The Arabic Wikipedia community has been informed of the efforts to integrate content through both the general talk-page as well as through one of the major Arabic Wikipedia facebook-groups: مجتمع ويكيبيديا العربي, something that has been heralded with great enthusiasm.
Integration guides

Integration is the next step after any translation. Despite this it is by no means trivial, and it comes with its own hardships and challenges. Previously each new integrator has needed to dive into the fray with little help from previous integrations. Therefore we are creating guides for specific Wikis that make integration simple and straightforward, with guides for specific languages, and for integrating on small Wikis.

Instructions on how to integrate an article may be found here [69]

News in short


To come
  • Medical editor census - Medical editors on different Wikis have been without proper means of communication. A preliminary list of projects is available here.
  • Proofreading drives

Further reading



Thanks for reading! To receive a monthly talk page update about new issues of the Medical Translation Newsletter, please add your name to the subscriber's list. To suggest items for the next issue, please contact the editor, CFCF (talk · contribs) at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Medicine/Translation Taskforce/Newsletter/Suggestions.
Want to help out manage the newsletter? Get in touch with me CFCF (talk · contribs)
For the newsletter from Wikiproject Medicine, see The Pulse

If you are receiving this newsletter without having signed up, it is because you have signed up as a member of the Translation Taskforce, or Wiki Project Med on meta. 22:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:OUP/Approved User Jyoti.mickey has undergone SUL rename to AmritasyaPutra

Hi Ocaasi, I have undergone SUL rename to AmritasyaPutra since I applied to WP:OUP. Now, In the email signup I gave my new username only. The email address remains the same. Is this okay? Regards. The earlier username (Jyoti.mickey) is also (re)registered to me but I do not use it. --AmritasyaPutra 02:55, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 July 2014

Resource request.

Resolved
  • Ezra Schabas, September 1994 Sir Ernest MacMillan: The Importance of Being Canadian ,University of Toronto Press, Chapter: A Matter of Morality (pages=225-242). ISBN 978-1-4426-7996-2 . Available at JSTOR.

I want the above chapter (pages- 227, 230, 232, 235, 237, 241-242) for symphony six. These pages are not shown in the Google book preview of the book. I have tried WP:RX.--Skr15081997 (talk) 16:00, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
To Ocaasi, thank you for your comments at Yahoo Health. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)


By the way, this is our rebuttal to Hasty & Gerber. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Axl, always happy to step in when I see an opportunity :) I'm very glad we have that rebuttal printed. It is really important to have a documented response! Ocaasi t | c 20:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Coordinators still needed?

Hi,

Per the message on my talk page, if you're still needing an account coordinator for the library, I would be happy to help out.--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:20, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

JSTOR access

You replied to a note I left on User: SlimVirgin's talk about my loss of JSTOR access, and told me to expect an email whereby I could be reconnected. That email has arrived, requesting details of my username and email address – the latter surely redundant since they are emailing me? Anyhow, I have attempted to submit these details three times, each time receiving back the message "Resend details". I'm not given any indication as to why what I send is not acceptable. I badly need this access, as its lack is impeding work on several articles. Any advice? Thanks, Brianboulton (talk) 14:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Brianboulton, we actually do not have your email because we used the Special:EmailUser feature. Please just email me at jorlowitz@gmail.com and I'll add you to the list manually. We're turning this around as fast as we can. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 19:15, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Sent the email but with difficulty, after a couple of failed attempts. Ye gods! In case you don't receive it, my email address is bb@bboulton.fsnet.co.uk – thanks for your trouble, I realise you're trying flat out. Brianboulton (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Mailed you. Didn't get the JSTOR mail. --Redtigerxyz Talk 19:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Sent you an e-mail, thanks. Kanatonian (talk) 20:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Hi, is there any way I can do this onwiki rather than through email. I don't have the login information for the email account linked with my Wikipedia username. Thanks Dlv999 (talk) 09:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
    @Dlv999: Hi, you can email me directly from whatever email account you do have at jorlowitz@gmail.com. You can also change the email linked to your Wikipedia account in Special:Preferences. Last, you could leave your email address public on my talk page and then I could revision/delete it afterwards. Your call! Ocaasi t | c 12:04, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 July 2014

08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

IsraelEdits on Twitter

Similar to CongressEdits. -- 94.201.57.87 (talk) 16:29, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia Visiting Scholar - MSU

Jake, FYI - I've been accepted at the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at Montana State University Library and have been working with Brian Rossman and others there on potential projects. I was granted complete access to online library resources a couple of weeks ago. I will be maintaining an accounting of contributions that benefited from access to library resources here: User:Mike Cline/Wikipedia visiting scholar/contributions. Additionally, just for fun, I mocked up a userbox:


Feel free to improve and expropriate for the Wikipedia Library if desired. Thanks for the opportunities. You all are doing great work. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:51, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

That's great Mike Cline! I'm happy for you and excited to see what you do with all of that access to MSU's neat resources. I'll be in touch to check in and see how it's going later in the fall. Best of luck, and nice userbox! Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 15:23, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 7

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 7, June-July 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • Seven new donations, two expanded partnerships
  • TWL's Final Report up, read the summary
  • Adventures in Las Vegas, WikiConference USA, and updates from TWL coordinators
  • Spotlight: Blog post on BNA's impact on one editor's research

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

newspapers.com subscription

My Wikipedia Library sub to newspapers.com doesn't seem to actually get me anything. When I click on an article, it urges me to get a paid subscription, but doesn't allow me to access the article. What might I be doing wrong? --Orange Mike | Talk 23:16, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

@Sadads:, can you please take a look at this (Sadads is coordinating this subscription). Thanks and let me know what's up. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 23:19, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Hey Ocaasi, and @Orangemike:: as I responded at The Wikipedia Library's talk, the accounts haven't been processed yet :P Sadads (talk) 15:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 July 2014

07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding localizing TWA for Telugu

Dear Ocaasi, me and my friend are trying to translate and bring in TWA game to Telugu. Please help us.--Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

TWA Localization

Hi Ocaasi, I am localizing the TWA into Telugu. I just got struck at the first page of the journey. Unable to get the pop-up. Could you please help in this task.
Praveen Grao (talk) 07:46, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi రహ్మానుద్దీన్ and Praveen Grao. I'd love to help. If your code is not loading then you have an error in it. Even just 1 error makes the entire tour not load.

My biggest tip is to be very careful with your code. Every character matters. The most common errors are:

  • Including an apostrophe ( ' ) in a word such as it's without backslashing the ( ' ). You have to write words with apostrophes like this: it\'s.
  • The next most common error is forgetting to close your brackets { }. For every open { bracket you need a close bracket }. The same goes for quote marks. If an instruction 'begins with a quote then it needs to end with a quote'.
  • Third tip, most of the lines in the code have a comma between them. So an instruction will 'end with a comma', and then the next instruction 'will end with a comma',
  • My fourt tip is mainly about how you test for bugs to find mistakes in your code. If your mission have 23 steps, and it's not loading, that means you have an error somewhere in there. So remove all of the steps but the first one, and then see if it works. If that loads, you know the error is not in step 1. Then try adding back all of the steps up to 5. If there's an error still (not loading), then you know the mistake is between steps 2-5. Then load until step 10, step 15, step 20....etc. Note that you still need to include the beginning and end of the code, even if you just have 1 step in it. So again, if you want to test up to step 5, you would include: Beginning - Step 1 - Step 2 - Step 3 - Step 4 - Step 5 - End.
  • Can you link me to your mediawiki code page. I can take a look! Also, will either of you be at Wikimania, or at the London Hackathon August 7th?? Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 12:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Dear Ocaasi, None of us both got scholarship for Wikimania, and we wont be there. Please let us know what all scripts and pages we need to have to have TWA level 1 working. With regard to code, we did copied all of the js files. you could find them at js file and similar locations. I planned of localising once it loads properly, But the initial popup itself is not working! --Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 12:44, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Update: Extension:GuidedTour is not enabled on Te wiki. Could you help us in enabling the same? Should we be raising a bug about it? Or does it require us to request some WMF staff member to help? --Rahmanuddin Shaik (talk) 13:12, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi రహ్మానుద్దీన్, you definitely need to have GuidedTour enabled. Pinging Superm401. I'd also try irc in #wikimedia-tech and #wikimedia-growth, and #mediawiki
All TWA pages are listed here: WP:TWA/Index. Jake Ocaasi t | c 13:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
రహ్మానుద్దీన్, thanks for filing bugzilla:69103. Superm401 - Talk 19:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

About Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure

sir, I have watched it for a long time, and I think that this is a right time to make it into other wikis. I may help you to move it to zh.wikipedia/zh.wikivoyage etc. How do you think? --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 14:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014

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.

Screenshot of VisualEditor's link tool
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).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 August 2014

Wikipedia Library user of Questia now unable to use same email for HighBeam

I am, of course, very grateful for being granted both Questia and HighBeam Research accounts, and for all the hard work required of yourself and other Wikipedia Library project managers, as well as the support people on the partner side, for making this possible. Alas, your work is not done ;)

I use ONE carefully maintained email account for all Wikipedia and academic purposes and can't be bothered with using a separate email address just to access ONE service. When the email address is the only allowed login name, as for both Questia and Highbeam, I would be always confused if it weren't the one email I use for all research by default. It might not be a big deal if the login name were not the email address, but it is. I can't remember trivia like a one-off address I must use for a Web service that isn't very serviceable.

If they can't figure it out, I'll not be able to use their service. I'm not opening another vector of spam because they can't get it together several years after Cenage merger. Thousands of users of Questia must also have HighBeam accounts. Please make the following clear to Highbeam Wikipedia customer support liaison. I'll be happy to help them troubleshoot and post results for the benefit of many others in the same situation.

Ideally:

My1email@example.com
QuestiaPa$$w0rd
My1email@example.com
HighBeamPa$$w0rd

Acceptable:

My1email@example.com
Questia-HighBeamPa$$w0rd

Not Worth the Bother:

My1email@example.com
QuestiaPa$$w0rd
MyHighBeamSNAFUaccount@example.com
HighBeamPa$$w0rd

See (and please revise, if/when solution found): Wikipedia:HighBeam/Support

Paulscrawl (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Per that page, if you'll email me HighBeam's dedicated Wikipedia customer support #, I'll take it on Monday. Thanks -- Paulscrawl (talk) 20:23, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
High Paulscrawl. I completely understand your frustration, and yet I can do nothing about this and nor do I expect HighBeam or Questia will be able to on any reasonable timeframe. They have given us 3000 completely free one-year accounts and are willing to keep doing this apparently indefinitely. The only caveat is that repeat users must use a unique email address. I see how that might not be worth the tradeoff to you to set up a throwaway or tertiary email account and that is fairly your call. I will happily pass on a feature request to HighBeam. It is unlikely, however, to result in a quick technical solution, so you might have to walk away from the opportunity, which would be unfortunate, but again is your call. Best, Ocaasi t | c 14:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Asking for basic Web site functionality is not a "feature request" - we are talking about a bug report. It is not my problem, it is theirs. I've never encountered this problem in 20 years heavy internet use. It is a bug, pure and simple, and I mean to help get it thoroughly diagnosed, documented, and prioritized. Don't forget how much Cenage gains from this partnership of Questia and HighBeam Research with active Wikipedia editors. I've already made about a dozen Questia links. You can't buy advertising like that, and they know it.
Cenage can gain even more from a professionally written, courteous, and solution-oriented email from a professional dotcom veteran willing to troubleshoot with them over the phone after receipt. That would be me, Monday, making clear I speak only for myself, not the Wikipedia Library, though I address a Cenage problem potentially affecting all their users having accounts serviced by the Questia technology stackand the HighBeam technology stack. I've already joined the Cenage/Questia/HighBeam Customer Advisory Team to lend a bit of credibility and help ensure oversight above and beyond customer service, if need be. I'm dedicated to helping them recognize the severity of this 2010-era bug (Questia merger) and finally fix their problem, for free on my part.
Now, again, please email me the dedicated customer support phone number you advertised on the page linked above. I won't embarrass you or Wikipedia - I have a long track record of helping websites get things done that need doing.
Thanks again. Paulscrawl (talk) 19:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: July 2014





Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

The Signpost: 13 August 2014

07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 August 2014

09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Library assistance

Mentioned you here, your comments are welcome too. Shyamal (talk) 07:51, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello Ocaasi. It has been over six months since you last edited your WP:AFC draft article submission, entitled "DJ Many".

The page will shortly be deleted. If you plan on editing the page to address the issues raised when it was declined and resubmit it, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code. Please note that Articles for Creation is not for indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you want to retrieve it, copy this code: {{subst:Refund/G13|Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DJ Many}}, paste it in the edit box at this link, click "Save page", and an administrator will in most cases undelete the submission.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. JMHamo (talk) 13:25, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

WVS Signup

This ought to be updated. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been the visiting scholar at UCR since May and I assume there are Wikipedians at the other schools. Are we that far beneath your notice? Chris Troutman (talk) 01:09, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 August 2014

07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2014

09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

TWA

Just a note from someone with an issue..

Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge#Wikipedia_adventure_.27game.27_or_tutorial.3F

Thanks! heather walls (talk) 23:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: August 2014





Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

The Signpost: 10 September 2014

08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2014

09:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Medical Translation Newsletter Aug./Sept. 2014

Medical Translation Newsletter
Issue 2, Aug./Sept. 2014
by CFCF

sign up for monthly delivery

Feature – Ebola articles

Electron micrograph of an Ebola virus virion

During August we have translated Disease and it is now live in more than 60 different languages! To help us focus on African languages Rubric has donated a large number of articles in languages we haven't previously reached–so a shout out them, and Ian Henderson from Rubric who's joined us here at Wikipedia. We're very happy for our continued collaboration with both Rubric and Translators without Borders!

Just some of our over 60 translations:
New roles and guides!

At Wikimania there were so many enthusiastic people jumping at the chance to help out the Medical Translation Project, but unfortunately not all of them knew how to get started. That is why we've been spending considerable time writing and improving guides! They are finally live, and you can find them at our home-page!

New sign up page!

We're proud to announce a new sign up page at WP:MTSIGNUP! The old page was getting cluttered and didn't allow you to speficy a role. The new page should be easier to sign up to, and easier to navigate so that we can reach you when you're needed!

Style guides for translations

Translations are of both full articles and shorter articles continues. The process where short articles are chosen for translation hasn't been fully transparent. In the coming months we hope to have a first guide, so that anyone who writes medical or health articles knows how to get their articles to a standard where they can be translated! That's why we're currently working on medical good lede criteria! The idea is to have a similar peer review process to good article nominations, but only for ledes.

Some more stats
Further reading


-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 13:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2014

09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2014

06:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Some stroopwafels for you!

I've been editing WP for a while, but just tried out your Wikipedia Adventure in advance of doing a presentation to librarians on getting involved in WP. That's a great tutorial and I'll be sharing. Thanks! Hamaxides (talk) 18:54, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Hamaxides (talk · contribs), so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your work sharing TWA and bringing more librarians into the fold. Please reach out to me about The Wikipedia Library, too, as that is the main program that I work on these days! Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 22:03, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 8

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 8, August-September2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • TWL now a Wikimedia Foundation program, moves on from grant status
  • Four new donations, including large DeGruyter parntership, pilot with Elsevier
  • New TWL coordinators, Wikimania news, new library platform discussions, Wiki Loves Libraries update, and more
  • Spotlight: "Traveling Through History" - an editor talks about his experiences with a TWL newspaper archive, Newspapers.com

Read the full newsletter



MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Wow, I just read about TWL's WMF contract funding… Congratulations! Amazing, amazing work. It has been so great watching the project develop and grow. Proud of you, and happy for you. :) ---Another Believer (Talk) 05:04, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

:) Thanks AB. It's a pleasure working with this community with folks like you around. There's lots more to do! Maybe... one day... you will be on our team ;) Cheers, Jake Ocaasi t | c 17:05, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

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.

See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.

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 66697bug 68828bug 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).

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, perhaps in late October.

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.

Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. To help with translations, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre at Meta. Thank you!

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2014

This Month in GLAM: September 2014





Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

08:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Problem with The Wikipedia Adventure

There is an issue with The Wikipedia Adventure, since it is using some deprecated (then later removed) functionality. This is unrelated to the GuidedTour changes, but rather due to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118733/ . The 'ok' field no longer works with get/post/ajax calls. Instead, you have to use the returned Promise. I've tweaked the code accordingly. This replacement needs to be done for all definitions of sendMessage since currently it is not a library:

function sendMessage( targetPage, msgPage, linkTo ) {
	var api = new mw.Api();
	api.get( {
		'action' : 'query',
		'titles' : msgPage,
		'prop'   : 'revisions|info',
		'intoken' : 'edit',
		'rvprop' : 'content',
		'indexpageids' : 1
	} ).done( function (result) {
		result = result.query;
		var page = result.pages[result.pageids[0]];
		var text = page.revisions[0]['*'];
		api.post( {
			'action' : 'edit',
			'title' : targetPage,
			'appendtext' : "\n" + text,
			'summary' : 'New Message (simulated automatically as part of [[WP:The Wikipedia Adventure|The Wikipedia Adventure]])',
			'token' : page.edittoken
		} ).done( function () {
			window.location.href = linkTo;
		} );
	} );
}

As part of this, I've also changed it to not be global (it doesn't need to be, so it's better to avoid it). That shouldn't affect anything unless you're explicitly writing window.sendMessage . If so, change it to sendMessage.

When reply to this, please ping me so I'll get a notification. After this is fixed, I'll continue testing the first level, so please let me know when it's done. You can see my status at https://trello.com/c/zX0PEzEl/407-test-backwards-compatibility-of-wikipedia-adventure-tour-with-updated-guidedtour . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Matt. Thanks for that fix! I've updated all 7 twa.js tours and the message function is working (as you can see in the section below). I see one other problem with the logged-in logic in step 7. When I'm logged in, it should auto-skip to Step 8 per shouldSkip: function () {return mw.config.get( 'wgUserId' )  !== null;. However it is not doing that...
                //7
                title: 'Account Creation',
                description: '<br><div align="left">[[File:TWA_guide_left_top.png|link=]]</div>Creating an account gives you lots of neat benefits.  Go for it.<br><br>',
                onShow: gt.parseDescription,
                overlay: false,
                closeOnClickOutside: false,
                buttons: [ {
                        name: '<big>←</big>',
                        action: 'externalLink',
                        url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Wikipedia:TWA/1/Start' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=6'          
                } , {
                	name: 'Have account, need to login',
                        action: 'externalLink',
                        url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Special:UserLogin' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=7'
 
                } , {
                	name: 'Register!',
                    action: 'externalLink',
                    url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Special:UserLogin/signup' ) + '?tour=twa1&step=7'
 
                } ],
                allowAutomaticOkay: false,
                shouldSkip: function () {
                return mw.config.get( 'wgUserId' )  !== null;
                }
Yeah, that's a separate bug, unfortunately. See bugzilla:71927 ("shouldSkip and transition do not properly execute on next/prev"). BTW, pinging doesn't work unless you sign; I only happened to come back here when I was talking to Ragesoss. Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 October 2014

13:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 October 2014

05:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the Wikipedia Adventure!

Thanks for your work on the Wikipedia Adventure! I really enjoyed it, and I hope that others will also use it as a starting point to become great editors and content creators! Thanks again! Stevenzc (talk) 03:44, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 October 2014

The Structured Data Bee, vol. 1, issue 1

Greetings, thank you for signing up for the Structured Data newsletter and its first edition. With this newsletter, the Structured data team plans on keeping you informed of technical progress, events, and communications to talk about the project, and continued information on how you can participate. This newsletter will be sent approximately every two weeks, and future editions will be translatable prior to publication. If you're new to Wikidata and want more information about how it works in relation to Wikimedia Commons, you can read an introduction to Wikidata for Commons being drafted.

Tech and design

  • The software development for this process is still in the planning phases. The idea is to have some functional prototyping done for experimentation and feedback by the end of the year.
  • The initial roadmap for development has been posted on Commons. The roadmap is a rough outline and is open to iterations as the team learns where and when to focus its energies.
  • There is a page set up for design ideas about what structured data could potentially look like.
  • There are forthcoming requests for comment about the particulars of technical architecture on mediawiki.org. Keep an eye on the commons:Commons:Structured data/Get involved page for notification of when the RfCs are posted.

Events and chats

  • There was a week-long meeting between the Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team, the Wikidata team, and community members, held in Berlin, Germany, at the office of Wikimedia Deutchland on October 6-10. You can read an overview of the event in on this page on Commons. There are also plenty of pictures available on Wikimedia Commons.
  • If you would like to read more detail about what was discussed, there are etherpads of notes taken for each day of the event.
  • The second IRC office hour (logs) was held on October 16, and the first (logs) on September 3.

Getting involved

  • You've signed up for the newsletter. That's a great first step!
  • While working prototypes are being developed, there is a drive to make all files contain machine-readable data on Wikimedia projects.
  • A hub has been launched to facilitate communication and documentation for this work.
  • There is a frequently-asked questions page that is finishing drafting and will need translated. Keep an eye out for when it is ready if you are interested in translating.
  • There will be active organization of the Get involved page as community participation is further organized. There will be work groups, similar to specific Wikiprojects, dedicated to particular aspects of structured data like licensing presentation, design, API performance, and even helping out with this newsletter and other community communications.

There will be much more information and activities around the proposal to develop structured data on Wikimedia Commons. This project is a major undertaking and an important step as the chief provider, repository, and curator of media for Wikimedia projects.

Thank you for your participation in such an extensive project, let me know if you're interested in participating in this newsletter. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (November 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

  • DeGruyter: 1000 new accounts for English and German-language research. Sign up on one of two language Wikipedias:
  • Fold3: 100 new accounts for American history and military archives
  • Scotland's People: 100 new accounts for Scottish genealogy database
  • British Newspaper Archive: expanded by 100+ accounts for British newspapers
  • Highbeam: 100+ remaining accounts for newspaper and magazine archives
  • Questia: 100+ remaining accounts for journal and social science articles
  • JSTOR: 100+ remaining accounts for journal archives

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 23:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
This message was delivered via the Mass Message to the Book & Bytes recipient list.

VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014

Screenshot on an iPad, showing how to switch from one editor to the other
Did you know?

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 [273] 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 features for 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 researcher Abbey 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!

Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 November 2014

15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: October 2014





Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

The Signpost: 12 November 2014

18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Ocaasi. This message is part of a mass mailing to people who appear active in reviewing articles for creation submissions. First of all, thank you for taking part in this important work! I'm sorry this message is a form letter – it really was the only way I could think of to covey the issue economically. Of course, this also means that I have not looked to see whether the matter is applicable to you in particular.

The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.

If you don't do so already, I'd like to ask for your to help with this problem by taking on the practice of performing a copyvio check as the first step in any AfC review. The most basic method is to simply copy a unique but small portion of text from the draft body and run it through a search engine in quotation marks. Trying this from two different paragraphs is recommended. (If you have any question about whether the text was copied from the draft, rather than the other way around (a "backwards copyvio"), the Wayback Machine is very useful for sussing that out.)

If you do find a copyright violation, please do not decline the draft on that basis. Copyright violations need to be dealt with immediately as they may harm those whose content is being used and expose Wikipedia to potential legal liability. If the draft is substantially a copyvio, and there's no non-infringing version to revert to, please mark the page for speedy deletion right away using {{db-g12|url=URL of source}}. If there is an assertion of permission, please replace the draft article's content with {{subst:copyvio|url=URL of source}}.

Some of the more obvious indicia of a copyvio are use of the first person ("we/our/us..."), phrases like "this site", or apparent artifacts of content written for somewhere else ("top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", use of smartquotes, etc.); inappropriate tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone or a very slanted marketing voice with weasel words; including intellectual property symbols (™,®); and blocks of text being added all at once in a finished form with no misspellings or other errors.

I hope this message finds you well and thanks again you for your efforts in this area. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC).

       Sent via--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 November 2014

User talk:Remember the dot#Proposal: enable "Syntax highlighter" gadget by default for all editors

You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Remember the dot#Proposal: enable "Syntax highlighter" gadget by default for all editors. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (etc) 22:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 December 2014

17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia genealogy project

Just wondering if you have any thoughts re: the idea of WMF hosting a genealogy project. If so, feel free to contribute to this discussion. And apologies if I have made this request before. ---Another Believer (Talk) 17:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 December 2014

This Month in GLAM: November 2014





Headlines
  • Australia and New Zealand report: ALIA partnership goes countrywide
  • Belgium report: Workshops for collection holders across Europe; Founding event of Wikimedia Belgium; Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium & Luxembourg; Plantin-Moretus Museum; Edit-a-thon at faculty library in Ghent University; Image donation UGentMemorie; Upcoming activities
  • France report: Wiki Loves Monuments; mass upload; Musée de Bretagne
  • Germany report: Facts, fun and free content
  • Ireland report: Ada Lovelace day in Dublin
  • Italy report: National Library Conference; Wiki Loves Monuments; Archaeological Open Data; BEIC
  • Netherlands report: Video challenge; Wikidata workshop and hackathon; Wikipedia courses in libraries; WWII editathon
  • Norway report: Edit-a-thon far north at the Museum of Nordland (Nordlandsmuseet)
  • Spain report: Picasso, first Galipedia edit-a-thon, course in Biblioteca Reina Sofía and free portraits
  • South Africa report: Wiki Loves GLAMs, Cape Town
  • Sweden report: Use, reuse and contributions back and forth
  • UK report: Medals, maps and multilingual marvels
  • Special story: ORCID identifiers
  • Open Access report: Open proposal: Wikidata for Research; Open Access signalling
  • Tool testing report: Tools for references, images, video, file usage; Popular Pages
  • Calendar: December's GLAM events
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Protection?

Any reason for this protection [314]? -DePiep (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi DePiep! All of the static pages in The Wikipedia Adventure are protected so that new editors going through that introductory tutorial have a consistent experience (as if this were a self-contained onboarding game rather than a cleverly hacked-together guided tour). We had vandalism on some of the minor background pages of the many created for the 'environment' of TWA and it was not caught in time to prevent new editors from having a broken experience. Most of the minor pages are unwatched except by me, as I'm the only person who created or ever edited them. And I simply am not thorough enough to catch all of the vandalism. These pages are also targets for vandalism because hundreds of new editors are regularly are taken to them during their introductory training, in such a way that they would naturally want to make test edits during the game to the interface itself. I am all for modded content, but not inside TWA itself when that effects other future players. I hope that helps explain why that and other similar pages are protected. Best, Jake Ocaasi t | c 23:24, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Did not see this background. (I was trying ot fox [[:CAT:DUPARG}] btw.) -DePiep (talk) 23:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.

The Signpost: 17 December 2014

Seasonal Greets!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Ocaasi, May you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New year 2015.
Happy editing,
Rosiestep (talk) 01:47, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

Seasonal Greets!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
The Herald : here I am 11:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Screenshot showing how to add or remove columns from a table

Did you know?

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 features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help

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Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Seasonal Greets!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
JudeccaXIII (talk) 18:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

The Signpost: 24 December 2014

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Ocaasi, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:01, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} to all registered users whom have commented on his talk page. To prevent receiving future messages, please follow the opt-out instructions on User:Technical 13/Holiday list

Wikipedia Library research co-ordinator

Hi - what is involved in being a research co-ordinator on Wikipedia Library? I'd like more information, please. I'm a health sciences librarian. Sharkli (talk - contribs) 13:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

16:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Requesting deletion

Hello Ocaasi, I'm requesting a deletion of my user page. Thnx & Cheers! — JudeccaXIII (talk) 04:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

To delete a page in one's own user space, just add {{db-user}} at the top of the page. That does not apply to a talk page where others have posted. Johnuniq (talk) 08:17, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll do that then. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 08:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 December 2014

Books and Bytes - Issue 9

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 9, November-December 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • New donations, including real-paper-and-everything books, e-books, science journal databases, and more
  • New TWL coordinators, conference news, a new open-access journal database, summary of library-related WMF grants, and more
  • Spotlight: "Global Impact: The Wikipedia Library and Persian Wikipedia" - a Persian Wikipedia editor talks about their experiences with database access in Iran, writing on the Persian project and the JSTOR partnership

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2015

This Month in GLAM: December 2014





Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 January 2015

Laura

Hi, Ocaasi. It looks like Laura has been on Wikipedia since at least 2005 (=very young), see this and this. Considering Bonadea's comments in the SPI alone — "mainly edits to userspace: to prettify user pages, add nonsensical text or random userboxes, or add misleading templates", "using Wikipedia as a medium for creative self-expression, posting nonsensical/incomprehensible text and templates" — there's little real doubt that it's the same person. But do you think there's any point in indeffing the present account as a sock? I'm thinking possibly not, as there's in any case no way of preventing the individual from creating more accounts ad libitum. (Are you watching, Drmies? Any ideas?) Bishonen | talk 13:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC).

This person is still around? o_O I'm sure it is the same user: they had a fascination for Joseph Gordon-Levitt and added various incoherent bits of text about him (and his brother? I can't quite remember) to articles and user pages. That ties in with these recent edits from LonelyLaura about a company started by Gordon-Levitt. And she's posted to the JG-L talk page as well. --bonadea contributions talk 14:22, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi, Bonadea. We have a whole system based on pretending we can do something about serial sockpuppeteers, but we really can't. It's very easy to create an account, and quite laborious to track and block them, and it's easy to post from open proxies all over the world, too. (It used to be that you needed a certain technical proficiency for the open proxy thing, but now it's dead easy; just ask google. Hell, I could probably do it myself; I can't say fairer than that.) As long as an individual wants to edit Wikipedia, they basically can. All we can do, really, is try to make it as unrewarding as possible for the worst harassers, per WP:DENY. Laura is extremely harmless compared to those characters, but she, too, can't really be kept out as long as she wants to be in. Bishonen | talk 18:56, 18 January 2015 (UTC).

18:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2015

16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 January 2015

RfC: AfC Helper Script access

An RfC has been opened at RfC to physically restrict access to the Helper Script. You are invited to comment. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)