Wikipedia:Community Portal

• ak:

• en: Requests for the bot flag should be made on this page. This wiki uses the standard bot policy, and allows global bots and automatic approval of certain types of bots. Other bots should apply below, and then request access from a steward if there is no objection.

  Community pages: vote for administrators, speedy deletions.

Using only UploadWizard for uploads

Hello! It was noted that on this wiki you have less than 10 local files. Presumably, you therefore don't have interest nor energies to have hundreds templates with the now required HTML, even less a local EDP. However, this means that users here will experience a mostly broken and/or illegal uploading. I propose to

• have local upload restricted to the "Administrators" group (for emergency uploads) and
• the sidebar point to commons:Special:UploadWizard,

so that you can avoid local maintenance and all users can have a functioning, easy upload interface in their own language. All registered users can upload on Commons and existing files will not be affected.

I'll get this done in one week from now.

1. If you disagree with the proposal, just remove your wiki from the list.
2. To make the UploadWizard even better, please tell your experience and ideas on commons:Commons:Upload Wizard feedback.

Nemo 20:38, 19 Kɔtonimma 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (June 2015)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

• Taylor & Francis — academic publisher of journals. The pilot includes two subject collections: Arts & Humanities and Biological, Environment & Earth Sciences. (30 accounts)
• World Bank eLibrary — digital platform containing all books, working papers, and journal articles published by the World Bank from the 1990s to the present. (100 accounts)
• AAAS — general interest science publisher, who publishes the journal Science among other sources (50 accounts)

New French-Language Branch!

• Érudit (en Francais) — Érudit is a French-Canadian scholarly aggregator primarily, humanities and social sciences, and contains sources in both English and French. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (50 accounts).
• Cairn.info (en Francais) — Cairn.info is a Switzerland based online web portal of scholarly materials in the humanities and social sciences. Most sources are in French, but some also in English. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (100 accounts).
• L'Harmattan — French language publisher across a wide range of non-fiction and fiction, with a strong selection of francophone African materials (1000 accounts).

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including an expansion of accounts for Royal Society journals and remaining accounts on Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Highbeam Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. If you have suggestions for journals or databases we should seek access to make a request! Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (June 2015)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

• Taylor & Francis — academic publisher of journals. The pilot includes two subject collections: Arts & Humanities and Biological, Environment & Earth Sciences. (30 accounts)
• World Bank eLibrary — digital platform containing all books, working papers, and journal articles published by the World Bank from the 1990s to the present. (100 accounts)
• AAAS — general interest science publisher, who publishes the journal Science among other sources (50 accounts)

New French-Language Branch!

• Érudit (en Francais) — Érudit is a French-Canadian scholarly aggregator primarily, humanities and social sciences, and contains sources in both English and French. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (50 accounts).
• Cairn.info (en Francais) — Cairn.info is a Switzerland based online web portal of scholarly materials in the humanities and social sciences. Most sources are in French, but some also in English. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (100 accounts).
• L'Harmattan — French language publisher across a wide range of non-fiction and fiction, with a strong selection of francophone African materials (1000 accounts).

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including an expansion of accounts for Royal Society journals and remaining accounts on Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Highbeam Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. If you have suggestions for journals or databases we should seek access to make a request! Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List

HTTPS

Apologies for writing in English.

Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

21:57, 19 Ayɛwohomumu 2015 (UTC)

Please join the 2nd edition of the VisualEditor Translathon

Hello!

I'm pleased to announce the 2nd edition of the VisualEditor Translathon.

It is a translation rally, focused on interface messages and help pages related to VisualEditor. In order to participate, you need to sign up on the Translathon page on TranslateWiki.

The top 3 contributors will each win a Wikipedia t-shirt of their choice from the Wikipedia store. Translations made between July 15th and July 19th (CDT time zone) qualify.

If you are at Wikimania Mexico this year, you are also welcome to join a related sprint during the hackathon in Workplace 1 - Don Américo, Thursday 16 July at 4pm (CDT) at the conference venue, so you can meet other fellow translators and get support if you need some.

Interface messages have the priority. You will need to create an account at translatewiki.net in order to work on them, if you don't have one. It is recommended to create the account ASAP, so that it can be confirmed in time.

You can also help translate documentation pages about VisualEditor on mediawiki.org. You can use your Wikipedia account to work there.

You will find instructions, links and other details on the Translathon page.

Thanks for your attention, and happy translating!
Elitre (WMF) 20:56, 13 Kutawonsa 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to create PNG thumbnails of static GIF images

The thumbnail of this gif is of really bad quality.

How a PNG thumb of this GIF would look like

There is a proposal at the Commons Village Pump requesting feedback about the thumbnails of static GIF images: It states that static GIF files should have their thumbnails created in PNG. The advantages of PNG over GIF would be visible especially with GIF images using an alpha channel. (compare the thumbnails on the side)

This change would affect all wikis, so if you support/oppose or want to give general feedback/concerns, please post them to the proposal page. Thank you. --McZusatz (talk) & MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:07, 24 Kutawonsa 2015 (UTC)

What does a Healthy Community look like to you?

Hi,
The Community Engagement department at the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a new learning campaign. The WMF wants to record community impressions about what makes a healthy online community. Share your views and/or create a drawing and take a chance to win a Wikimania 2016 scholarship! Join the WMF as we begin a conversation about Community Health. Contribute a drawing or answer the questions on the campaign's page.

Why get involved?

The world is changing. The way we relate to knowledge is transforming. As the next billion people come online, the Wikimedia movement is working to bring more users on the wiki projects. The way we interact and collaborate online are key to building sustainable projects. How accessible are Wikimedia projects to newcomers today? Are we helping each other learn?
Share your views on this matter that affects us all!
We invite everyone to take part in this learning campaign. Wikimedia Foundation will distribute one Wikimania Scholarship 2016 among those participants who are eligible.

More information

• All participants must have a registered user of at least one month antiquity on any Wikimedia project before the starting date of the campaign.
• All eligible contributions must be done until August 23, 2015 at 23:59 UTC
• Wiki link: Community Health learning campaign
• URL https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Community_Health_learning_campaign
• Contact: María Cruz / Twitter: Template:@WikiEval #CommunityHealth / email: evalTemplate:@wikimediaTemplate:Dotorg

Happy editing!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:42, 31 Kutawonsa 2015 (UTC)

What does a Healthy Community look like to you?

Hi,
The Community Engagement department at the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a new learning campaign. The WMF wants to record community impressions about what makes a healthy online community. Share your views and/or create a drawing and take a chance to win a Wikimania 2016 scholarship! Join the WMF as we begin a conversation about Community Health. Contribute a drawing or answer the questions on the campaign's page.

Why get involved?

The world is changing. The way we relate to knowledge is transforming. As the next billion people come online, the Wikimedia movement is working to bring more users on the wiki projects. The way we interact and collaborate online are key to building sustainable projects. How accessible are Wikimedia projects to newcomers today? Are we helping each other learn?
Share your views on this matter that affects us all!
We invite everyone to take part in this learning campaign. Wikimedia Foundation will distribute one Wikimania Scholarship 2016 among those participants who are eligible.

More information

• All participants must have a registered user of at least one month antiquity on any Wikimedia project before the starting date of the campaign.
• All eligible contributions must be done until August 23, 2015 at 23:59 UTC
• Wiki link: Community Health learning campaign
• URL https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Community_Health_learning_campaign
• Contact: María Cruz / Twitter: Template:@WikiEval #CommunityHealth / email: evalTemplate:@wikimediaTemplate:Dotorg

Happy editing!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:56, 1 Ɔsannaa 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata: Access to data from arbitrary items is coming

(Sorry for writing in English)

When using data from Wikidata on Wikipedia and other sister projects, there is currently a limitation in place that hinders some use cases: data can only be accessed from the corresponding item. So, for example, the Wikipedia article about Berlin can only get data from the Wikidata item about Berlin but not from the item about Germany. This had technical reasons. We are now removing this limitation. It is already done for many projects. Your project is one of the next ones. We will roll out this feature here on August 12.

We invite you to play around with this new feature if you are one of the people who have been waiting for this for a long time. If you have technical issues/questions with this you can come to d:Wikidata:Contact the development team.

A note of caution: Please be careful with how many items you use for a single page. If it is too many pages, loading might get slow. We will have to see how the feature behaves in production to see where we need to tweak and how.

How to use it, once it is enabled:

• Parser function: {{#property:P36|from=Q183}} to get the capital from the item about Germany
• Lua: see mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua

Cheers Lydia Pintscher MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 3 Ɔsannaa 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata: Access to data from arbitrary items is here

(Sorry for writing in English)

Hi everyone,

As I have previously announced here we have now enabled the arbitrary access feature here. This means from now on you can make use of data from any Wikidata item in any article here. Before you could for example only access data about Berlin in the article about Berlin. If you want to find out more or have questions please come to d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access. I hope this will open up great possibilities for you and make your work easier. Cheers Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 13:32, 12 Ɔsannaa 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #4—2015

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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. We thank 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.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page is now using Flow instead of LiquidThreads.
• 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 mediawiki.org 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 design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• 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.

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!

—Elitre (WMF), 22:28, 14 Ɔsannaa 2015 (UTC)

How can we improve Wikimedia grants to support you better?

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation would like your feedback about how we can reimagine Wikimedia Foundation grants, to better support people and ideas in your Wikimedia project. Ways to participate:

• Respond to questions on the discussion page of the idea.
• Join a small group conversation.
• Learn more about this consultation.

Feedback is welcome in any language.

With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), m:Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was sent by I JethroBT (WMF) through MediaWiki message delivery. 23:42, 18 Ɔsannaa 2015 (UTC)

Introducing the Wikimedia public policy site

Hi all,

We are excited to introduce a new Wikimedia Public Policy site. The site includes resources and position statements on access, copyright, censorship, intermediary liability, and privacy. The site explains how good public policy supports the Wikimedia projects, editors, and mission.

Visit the public policy portal: https://policy.wikimedia.org/

Please help translate the statements on Meta Wiki. You can read more on the Wikimedia blog.

Thanks,

Yana and Stephen (Talk) 18:12, 2 Ɛbɔ 2015 (UTC)

(Sent with the Global message delivery system)

New Wikipedia Library Database Access (September 2015)

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 new accounts and research materials from:

• EBSCOHost - this is one of our largest access donations so far: access to a wide variety of academic, newspaper and magazine sources through their Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete and MasterFILE Complete
• Newspaperarchive.com - historical newspapers from the United States, Canada, UK and 20 other countries, and includes an Open Access "clipping" feature (1000 accounts)
• IMF Elibary- a digital collection of the IMF's reports, studies and research on global economics and development (50 accounts)
• Sabinet - one of the largest African digital publishers, based in South Africa, with a wide range of content in English and other European and African languages (10 accounts)
• Numérique Premium - a French language social science and humanities ebook database, with topical collections on a wide range of topics (100)
• Al Manhal - an Arabic and English database with a wide range of sources, largely focused on or published in the Middle East (60 accounts)
• Jamalon - an Arabic book distributor, who is providing targeted book delivery to volunteers (50 editors)

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including expanded accounts for Elsevier ScienceDirect, British Medical Journal and Dynamed and additional accounts for Project MUSE, DeGruyter, Newspapers.com, Highbeam and HeinOnline. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 19:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

We need help! Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Reimagining WMF grants report

(My apologies for using English here, please help translate if you are able.)

Last month, we asked for community feedback on a proposal to change the structure of WMF grant programs. Thanks to the 200+ people who participated! A report on what we learned and changed based on this consultation is now available.

Come read about the findings and next steps as WMF’s Community Resources team begins to implement changes based on your feedback. Your questions and comments are welcome on the outcomes discussion page.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 16:56, 28 Ɛbɔ 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #5—2015

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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 ever 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 it on all devices regardless of size if they wish. (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 sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227, 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.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
• 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 What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
• Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then 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 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.

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!

—Elitre (WMF), 18:17, 30 Ahinime 2015 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey

Hi everyone! Apologies for posting in English. Translations are very welcome.

The Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is focused on building improved curation and moderation tools for experienced Wikimedia contributors. We're now starting a Community Wishlist Survey to find the most useful projects that we can work on.

For phase 1 of the survey, we're inviting all active contributors to submit brief proposals, explaining the project that you'd like us to work on, and why it's important. Phase 1 will last for 2 weeks. In phase 2, we'll ask you to vote on the proposals. Afterwards, we'll analyze the top 10 proposals and create a prioritized wishlist.

While most of this process will be conducted in English, we're inviting people from any Wikimedia wiki to submit proposals. We'll also invite volunteer translators to help translate proposals into English.

Your proposal should include: the problem that you want to solve, who would benefit, and a proposed solution, if you have one. You can submit your proposal on the Community Wishlist Survey page, using the entry field and the big blue button. We will be accepting proposals for 2 weeks, ending on November 23.

We're looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Community Tech Team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:58, 9 Obubuo 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016 scholarships ambassadors needed

Hello! Wikimania 2016 scholarships will soon be open; by the end of the week we'll form the committee and we need your help, see Scholarship committee for details.

If you want to carefully review nearly a thousand applications in January, you might be a perfect committee member. Otherwise, you can volunteer as "ambassador": you will observe all the committee activities, ensure that people from your language or project manage to apply for a scholarship, translate scholarship applications written in your language to English and so on. Ambassadors are allowed to ask for a scholarship, unlike committee members.

Wikimania 2016 scholarships subteam 10:48, 10 Obubuo 2015 (UTC)

Harassment consultation

Please help translate to your language

The Community Advocacy team the Wikimedia Foundation has opened a consultation on the topic of harassment on Meta. The consultation period is intended to run for one month from today, November 16, and end on December 17. Please share your thoughts there on harassment-related issues facing our communities and potential solutions. (Note: this consultation is not intended to evaluate specific cases of harassment, but rather to discuss the problem of harassment itself.)

• Harassment consultation 2015

Regards, Community Advocacy, Wikimedia Foundation

Your input requested on the proposed #FreeBassel banner campaign

This is a message regarding the proposed 2015 Free Bassel banner. Translations are available.

Hi everyone,

This is to inform all Wikimedia contributors that a straw poll seeking your involvement has just been started on Meta-Wiki.

As some of your might be aware, a small group of Wikimedia volunteers have proposed a banner campaign informing Wikipedia readers about the urgent situation of our fellow Wikipedian, open source software developer and Creative Commons activist, Bassel Khartabil. An exemplary banner and an explanatory page have now been prepared, and translated into about half a dozen languages by volunteer translators.

We are seeking your involvement to decide if the global Wikimedia community approves starting a banner campaign asking Wikipedia readers to call on the Syrian government to release Bassel from prison. We understand that a campaign like this would be unprecedented in Wikipedia's history, which is why we're seeking the widest possible consensus among the community.

Given Bassel's urgent situation and the resulting tight schedule, we ask everyone to get involved with the poll and the discussion to the widest possible extent, and to promote it among your communities as soon as possible.

(Apologies for writing in English; please kindly translate this message into your own language.)

Thank you for your participation!

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 21:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help

Community Wishlist Survey

Hi everyone! Apologies for posting this in English. Translations are very welcome.

We're beginning the second part of the Community Tech team's Community Wishlist Survey, and we're inviting all active contributors to vote on the proposals that have been submitted.

Thanks to you and other Wikimedia contributors, 111 proposals were submitted to the team. We've split the proposals into categories, and now it's time to vote! You can vote for any proposal listed on the pages, using the {{Support}} tag. Feel free to add comments pro or con, but only support votes will be counted. The voting period will be 2 weeks, ending on December 14.

The proposals with the most support votes will be the team's top priority backlog to investigate and address. Thank you for participating, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

Community Tech via

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:38, 1 Ɔpenimma 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (December 2015)

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 new accounts and research materials from:

• Gale - multidisciplinary periodicals, newspapers, and reference sources - 10 accounts
• Brill - academic e-books and journals in English, Dutch, and other languages - 25 accounts
• Finnish Literature Society (in Finnish)
• Magiran (in Farsi) - scientific journal articles - 100 articles
• Civilica (in Farsi) - Iranian journal articles, seminars, and conferences - 50 accounts

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including EBSCO, DeGruyter, and Newspaperarchive.com. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 01:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Help us a start Wikipedia Library in your language! Email us at wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Get involved in Wikipedia 15!

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation. Translations are available.

As many of you know, January 15 is Wikipedia’s 15th Birthday!

People around the world are getting involved in the celebration and have started adding their events on Meta Page. While we are celebrating Wikipedia's birthday, we hope that all projects and affiliates will be able to utilize this celebration to raise awareness of our community's efforts.

Haven’t started planning? Don’t worry, there’s lots of ways to get involved. Here are some ideas:

• Join/host an event. We already have more than 80, and hope to have many more.
• Talk to local press. In the past 15 years, Wikipedia has accomplished extraordinary things. We’ve made a handy summary of milestones and encourage you to add your own. More resources, including a press release template and resources on working with the media, are also available.
• Design a Wikipedia 15 logo. In place of a single icon for Wikipedia 15, we’re making dozens. Add your own with something fun and representative of your community. Just use the visual guide so they share a common sensibility.
• Share a message on social media. Tell the world what Wikipedia means to you, and add #wikipedia15 to the post. We might re-tweet or share your message!

Everything is linked on the Wikipedia 15 Meta page. You’ll find a set of ten data visualization works that you can show at your events, and a list of all the Wikipedia 15 logos that community members have already designed.

If you have any questions, please contact Zachary McCune or Joe Sutherland.

Thanks and Happy nearly Wikipedia 15!
-The Wikimedia Foundation Communications team

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery, 20:58, 18 Ɔpenimma 2015 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Help

VisualEditor News #6—2015

Did you know?

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.

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Since the last newsletter, the visual editor 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, T58337) 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:".

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.

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 already 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 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!

Elitre (WMF), 00:06, 25 Ɔpenimma 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016 Scholarships - Deadline soon!

Please help translate to your language

A reminder - applications for scholarships for Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy, are closing soon! Please get your applications in by January 9th. To apply, visit the page below:

• Wikimania 2016 Scholarships

Patrick Earley (WMF) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:49, 5 Ɔpɛpɔn 2016 (UTC)

2016 WMF Strategy consultation

Please help translate to your language

Hello, all.

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has launched a consultation to help create and prioritize WMF strategy beginning July 2016 and for the 12 to 24 months thereafter. This consultation will be open, on Meta, from 18 January to 26 February, after which the Foundation will also use these ideas to help inform its Annual Plan. (More on our timeline can be found on that Meta page.)

Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) at the Meta discussion, 2016 Strategy/Community consultation.

Apologies for English, where this is posted on a non-English project. We thought it was more important to get the consultation translated as much as possible, and good headway has been made there in some languages. There is still much to do, however! We created m:2016 Strategy/Translations to try to help coordinate what needs translation and what progress is being made. :)

If you have questions, please reach out to me on my talk page or on the strategy consultation's talk page or by email to mdennis@wikimedia.org.

I hope you'll join us! Maggie Dennis via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:06, 18 Ɔpɛpɔn 2016 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #1—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. This will affect the following languages, amongst others: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic.

Let's work together

• 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? Does typing in these languages feels natural in the visual editor? Language engineer David Chan needs to know. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.

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!

Elitre (WMF), 20:21, 26 Ɔgyefuo 2016 (UTC)

Completion suggestor

Updates to wiki search auto completion are arriving 10 March

Hello!

Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

The completion suggester beta feature will become the default at the first group of wikis on Thursday, 10 March. This initial rollout will start with some of the smaller wikis to ensure the change happens in an organized way. The remaining wikis will receive the update on Wednesday, 16 March. This update brings three major improvements to search. Improved search result ordering, a tolerance for a small number of spelling errors, and suggests fewer typos.

Since December 2015, 19,000 editors have already opted into the completion suggester beta feature. Contributors are encouraged to try out the feature ahead of the release. Please share any comments on the Completion Suggester discussion page in any language.

To learn more about the work of the Discovery department and other improvements to search, please check out the Wikimedia blog. Read about CirrusSearch, the MediaWiki extension that makes wiki search possible.

- User:CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 7 Ɔbenem 2016 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2016)

Apologies for writing in English. Please help translate to your language

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 access to research materials from:

• Cambridge University Press - a major publisher of academic journals and e-books in a variety of subject areas. Access includes both Cambridge Journals Online and Cambridge Books. 25 accounts.
• Alexander Street Academic Video Online - a large academic video collection good for a wide range of subjects, including news programs (such as PBS and BBC), music and theatre, lectures and demonstrations, and documentaries. 25 accounts.
• Baylor University Press - a publisher of academic e-books primarily in religious studies and the humanities. 50 accounts.
• Future Science Group - a publisher of medical, biotechnological and scientific research. 30 accounts.
• Annual Reviews - a publisher of review articles in the biomedical sciences. 100 accounts.
• Miramar Ship Index - an index to ships and their histories since the early 19th century. 30 accounts.

Non-English

• Noormags - Farsi-language aggregator of academic and professional journals and magazines. 30 accounts.
• Kotobna - Arabic-language ebook publishing platform. 20 accounts.

Expansions

• Gale - aggregator of newspapers, magazines and journals. 50 accounts.
• Elsevier ScienceDirect - an academic publishing company that publishes medical and scientific literature. 100 accounts.

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, De Gruyter, EBSCO, Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 20:30, 17 Ɔbenem 2016 (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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Server switch 2016

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas. This will make sure Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the new data center on Tuesday, 19 April.
On Thursday, 21 April, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for approximately 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped.

Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.

• There will be a code freeze for the week of 18 April.

No non-essential code deployments will take place.

This test was originally planned to take place on March 22. April 19th and 21st are the new dates. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 17 Oforisuo 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon

Hello! Sorry that this is in English only, but we are using village pump messaging in order to reach as many language communities as possible. Wrong page? Please fix it here.

This is an invitation to all Wikipedians: Wikimedia Deutschland has been given data space to include Wikipedia content in an upcoming mission to the Moon. (No joke!) We have launched a community discussion about how to do that, because we feel that this is for the global community of editors. Please, join the discussion on Meta-Wiki (and translate this invitation to your language community)! Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 15:35, 21 Oforisuo 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon: voting has begun

Hello, after six weeks of community discussion about Wikipedia to the Moon, there are now 10 different proposals for content for the mission. Starting today, you can vote for them on Meta-Wiki, and decide what we will work on: a Wikipedia canon, different lists, the Moon in 300 languages, an astronomy editathon, featured articles, articles about technology, endangered things, or DNA-related topics. You can even vote against community involvement. Voting is open until 24 June. Sorry that this message is again in English only, but we are using village pumps to reach as many communities as possible, so that everyone knows they can vote. Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 15:31, 10 Ayɛwohomumu 2016 (UTC)

Compact Language Links enabled in this wiki today

Please help translate to your language

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). Based on several factors, this shorter list of languages is expected to be more relevant for them and valuable for finding similar content in a language known to them. More information about compact language links can be found in the documentation.

From today onwards, compact language links has been enabled as the default listing of interlanguage links on this wiki. Using the button at the bottom, you will be able to see a longer list of all the languages the article has been written in. The setting for this compact list can be changed by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages

The compact language links feature has been tested extensively by the Wikimedia Language team, which developed it. However, in case there are any problems or other feedback please let us know on the project talk page or on this discussion thread. It is to be noted that on some wikis the presence of an existing older gadget that was used for a similar purpose may cause an interference for compact language list. We would like to bring this to the attention of the admins of this wiki. Full details are on this phabricator ticket (in English).

Due to the large scale enablement of this feature, we have had to use MassMessage for this announcement and as a result it is only written in English. We will really appreciate if this message can be translated for other users of this wiki. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team: Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 07:04, 24 Ayɛwohomumu 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon: invitation to edit

Three weeks ago, you were invited to vote on how to take Wikipedia articles to the Moon. Community voting is over and the winning idea is to send all ‘’featured articles and lists’’ to the Moon. This decision means that, starting today, Wikipedians from all language communities are warmly invited to intensively work on their best articles and lists, and submit them to Wikipedia to the Moon. The central site to coordinate between communities will be Meta-Wiki. You will find an overview and more information there. Hopefully, we will be able to represent as many languages as possible, to show Wikipedia’s diversity. Please feel kindly invited to edit on behalf of your community and tell us about your work on featured content!

Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland 14:10, 1 Kutawonsa 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

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 visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. 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: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

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.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
• 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!

m:User:Elitre (WMF), 17:20, 3 Kutawonsa 2016 (UTC)

Save/Publish

The Editing team is planning to change the name of the “Save page” button to “Publish page” and “Publish changes”. “Publish page” will be used when you create a new page. “Publish changes” will be used when you change an existing page. The names will be consistent in all editing environments.[1][2]

This change will probably happen during the week of 30 August 2016. The change will be announced in Tech News when it happens.

If you are fluent in a language other than English, please check the status of translations at translatewiki.net for “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

The main reason for this change is to avoid confusion for new editors. Repeated user research studies with new editors have shown that some new editors believed that “Save page” would save a private copy of a new page in their accounts, rather than permanently publishing their changes on the web. It is important for this part of the user interface to be clear, since it is difficult to remove public information after it is published. We believe that the confusion caused by the “Save page” button increases the workload for experienced editors, who have to clean up the information that people unintentionally disclose, and report it to the functionaries and stewards to suppress it. Clarifying what the button does will reduce this problem.

Beyond that, the goal is to make all the wikis and languages more consistent, and some wikis made this change many years ago. The Legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports this change. Making the edit interface easier to understand will make it easier to handle licensing and privacy questions that may arise.

Any help pages or other basic documentation about how to edit pages will also need to be updated, on-wiki and elsewhere. On wiki pages, you can use the wikitext codes {{int:Publishpage}} and {{int:Publishchanges}} to display the new labels in the user's preferred language. For the language settings in your account preferences, these wikitext codes produce “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

Please share this news with community members who teach new editors and with others who may be interested.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 9 Ɔsannaa 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon working phase

Dear Akan Wikipedia language community,

First of all, I am sorry to write this in English.

You may already have heard about Wikipedia to the Moon: A team of scientists called the “PT Scientists” are going to send a space craft to the moon in 2017 and they want to take Wikipedia along with them. Because Wikipedia is so big, we cannot send all of it to the moon. That is why the international Wikipedia-community has voted to send all “Featured Articles and Featured Lists“ from all languages in Wikipedia.

“Featured Articles“ is a category in many language versions of Wikipedia that collects the very best articles in that language. Your community does not currently have a „Featured Articles“ category. Ideally, we want to take every language on Wikipedia to the moon and we also want to take the best articles in your language. That is why we would like you to tell us what the very best articles in your language are.

There are two ways you could do this:

1) You could introduce the categories “Featured Article” and “Featured List” in your language version of Wikipedia and vote for the best articles and put them in the category. We will take every article that is tagged as a “Featured Article” or a “Featured List” to the moon

2) You could vote for the best articles in your language version of Wikipedia and put them all on one a new Wikipedia page. If you let us know where we can find that list here, we will also take the articles to the moon.

The deadline for Wikipedia to the Moon is 31 October 2016. After that date, we will put all the Featured Articles and Lists onto a special disc and give it to the “PT Scientists.” They will take the Wikipedia articles into space next year.

--Denis Schroeder (WMDE) (talk) 12:57, 17 Ɔsannaa 2016 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library accounts available now (August 2016)

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 now sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

• Nomos – Primarily German-language publisher of law and social sciences books and journals - 25 accounts
• World Scientific – Scientific, technical, and medical journals - 50 accounts
• Edinburgh University Press – Humanities and social sciences journals - 25 accounts
• American Psychological Association – Psychology books and journals - 10 accounts
• Emerald – Journals on a range of topics including business, education, health care, and engineering - 10 accounts

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, DeGruyter, Gale and Newspaperarchive.com.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:38, 30 Ɔsannaa 2016 (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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

RevisionSlider

From September 13th on, RevisionSlider will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page, so that you can easily move between revisions. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:56, 12 Ɛbɔ 2016 (UTC)

Creative Commons 4.0

Hello! I'm writing from the Wikimedia Foundation to invite you to give your feedback on a proposed move from CC BY-SA 3.0 to a CC BY-SA 4.0 license across all Wikimedia projects. The consultation will run from October 5 to November 8, and we hope to receive a wide range of viewpoints and opinions. Please, if you are interested, take part in the discussion on Meta-Wiki.

Apologies that this message is only in English. This message can be read and translated in more languages here. Joe Sutherland (talk) 01:35, 6 Ahinime 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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.

Recent changes

• You can now set text as small or big.[3]
• Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[4] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[5]
• Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[6]
• At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department is adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more at mediawiki.org.[7]
• The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[8] 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.[9]

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.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

• 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!

—Elitre (WMF)

17:49, 15 Ahinime 2016 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (November 2016)

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 new accounts and research materials from:

• Foreign Affairs - Journal of international relations and U.S. foreign policy
• OpenEdition - Journals in the social sciences and humanities
• Édition Diffusion Presse Sciences - French and English language scientific journals
• ASHA - Speech–language–hearing journals
• Tilastopaja - Athletics statistics

Expansions

• EBSCO - Many new databases added
• Taylor & Francis - Strategic, Defence & Security Studies collection

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:30, 1 Obubuo 2016 (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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Password reset

I apologise that this message is in English. ⧼Centralnotice-shared-help-translate⧽

We are having a problem with attackers taking over wiki accounts with privileged user rights (for example, admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, checkusers). It appears that this may be because of weak or reused passwords.

Community members are working along with members of multiple teams at the Wikimedia Foundation to address this issue.

In the meantime, we ask that everyone takes a look at the passwords they have chosen for their wiki accounts. If you know that you've chosen a weak password, or if you've chosen a password that you are using somewhere else, please change those passwords.

Select strong passwords – eight or more characters long, and containing letters, numbers, and punctuation. Joe Sutherland (talk) / MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:59, 13 Obubuo 2016 (UTC)

Adding to the above section (Password reset)

Please accept my apologies - that first line should read "Help with translations!". Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) / MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 14 Obubuo 2016 (UTC)

New way to edit wikitext

Summary: There's a new opt-in Beta Feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. Please go try it out.

We in the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing department are responsible for making editing better for all our editors, new and experienced alike. We've been slowly improving the visual editor based on feedback, user tests, and feature requests. However, that doesn't work for all our user needs: whether you need to edit a wikitext talk page, create a template, or fix some broken reference syntax, sometimes you need to use wikitext, and many experienced editors prefer it.

Consequently, we've planned a "wikitext mode" for the visual editor for a long time. It provides as much of the visual editor's features as possible, for those times that you need or want wikitext. It has the same user interface as the visual editor, including the same toolbar across the top with the same buttons. It provides access to the citoid service for formatting citations, integrated search options for inserting images, and the ability to add new templates in a simple dialog. Like in the visual editor, if you paste in formatted text copied from another page, then formatting (such as bolding) will automatically be converted into wikitext.

All wikis now have access to this mode as a Beta Feature. When enabled, it replaces your existing wikitext editor everywhere. If you don't like it, you can reverse this at any time by turning off the Beta Feature in your preferences. We don't want to surprise anyone, so it's strictly an opt-in-only Beta Feature. It won't switch on automatically for anyone, even if you have previously checked the box to "Automatically enable most beta features".

The new wikitext edit mode is based on the visual editor, so it requires JavaScript (as does the current wikitext editor). It doesn't work with gadgets that have only been designed for the older one (and vice versa), so some users will miss gadgets they find important. We're happy to work with gadget authors to help them update their code to work with both editors. We're not planning to get rid of the current main wikitext editor on desktop in the foreseeable future. We're also not going to remove the existing ability to edit plain wikitext without JavaScript. Finally, though it should go without saying, if you prefer to continue using the current wikitext editor, then you may so do.

This is an early version, and we'd love to know what you think so we can make it better. Please leave feedback about the new mode on the feedback page. You may write comments in any language. Thank you.

James Forrester (Product Manager, Editing department, Wikimedia Foundation) --19:31, 14 Ɔpenimma 2016 (UTC)

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:

• Update 1 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (15 December 2016)
  • Introduction to process and information about budget spending resolution to support it
• Update 2 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (23 December 2016)
  • Start of search for Lead Architect for movement strategy process
• Update 3 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (8 January 2017)
  • Plans for strategy sessions at upcoming Wikimedia Conference 2017
• Update 4 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (11 January 2017)
  • Introduction of williamsworks
• Update 5 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 February 2017)
  • The core movement strategy team, team tracks being developed, introduction of the Community Process Steering Committee, discussions at WikiIndaba conference 2017 and the Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland
• Update 6 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (10 February 2017)
  • Tracks A & B process prototypes and providing feedback, updates on development of all four Tracks

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:31, 15 Ɔgyefuo 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

• Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
  • Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
• Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
  • Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
• Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
  • Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 Ɔbenem 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

• Find out more about the movement strategy process
• Learn more about volunteering to be a Discussion Coordinator

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams

05:10, 18 Ɔbenem 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

• April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
• April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
• April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
• May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
• May 15–19 – Board vote checking
• May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:

• Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
  • There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

• Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
  • One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:37, 7 Oforisuo 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:34, 11 Oforisuo 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata description editing in the Wikipedia Android app

Wikidata description editing is a new experiment being rolled out on the Wikipedia app for Android. While this primarily impacts Wikidata, the changes are also addressing a concern about the mobile versions of Wikipedia, so that mobile users will be able to edit directly the descriptions shown under the title of the page and in the search results.

We began by rolling out this feature several weeks ago to a pilot group of Wikipedias (Russian, Hebrew, and Catalan), and have seen very positive results including numerous quality contributions in the form of new and updated descriptions, and a low rate of vandalism.

We are now ready for the next phase of rolling out this feature, which is to enable it in a few days for all Wikipedias except the top ten by usage within the app (i.e. except English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, and Chinese). We will enable the feature for those languages instead at some point in the future, as we closely monitor user engagement with our expanded set of pilot communities. As always, if have any concerns, please reach out to us on wiki at the talk page for this project or by email at reading@wikimedia.org. Thanks!

-DBrant (WMF) 08:41, 14 Oforisuo 2017 (UTC)

New Page previews feature

New Page previews feature

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

Hello,

The Reading web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working to enable Page previews, a beta feature known previously as Hovercards, as opt-in behavior for logged-in users and the default behavior for logged-out users across Wikipedia projects. Page previews provide a preview of any linked article, giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving the current page. For this project, we are expecting to collect feedback over the following few weeks and tentatively enable the feature in early May, 2017.

A quick note on the implementation:

• For logged-in users who are not currently testing out the beta feature, Page previews will be off by default. Users may turn them on from their user preferences page.
• For logged-out users, the feature will be on by default. Users may disable it at any time by selecting the setting cog available in each preview.
• For users of the Navigation popups gadget, you will not be able to turn on the Page previews feature while using navigational popups. If you would like to try out the Page preview feature, make sure to first turn Navigation popups off prior to turning Page previews on.

You can read more about the feature and the tests we used to evaluate performance, try it out by enabling it from the beta features page, and leave feedback or questions on the talk page.

Thank you, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 19 Oforisuo 2017 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2017)

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 new accounts and research materials from:

• American Psychiatric Association – Psychiatry books and journals
• Bloomsbury – Who's Who, Drama Online, Berg Fashion Library, and Whitaker's
• Gaudeamus – Finnish humanities and social sciences
• Ympäristö-lehti – The Finnish Environment Institute's Ympäristö-lehti magazine

Expansions

• Gale – Biography In Context database added
• Adam Matthew – all 53 databases now available

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, Taylor & Francis and Newspaperarchive.com.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:52, 2 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Aaron.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Voting has begun in 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2017 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 1 to 23:59 UTC May 14. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2017 Board of Trustees election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help 19:14, 3 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View

From May 9, the Two Column Edit Conflict View will be available as a beta feature on all wikis. The Two Column Edit Conflict View is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. It highlights differences between the editor's and the conflicting changes to make it easy to copy and paste pieces of the text and resolve the conflict. The feature fulfils a request for a more user-friendly edit conflict resolution from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:28, 8 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• 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. [10]
• The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [11]
• 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. [12]
• 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. [13]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [14] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [15]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [16]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [17]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [18]
• 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. [19]
• 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 or Command+K respectively. [20]

Future changes

• The team is working 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. [21]
• 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. [22]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [23]
• 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!

—Elitre (WMF)

18:06, 12 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Prototype for editing Wikidata infoboxes on Wikipedia

Hello,

I’m sorry for writing in English. It’d be great if someone could translate this message if necessary.

One of the most requested features for Wikidata is to enable editing of Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia, so the editors can continue their workflow without switching websites.

The Wikidata development team has been working on a tool to achieve this goal: fill and edit the Wikipedia infoboxes with information from Wikidata, directly on Wikipedia, via the Visual Editor.

We already asked for feedback in 2015, and collected some interesting ideas which we shared with you in this thesis. Now we would like to present to you our first prototype and collect your feedback, in order to improve and continue the development of this feature.

We present this work to you very early, so we can include your feedback before and all along the development. You are the core users of this feature, so we want to make sure that it fits your needs and editing processes.

You will find the prototype, description of the features, and a demo video, on this page. Feel free to add any comment or feedback on the talk page. The page is currently not translated in every languages, but you can add your contribution by helping to translate it.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to follow all the discussions on Wikipedia, so if you want to be sure that your feedback is read, please add it on the Wikidata page, in your favorite language. Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks, Lea Lacroix (WMDE)

RevisionSlider

RevisionSlider will be available as a default feature for all users on all wikis from May 17. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page so that you can easily move between revisions. The slider view is collapsed by default, and will load by clicking on it. It can also be turned off entirely in the user preferences. RevisionSlider has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia for 6 months and a beta feature on all wikis for 8 months. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Thanks to everyone who tested RevisionSlider and gave valuable feedback to improve the feature! We hope that RevisionSlider will continue to serve you well in your work.

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:39, 16 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Join the next cycle of Wikimedia movement strategy discussions (underway until June 12)

Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki

The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.

You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.

Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:

• Healthy, Inclusive Communities
• The Augmented Age
• A Truly Global Movement
• The Most Respected Source of Knowledge
• Engaging in the Knowledge Ecosystem

On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation • Please help translate to your language • Get help

21:09, 16 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

New notification when a page is connected to Wikidata

Hello all,

(Please help translate to your language)

The Wikidata development team is about to deploy a new feature on all Wikipedias. It is a new type of notification (via Echo, the notification system you see at the top right of your wiki when you are logged in), that will inform the creator of a page, when this page is connected to a Wikidata item.

You may know that Wikidata provides a centralized system for all the interwikilinks. When a new page is created, it should be connected to the corresponding Wikidata item, by modifying this Wikidata item. With this new notification, editors creating pages will be informed when another editor connects this page to Wikidata.

This feature will be deployed on May 30th on all the Wikipedias, excepting English, French and German. This feature will be disable by default for existing editors, and enabled by default for new editors.

This is the first step of the deployments, the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects will follow in the next months.

If you have any question, suggestion, please let me know by pinging me. You can also follow and leave a comment on the Phabricator ticket.

Thanks go to Matěj Suchánek who developed this feature!

Thank you! Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk)

m:Requests for comment/Global centralnotice for the blockade of the Turkish government

Hi, you are invited to participate in the discussion on the proposal to make a banner through m: centralnotice to inform more people around the world about what the Turkish government has done about Wikipedia, ie all the language versions of Wikipedia are You are obscured, so in Turkey it is impossible to view the * .wikipedia.org site. To hope that the Turkish government will remove the block, it is necessary to raise awareness of this fact around the world because it is important to succeed in this mission because Wikipedia can not be seen in Turkey. With this message also for those interested, I invite him to sign the Wikimedian appeal. If you have any questions or questions do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks best regards. --Samuele2002 (Talk!) 20:44, 17 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee elections

Translations of this message are available on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, we are pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson elections. Please read the letter from the Wikimedia Foundation calling for candidates at on the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Funds Dissemination Committee
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.

Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson
The Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.

The candidacy submission phase will last until May 28 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates until May 28. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki. Once the questions submission period has ended on May 28, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to.

The goal of this process is to fill the five community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and the community-selected ombudsperson. The election results will be used by the Board itself to make the appointments.

The full schedule for the FDC elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

• May 15 (00:00 UTC) – May 28 (23:59 UTC) – Nominations
• May 15 – May 28 – Candidates questions submission period
• May 29 – June 2 – Candidates answer questions
• June 3 – June 11 – Voting period
• June 12–14 – Vote checking
• June 15 – Goal date for announcing election results

More information on this year's elections can be found at the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help

21:06, 23 Kɔtonimma 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata changes now also appear in enhanced recent changes

Hello, and sorry to write this message in English. You can help translating it.

Starting from today, you will be able to display Wikidata changes in both modes of the recent changes and the watchlist.

Read and translate the full message

Thank you! Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 08:33, 29 Ayɛwohomumu 2017 (UTC)

(wrong target page? you can fix it here)

Accessible editing buttons

The MediaWiki developers have been slowly improving the accessibility of the user interface. The next step in this transition will change the appearance of some buttons and may break some outdated (non-updated or unmaintained) user scripts and gadgets.

You can see and use the old and new versions now. Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors.

• Comparison of old and new styles
• 
  Buttons before the change
• 
  Buttons after the change

However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.

This change will probably reach this wiki on Tuesday, 18 July 2017. Please leave a note at mw:Talk:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons if you need help.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 10 Kutawonsa 2017 (UTC)

Page Previews (Hovercards) update

Hello,

A quick update on the progress of enabling Page Previews (previously named Hovercards) on this project. Page Previews provide a preview of any linked article, giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving the current page. As mentioned in December we're preparing to remove the feature from Beta and make it the default behavior for logged-out users. We have recently made a large update to the code which fixes most outstanding bugs.

Due to some issues with our instrumentation, we delayed our deployment by a few months. We are finally ready to deploy the feature. Page Previews will be off by default and available in the user preferences page for logged-in users the week of July 24th. The feature will be on by default for current beta users and logged-out users. If you would like to preview the feature, you can enable it as a beta feature. For more information see Page Previews. Questions can be left on the talk page in your preferred language.

Thank you again.

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:32, 20 Kutawonsa 2017 (UTC)

Improved search in deleted pages archive

Please help translate to your language

During Wikimedia Hackathon 2016, the Discovery team worked on one of the items on the 2015 community wishlist, namely enabling searching the archive of deleted pages. This feature is now ready for production deployment, and will be enabled on all wikis, except Wikidata.

Right now, the feature is behind a feature flag - to use it on your wiki, please go to the Special:Undelete page, and add &fuzzy=1 to the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=1. Then search for the pages you're interested in. There should be more results than before, due to using ElasticSearch indexing (via the CirrusSearch extension).

We plan to enable this improved search by default on all wikis soon (around August 1, 2017). If you have any objections to this - please raise them with the Discovery team via email or on this announcement's discussion page. Like most Mediawiki configuration parameters, the functionality can be configured per wiki. Once the improved search becomes the default, you can still access the old mode using &fuzzy=0 in the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=0

Please note that since Special:Undelete is an admin-only feature, this search capability is also only accessible to wiki admins.

Thank you! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 25 Kutawonsa 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding "Interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing to decrease impersonation"

There is currently a RfC open on Meta regarding "requiring those involved with paid editing on Wikipedia to link on their user page to all other active accounts through which they advertise paid Wikipedia editing business."

Note this is to apply to Wikipedia and not necessarily other sister projects, this is only to apply to websites where people are specifically advertising that they will edit Wikipedia for pay and not any other personal, professional, or social media accounts a person may have.

Please comment on meta. Thanks. Send on behalf of User:Doc James.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:06, 17 Ɛbɔ 2017 (UTC)

Discussion on synced reading lists

Discussion on synced reading lists

Hello,

The Reading Infrastructure team at the Wikimedia Foundation is developing a cross-platform reading list service for the mobile Wikipedia app. Reading lists are like bookmark folders in your web browser. They allow readers using the Wikipedia app to bookmark pages into folders to read later. This includes reading offline. Reading lists do not create or alter content in any way.

To create Reading Lists, app users will register an account and marked pages will be tied to that account. Reading List account preferences sync between devices. You can read the same pages on different mobile platforms (tablets, phones). This is the first time we are syncing preference data between devices in such a way. We want to hear and address concerns about privacy and data security. We also want to explain why the current watchlist system is not being adapted for this purpose.

Background

In 2016 the Android team replaced the simple Saved Pages feature with Reading Lists. Reading Lists allow users to bookmark pages into folders and for reading offline. The intent of this feature was to allow "syncing" of these lists for users with many devices. Due to overlap with the Gather feature and related community concerns, this part was put on hold.

The Android team has identified this lack of synching as a major area of complaint from users. They expect lists to sync. The iOS team has held off implementing Reading Lists, as syncing was seen as a "must have" for this feature. A recent technical RfC has allowed these user stories and needs to be unblocked. Initially for Android, then iOS, and with web to potentially follow.

Reading lists are private, stored as part of a user's account, not as a public wiki page. There is no sharing or publishing ability for reading lists. No planned work to make these public. The target audience are people that read Wikipedia and want to bookmark and organize that content in the app. There is a potential for the feature to be available on the web in the future.

Why not watchlists

Watchlists offer similar functionality to Reading Lists. The Reading Infrastructure team evaluated watchlist infrastructure before exploring other options. In general, the needs of watchlists differ from Reading Lists in a few key ways:

• Reading lists focus on Reading articles, not the monitoring of changes.
• Watchlists are focused on monitoring changes of pages/revisions.
  • The Watchlist infrastructure is key to our contributor community for monitoring content changes manually and through the use of automated tools (bots). Because of these needs, expanding the scope of Watchlists to reading purposes will only make the project harder to maintain and add more constraints.
• By keeping the projects separate it is easier to scale resources. We can serve these two different audiences and prioritize the work accordingly. Reading Lists are, by their nature, less critical to the health of Wikipedia/MediaWiki.
• Multi-project support. Reading Lists are by design cross-wiki/project. Watchlists are tied to specific wikis. While there have been many discussion for making them cross-wiki, resolution is not in the near term.

More information can be found on MediaWiki.org where feedback and ideas are welcome.

Thank you

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 20 Ɛbɔ 2017 (UTC)

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website.

Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas from the research done by the New Readers team in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. The teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated by user research and community feedback. The prototype evaluation received positive feedback and results, so development continued.

For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.

The feature is available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 Obubuo 2017 (UTC)

Call for Wikimania 2018 Scholarships

Hi all,

We wanted to inform you that scholarship applications for Wikimania 2018 which is being held in Cape Town, South Africa on July 18–22, 2018 are now being accepted. Applications are open until Monday, 22 January 2018 23:59 UTC.

Applicants will be able to apply for a partial or full scholarship. A full scholarship will cover the cost of an individual's round-trip travel, shared accommodation, and conference registration fees as arranged by the Wikimedia Foundation. A partial scholarship will cover conference registration fees and shared accommodation. Applicants will be rated using a pre-determined selection process and selection criteria established by the Scholarship Committee and the Wikimedia Foundation, who will determine which applications are successful. To learn more about Wikimania 2018 scholarships, please visit: wm2018:Scholarships.

To apply for a scholarship, fill out the multi-language application form on: https://scholarships.wikimedia.org/apply

It is highly recommended that applicants review all the material on the Scholarships page and the associated FAQ before submitting an application. If you have any questions, please contact: wikimania-scholarships at wikimedia.org or leave a message at: wm2018:Talk:Scholarships. Please help us spread the word and translate pages!

Best regards, David Richfield and Martin Rulsch for the Scholarship Committee 19:24, 20 Ɔpenimma 2017 (UTC)

User group for Military Historians

Greetings,

"Military history" is one of the most important subjects when speak of sum of all human knowledge. To support contributors interested in the area over various language Wikipedias, we intend to form a user group. It also provides a platform to share the best practices between military historians, and various military related projects on Wikipedias. An initial discussion was has been done between the coordinators and members of WikiProject Military History on English Wikipedia. Now this discussion has been taken to Meta-Wiki. Contributors intrested in the area of military history are requested to share their feedback and give suggestions at Talk:Discussion to incubate a user group for Wikipedia Military Historians.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:46, 21 Ɔpenimma 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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.

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 Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• 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. [24]
• Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [25]
• The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be a bit tricky to set up. Your wiki can have this service. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.

Let's work together

• The team will talk about editing tools at an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
• 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. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [26]
• 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!

—Elitre (WMF)

20:56, 2 Ɔbenem 2018 (UTC)

Galicia 15 - 15 Challenge

Wikipedia:Galicia 15 - 15 Challenge is a public writing competition which will improve improve and translate this list of 15 really important articles into as many languages as possible. Everybody can help in any language to collaborate on writing and/or translating articles related to Galicia. To participate you just need to sign up here. Thank you very much.--Breogan2008 (talk) 13:10, 12 Ɔbenem 2018 (UTC)

Time to bring embedded maps (‘mapframe’) to most Wikipedias

Time to bring embedded maps (‘mapframe’) to most Wikipedias

Please help translate to your language

Mapframe is a feature that enables users to easily display interactive maps right on wiki pages. Currently, most Wikipedias don’t have mapframe. But fifteen Wikipedias, along with all the other Wikimedia projects, are using mapframe today to display maps on thousands of pages.

A little background: over the last few months, the Foundation’s Collaboration team has been working to improve the stability and user experience of the maps service. In addition, a question about long-term support for the maps service was recently settled, and a small team has been assigned for routine maintenance. Given these developments, bringing the benefits of mapframe to Wikipedias that lack the feature seems both safe and supportable. Nine Wikipedias that use a stricter version of Flagged Revisions will not get mapframe in this release.

Maps are a valuable form of visual data that can improve readers’ understanding across a wide range of topics. If you know of any reasons why mapframe shouldn’t be implemented on your Wikipedia, let us know on the project talk page. Unless we hear from you, we plan to release mapframe to most Wikipedias in May, 2018. So, if you foresee an issue, please let us hear from you. Otherwise, happy mapping!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 24 Oforisuo 2018 (UTC)

AdvancedSearch

From May 8, AdvancedSearch will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The feature enhances the search page through an advanced parameters form and aims to make existing search options more visible and accessible for everyone. AdvancedSearch is a project by WMDE Technical Wishes. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:44, 7 Kɔtonimma 2018 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2018)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to research and tools as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:

• Rock's Backpages – Music articles and interviews from the 1950s onwards - 50 accounts
• Invaluable – Database of more than 50 million auctions and over 500,000 artists - 15 accounts
• Termsoup – Translation tool

Expansions

• Fold3 – Available content has more than doubled, now including new military collections from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Oxford University Press – The Scholarship collection now includes Electronic Enlightenment
• Alexander Street Press – Women and Social Movements Library now available
• Cambridge University Press – Orlando Collection now available

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Baylor University Press, Loeb Classical Library, Cairn, Gale and Bloomsbury.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:03, 30 Kɔtonimma 2018 (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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Update on page issues on mobile web

Update on page issues on mobile web

Please help translate to your language Hi everyone. The Readers web team has recently begun working on exposing issue templates on the mobile website. Currently, details about issues with page content are generally hidden on the mobile website. This leaves readers unaware of the reliability of the pages they are reading. The goal of this project is to improve awareness of particular issues within an article on the mobile web. We will do this by changing the visual styling of page issues.

So far, we have drafted a proposal on the design and implementation of the project. We were also able to run user testing on the proposed designs. The tests so far have positive results. Here is a quick summary of what we learned:

• The new treatment increases awareness of page issues among participants. This is true particularly when they are in a more evaluative/critical mode.
• Page issues make sense to readers and they understand how they work
• Readers care about page issues and consider them important
• Readers had overwhelmingly positive sentiments towards Wikipedia associated with learning about page issues

Our next step would be to start implementing these changes. We wanted to reach out to you for any concerns, thoughts, and suggestions you might have before beginning development. Please visit the project page where we have more information and mockups of how this may look. Please leave feedback on the talk page.

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 12 Ayɛwohomumu 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences are available

Global preferences are now available, you can set them by visiting your new global preferences page. Visit mediawiki.org for information on how to use them and leave feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

19:19, 10 Kutawonsa 2018 (UTC)

Consultation on the creation of a separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all,

I'm preparing a change in who can edit sitewide CSS/JS pages. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which are executed in the browser of all readers and editors.) Currently all administrators are able to edit these pages, which poses a serious and unnecessary security risk. Soon, a dedicated, smaller user group will take over this task. Your community will be able to decide who belongs in this group, so this should mean very little change for you. You can find out more and provide feedback at the consultation page on Meta. If you are involved in maintaining CSS/JS code, or policymaking around adminship requests, please give it a look!

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 08:45, 12 Kutawonsa 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

New user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all!

To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.) A new user group, interface-admin, has been created. Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).

You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.

Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 13:08, 30 Kutawonsa 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

Enabling a helpful feature for Template editors

Hello.

The team working on TemplateStyles at the Wikimedia Foundation would like to enable TemplateStyles on this wiki.

TemplateStyles is a feature to allow non-administrators to write and manage CSS styles for templates. It allows contributors who edit templates to separate content and presentation. A good web practice that makes it easier to manage the layout of templates. If you don't edit templates, this will not have any impact on your contributions.

TemplateStyles is useful for a few reasons.

• It makes it possible for templates to work better on mobile.
• It cuts out confusion on where to apply CSS rules.
• Editing CSS is currently limited to administrators, which is a major barrier to participation.
• All stylesheets must be loaded on all pages (whether they actually use the page or not), which wastes bandwidth and makes debugging style rules more difficult.

You can learn more about TemplateStyles on MediaWiki.org. Technical documentation is also available.

This is an optional feature and no one must use it, but template contributors are encouraged to do so! Please discuss and let us know if there are any concerns. If there are no concerns we will proceed to deploy the feature on the 9th of August.

Thank you.

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 6 Ɔsannaa 2018 (UTC)

Editing of sitewide CSS/JS is only possible for interface administrators from now

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all,

as announced previously, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed: only members of the interface-admin (Interface administrators) group, and a few highly privileged global groups such as stewards, can edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage). This is done to improve the security of readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. More information is available at Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS. If you encounter any unexpected problems, please contact me or file a bug.

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 12:39, 27 Ɔsannaa 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

Read-only mode for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 12 September 2018. On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop when we switch. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday, 12 September and Wednesday, 10 October. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 13 September and Thursday 11 October).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the weeks of 10 September 2018 and 8 October 2018. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Johan(WMF) (talk)

13:32, 6 Ɛbɔ 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: No editing for up to an hour on 10 October

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation are testing its secondary data center. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

They switched all traffic to the secondary data center 12 September 2018. On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while we switch.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday, 10 October. The test will start a bit after 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST). If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. Please share this information with your community. /User:Johan(WMF) (talk)

12:03, 4 Ahinime 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to your language.

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can post technical proposals from now until 11 November. The communities will vote on the proposals between 16 November and 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

/User:Johan (WMF)

11:05, 30 Ahinime 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

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 Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

• The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
• 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 Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [27]

Let's work together

• 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.
• The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
• 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!

—Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:16, 2 Obubuo 2018 (UTC)

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to your language

Example of improvements

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 13 Obubuo 2018 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey vote

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to your language.

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

/User:Johan (WMF)

18:13, 22 Obubuo 2018 (UTC)

Advanced Search

Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:57, 26 Obubuo 2018 (UTC)

New Wikimedia password policy and requirements

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 6 Ɔpenimma 2018 (UTC)

Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019

Please help translate to your language

Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.

Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.

The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.

The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.

Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.

To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs

There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!

Kind regards,

Wiki Loves Love Team

Imagine... the sum of all love!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:12, 27 Ɔpenimma 2018 (UTC)

FileExporter beta feature

Coming soon: the beta feature FileExporter

A new beta feature will soon be released on all wikis: The FileExporter. It allows exports of files from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons, including their file history and page history. Which files can be exported is defined by each wiki's community: Please check your wiki's configuration file if you want to use this feature.

The FileExporter has already been a beta feature on mediawiki.org, meta.wikimedia, deWP, faWP, arWP, koWP and on wikisource.org. After some functionality was added, it's now becoming a beta feature on all wikis. Deployment is planned for January 16. More information can be found on the project page.

As always, feedback is highly appreciated. If you want to test the FileExporter, please activate it in your user preferences. The best place for feedback is the central talk page. Thank you from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes project.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 09:41, 14 Ɔpɛpɔn 2019 (UTC)

No editing for 30 minutes 17 January

You will not be able to edit the wikis for up to 30 minutes on 17 January 07:00 UTC. This is because of a database problem that has to be fixed immediately. You can still read the wikis. Some wikis are not affected. They don't get this message. You can see which wikis are not affected on this page. Most wikis are affected. The time you can't edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)

14:47, 16 Ɔpɛpɔn 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

1. First, sign up your group here.
2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
   1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
   2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
   3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
   4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
   5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:00, 21 Ɔgyefuo 2019 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2019)

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 new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:

• Kinige – Primarily Indian-language ebooks - 10 books per month
• Gale – Times Digital Archive collection added (covering 1785-2013)
• JSTOR – New applications now being taken again

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Baylor University Press, Taylor & Francis, Cairn, Annual Reviews and Bloomsbury. You can request new partnerships on our Suggestions page.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 17:40, 13 Ɔbenem 2019 (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 Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Read-only mode for up to 30 minutes on 11 April

You will not be able to edit most Wikimedia wikis for up to 30 minutes on 11 April 05:00 UTC. This is because of a hardware problem. You can still read the wikis. You can see which wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)

10:56, 8 Oforisuo 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation has published a Medium-Term Plan proposal covering the next 3–5 years. We want your feedback! Please leave all comments and questions, in any language, on the talk page, by April 20. Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 12 Oforisuo 2019 (UTC)

Multilingual Shared Templates and Modules

Hello akwiki community! (Please help translate to your language)

I recently organized a project to share templates and modules between wikis. It allows modules and templates to be “language-neutral”, and store all text translations on Commons. This means that it is enough to copy/paste a template without any changes, and update the translations separately. If someone fixes a bug or adds a new feature in the original module, you can copy/paste it again without any translation work. My bot DiBabelYurikBot can help with copying. This way users can spend more time on content, and less time on updating and copying templates. Please see mw:WP:TNT for details and ask questions on talk page.

P.S. I am currently running for the Wikimedia board. I believe in focusing on content and support of multi-language communities. If you liked my projects like maps, graphs, or this one, I will be happy to receive your support. (any registered user group can vote). Thank you! --Yurik (talk) 05:35, 11 Kɔtonimma 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata Bridge: edit Wikidata’s data from Wikipedia infoboxes

Sorry for writing this message in English - feel free to help us translating it :)

Hello all,

Many language versions of Wikipedia use the content of Wikidata, the centralized knowledge base, to fill out the content of infoboxes. The data is stored in Wikidata and displayed, partially or completely, in the Wikipedia’s language, on the articles. This feature is used by many template editors, but brought several issues that were raised by communities in various places: not being able to edit the data directly from Wikipedia was one of them.

This is the reason why the Wikidata Bridge project started, with the goal of offering a way to Wikipedia editors to edit Wikidata’s data more easily. This will be achieved by an interface, connected to the infobox, that users can access directly from their local wiki.

The project is now at an early stage of development. A lot of user research has been done, and will continue to be done through the different phases of the project. The next steps of development will be achieved by the development team working at Wikimedia Deutschland, starting now until the end of 2019.

In order to make sure that we’re building a tool that is answering editors’ needs, we’re using agile methods in our development process. We don’t start with a fixed idea of the tool we want to deliver: we will build it together with the editors, based on feedback loops that we will regularly organize. The first version will not necessarily have all of the features you want, but it will keep evolving.

Here’s the planned timeline:

• From June to August, we will build the setup and technical groundwork.
• From September to November 2019, we will develop the first version of the feature and publish a test system so you can try it and give feedback.
• Later on, we will test the feature on a few projects, in collaboration with the communities.
  • We will first focus on early adopters communities who already implemented a shortcut from their infoboxes to edit Wikidata (for example Russian, Catalan, Basque Wikipedias)
  • but we also welcome also communities who volunteer to be part of the first test round.
  • Then we will reach some of the big Wikipedias (French, German, English) in order to see if the project scales and to address their potentially different needs.
  • Even later, we can consider enabling the feature on all the other projects.

In any case, no deployment or big change will be enforced on the projects without talking to the communities first, and helping the template builders to prepare for the changes they will have to do on the infoboxes’ code.

If you want to get involved, there are several ways to help:

• Read and help translating the documentation pages
• Follow the updates and participate in the first feedback loop
• Talk about it with your local community

More ideas will be added on this page along the way

If you have any questions for the development team, feel free to ask them on the main talk page. You can also ask under this message, but if you expect an answer from me, please make sure to ping me.

Thanks for your attention, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 13:03, 24 Ayɛwohomumu 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

1. Section editing
   • 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.
2. Loading overlay
   • 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 the team 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.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:32, 23 Kutawonsa 2019 (UTC)

Update on the consultation about office actions

Hello all,

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety team announced a future consultation about partial and/or temporary office actions. We want to let you know that the draft version of this consultation has now been posted on Meta.

This is a draft. It is not intended to be the consultation itself, which will be posted on Meta likely in early September. Please do not treat this draft as a consultation. Instead, we ask your assistance in forming the final language for the consultation.

For that end, we would like your input over the next couple of weeks about what questions the consultation should ask about partial and temporary Foundation office action bans and how it should be formatted. Please post it on the draft talk page. Our goal is to provide space for the community to discuss all the aspects of these office actions that need to be discussed, and we want to ensure with your feedback that the consultation is presented in the best way to encourage frank and constructive conversation.

Please visit the consultation draft on Meta-wiki and leave your comments on the draft’s talk page about what the consultation should look like and what questions it should ask.

Thank you for your input! -- The Trust & Safety team 08:02, 16 Ɔsannaa 2019 (UTC)

New tools and IP masking

Hey everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation wants to work on two things that affect how we patrol changes and handle vandalism and harassment. We want to make the tools that are used to handle bad edits better. We also want to get better privacy for unregistered users so their IP addresses are no longer shown to everyone in the world. We would not hide IP addresses until we have better tools for patrolling.

We have an idea of what tools could be working better and how a more limited access to IP addresses would change things, but we need to hear from more wikis. You can read more about the project on Meta and post comments and feedback. Now is when we need to hear from you to be able to give you better tools to handle vandalism, spam and harassment.

You can post in your language if you can't write in English.

Johan (WMF)

14:18, 21 Ɔsannaa 2019 (UTC)

The consultation on partial and temporary Foundation bans just started

Hello,

In a recent statement, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees requested that staff hold a consultation to "re-evaluat[e] or add community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)".

Accordingly, the Foundation's Trust & Safety team invites all Wikimedians to join this consultation and give their feedback from 30 September to 30 October.

How can you help?

• Suggest how partial and temporary Foundation bans should be used, if they should (eg: On all projects, or only on a subset);

• Give ideas about how partial and temporary Foundation bans should ideally implemented, if they should be; and/or

• Propose changes to the existing Office Actions policy on partial and temporary bans.

We offer our thanks in advance for your contributions, and we hope to get as much input as possible from community members during this consultation!

-- Kbrown (WMF) 17:14, 30 Ɛbɔ 2019 (UTC)

Feedback wanted on Desktop Improvements project

Please help translate to your language

Hello. The Readers Web team at the WMF will work on some improvements to the desktop interface over the next couple of years. The goal is to increase usability without removing any functionality. We have been inspired by changes made by volunteers, but that currently only exist as local gadgets and user scripts, prototypes, and volunteer-led skins. We would like to begin the process of bringing some of these changes into the default experience on all Wikimedia projects.

We are currently in the research stage of this project and are looking for ideas for improvements, as well as feedback on our current ideas and mockups. So far, we have performed interviews with community members at Wikimania. We have gathered lists of previous volunteer and WMF work in this area. We are examining possible technical approaches for such changes.

We would like individual feedback on the following:

• Identifying focus areas for the project we have not yet discovered
• Expanding the list of existing gadgets and user scripts that are related to providing a better desktop experience. If you can think of some of these from your wiki, please let us know
• Feedback on the ideas and mockups we have collected so far

We would also like to gather a list of wikis that would be interested in being test wikis for this project - these wikis would be the first to receive the updates once we’re ready to start building.

When giving feedback, please consider the following goals of the project:

• Make it easier for readers to focus on the content
• Provide easier access to everyday actions (e.g. search, language switching, editing)
• Put things in logical and useful places
• Increase consistency in the interface with other platforms - mobile web and the apps
• Eliminate clutter
• Plan for future growth

As well as the following constraints:

• Not touching the content - no work will be done in terms of styling templates or to the structure of page contents themselves
• Not removing any functionality - things might move around, but all navigational items and other functionality currently available by default will remain
• No drastic changes to the layout - we're taking an evolutionary approach to the changes and want the site to continue feeling familiar to readers and editors

Please give all feedback (in any language) at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements

After this round of feedback, we plan on building a prototype of suggested changes based on the feedback we receive. You’ll hear from us again asking for feedback on this prototype.

Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk)

07:18, 16 Ahinime 2019 (UTC)

Beta feature "Reference Previews"

A new beta feature will soon be deployed to your wiki: Reference Previews. As you might guess from the name, this feature gives you a preview of references in the article text. That means, you can look up a reference without jumping down to the bottom of the page.

Reference Previews have already been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April. Now they will become available on more wikis. Deployment is planned for October 24. More information can be found on the project page.

As always, feedback is highly appreciated. If you want to test Reference Previews, please activate the beta feature in your user preferences and let us know what you think. The best place for feedback is the central talk page. We hope the feature will serve you well in your work. Thank you from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes project.

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 09:47, 23 Ahinime 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

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 wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk pages project

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.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

• On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
• There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
• Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

• 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.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

• 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: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

11:12, 29 Ahinime 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Asian Month 2019

Please help translate to your language

Wikipedia Asian Month is back! We wish you all the best of luck for the contest. The basic guidelines of the contest can be found on your local page of Wikipedia Asian Month. For more information, refer to our Meta page for organizers.

Looking forward to meet the next ambassadors for Wikipedia Asian Month 2019!

For additional support for organizing offline event, contact our international team on wiki or on email. We would appreciate the translation of this message in the local language by volunteer translators. Thank you!

Wikipedia Asian Month International Team.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:57, 31 Ahinime 2019 (UTC)

Extension of Wikipedia Asian Month contest

In consideration of a week-long internet block in Iran, Wikipedia Asian Month 2019 contest has been extended for a week past November. The articles submitted till 7th December 2019, 23:59 UTC will be accepted by the fountain tools of the participating wikis.

Please help us translate and spread this message in your local language.

Wikipedia Asian Month International Team

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 27 Obubuo 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore

Hello Folks,

Wiki Loves Love is back again in 2020 iteration as Wiki Loves Folklore from 1 February, 2020 - 29 February, 2020. Join us to celebrate the local cultural heritage of your region with the theme of folklore in the international photography contest at Wikimedia Commons. Images, videos and audios representing different forms of folk cultures and new forms of heritage that haven’t otherwise been documented so far are welcome submissions in Wiki Loves Folklore. Learn more about the contest at Meta-Wiki and Commons.

Kind regards,
Wiki Loves Folklore International Team
— Tulsi Bhagat (contribs | talk)
sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:14, 18 Ɔpɛpɔn 2020 (UTC)

Movement Learning and Leadership Development Project

Hello

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Development team is seeking to learn more about the way volunteers learn and develop into the many different roles that exist in the movement. Our goal is to build a movement informed framework that provides shared clarity and outlines accessible pathways on how to grow and develop skills within the movement. To this end, we are looking to speak with you, our community to learn about your journey as a Wikimedia volunteer. Whether you joined yesterday or have been here from the very start, we want to hear about the many ways volunteers join and contribute to our movement.

To learn more about the project, please visit the Meta page. If you are interested in participating in the project, please complete this simple Google form. Although we may not be able to speak to everyone who expresses interest, we encourage you to complete this short form if you are interested in participating!

-- LMiranda (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 22 Ɔpɛpɔn 2020 (UTC)

Additional interface for edit conflicts on talk pages

Sorry, for writing this text in English. If you could help to translate it, it would be appreciated.

You might know the new interface for edit conflicts (currently a beta feature). Now, Wikimedia Germany is designing an additional interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This interface is shown to you when you write on a discussion page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional editing conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments and edit your comment. We are inviting everyone to have a look at the planned feature. Let us know what you think on our central feedback page! -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) 14:14, 26 Ɔgyefuo 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• 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.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

19:24, 8 Oforisuo 2020 (UTC)

Urgent Help

Please help us translate the text (in bold) to your language Join WPWP Campaign to improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win a prize. Thanks for your help. T Cells (talk) 08:09, 6 Ayɛwohomumu 2020 (UTC)

Urgent Help

Please help us translate the text (in bold) to your language Join WPWP Campaign to improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win a prize. Thanks for your help. T Cells (talk) 08:24, 6 Ayɛwohomumu 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This issue of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature is called "Discussion tools". 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 now. 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.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• 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.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

20:32, 17 Ayɛwohomumu 2020 (UTC)

Annual contest Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos

Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP)

This is to invite you to join the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) campaign to help improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win prizes. The campaign starts today 1st July 2020 and closes 31st August 2020.

The campaign primarily aims at using images from Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles that are lacking images. Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.

Please visit the campaign page to learn more about the WPWP Campaign.

With kind regards,

Thank you,

Deborah Schwartz Jacobs, Communities Liaison, On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing Team - 08:24, 1 Kutawonsa 2020 (UTC)

feel free to translate this message to your local language when this helps your community

Feedback on movement names

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language if necessary. Thank you!

There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.

Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.

Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.

Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 19:44, 2 Kutawonsa 2020 (UTC)

Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.

Editing news 2020 #3

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this month, the Editing team offered the visual editor to most Wikipedia editors. Since then, editors have achieved many milestones:

• More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.
• 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.
• The visual editor is increasingly popular. The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has increased every year since its introduction.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers (logged-in editors with ≤99 edits) used the visual editor. This percentage has increased every year.
• 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.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor. 🚀 👩‍🚀
• 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.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

12:55, 9 Kutawonsa 2020 (UTC)

Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia

Hi all,

It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia, a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.

This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May 2020 after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.

The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.

As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation . We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.

It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project, and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.

We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.

There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list . We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.

Yours,

Katherine Maher (Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation)

Sent by m:User:Elitre (WMF) 19:56, 9 Kutawonsa 2020 (UTC) - m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC): we want to hear from you.

Hello. Apologies that you may not be reading this message in your native language: translations of the following message may be available on Meta. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

At times, our contributor communities and projects have suffered from a lack of guidelines that can help us create an environment where free knowledge can be shared safely without fear. There has been talk about the need for a global set of conduct rules in different communities over time.

Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees announced a Community Culture Statement, asking for new standards to address harassment and promote inclusivity across projects.

The universal code of conduct will be a binding minimum set of standards across all Wikimedia projects, and will apply to all of us, staff and volunteers alike, all around the globe. It is of great importance that we all participate in expressing our opinions and thoughts about UCoC and its values. We should think about what we want it to cover or include and what it shouldn’t include, and how it may create difficulties or help our groups.

This is the time to talk about it. Before starting drafting the code of conduct, we would like to hear from you and to solicit the opinions and feedback of your colleagues. In order for your voice to be heard, we encourage and invite you to read more about the universal code of conduct (UCoC) and then write down your opinions or feedback on the discussion page.

To reduce language barriers during the process, you are welcome to translate the universal code of conduct main page from English into your respective local language. You and your community may choose to provide your opinions/feedback using your local languages.

Thanks in advance for your attention and contributions, The Trust and Safety team at Wikimedia Foundation 16:42, 22 Kutawonsa 2020 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: FileExporter and FileImporter become default features on all Wikis

The FileExporter and FileImporter will become a default features on all wikis until August 7, 2020. They are planned to help you to move files from your local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier while keeping all original file information (Description, Source, Date, Author, View History) intact. Additionally, the move is documented in the files view history. How does it work?

Step 1: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link "Move file to Wikimedia Commons" on the local file page.

Step 2: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can in fact be moved to Wikimedia Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki's configuration file which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.

Step 3: If the file is compatible with Wikimedia Commons, you will be taken to an import page, at which you can update or add information regarding the file, such as the description. You can also add the 'Now Commons' template to the file on the local wiki by clicking the corresponding check box in the import form. Admins can delete the file from the local wiki by enabling the corresponding checkbox. By clicking on the 'Import' button at the end of the page, the file is imported to Wikimedia Commons.

If you want to know more about the FileImporter extension or the Technical Wishes Project, follow the links. --For the Technical Wishes Team:

Max Klemm (WMDE) 09:13, 6 Ɔsannaa 2020 (UTC)

Important: maintenance operation on September 1st

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data centre on Tuesday, September 1st 2020.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, September 1st. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday September 2).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of September 1st, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 26 Ɔsannaa 2020 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Collections Now Available (September 2020)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL owl says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing new free, full-access, accounts to reliable sources as part of our research access program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:

• Al Manhal – Arabic journals and ebooks
• Ancestry.com – Genealogical and historical records
• RILM – Music encyclopedias

Many other partnerships are listed on our partners page, including Adam Matthew, EBSCO, Gale and JSTOR.

A significant portion of our collection now no longer requires individual applications to access! Read more in our recent blog post.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 09:49, 3 Ɛbɔ 2020 (UTC)

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Invitation to participate in the conversation

Hello. Apologies for cross-posting, and that you may not be reading this message in your native language: translations of the following announcement may be available on Meta. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

We are excited to share a draft of the Universal Code of Conduct, which the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees called for earlier this year, for your review and feedback. The discussion will be open until October 6, 2020.

The UCoC Drafting Committee wants to learn which parts of the draft would present challenges for you or your work. What is missing from this draft? What do you like, and what could be improved?

Please join the conversation and share this invitation with others who may be interested to join, too.

To reduce language barriers during the process, you are welcomed to translate this message and the Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review. You and your community may choose to provide your opinions/feedback using your local languages.

To learn more about the UCoC project, see the Universal Code of Conduct page, and the FAQ, on Meta.

Thanks in advance for your attention and contributions, The Trust and Safety team at Wikimedia Foundation, 17:55, 10 Ɛbɔ 2020 (UTC) 

Wiki of functions naming contest

Please help translate to your language.

Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Wikimedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki where the community can work together on a library of functions. The community can create new functions, read about them, discuss them, and share them. Some of these functions will be used to help create language-independent Wikipedia articles that can be displayed in any language, as part of the Abstract Wikipedia project. But functions will also be usable in many other situations.

There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with voting beginning on 29 September and 27 October. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on 8 December. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

21:19, 29 Ɛbɔ 2020 (UTC)

Call for feedback about Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws changes and Board candidate rubric

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language.

Today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees starts two calls for feedback. One is about changes to the Bylaws mainly to increase the Board size from 10 to 16 members. The other one is about a trustee candidate rubric to introduce new, more effective ways to evaluate new Board candidates. The Board welcomes your comments through 26 October. For more details, check the full announcement.

Thank you! Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:17, 7 Ahinime 2020 (UTC)

Important: maintenance operation on October 27

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, October 27 2020.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, October 27. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (14:00 WET, 15:00 CET, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 03:00 NZDT on Wednesday October 28).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of October 26, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

-- Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 21 Ahinime 2020 (UTC)

Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2

Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

22:10, 5 Obubuo 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 November, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 December and 21 December.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

18:09, 20 Obubuo 2020 (UTC)

Global bot policy proposal: invitation to a Meta discussion

Hello!

I apologize for sending a message in English. Please help translate to your language. According to the list, your wiki project currently is opted in to the global bot policy. Under this policy, bots that fix double redirects or maintain interwiki links are allowed to operate under a global bot flag that is assigned directly by the stewards.

As the Wikimedia projects developed, the need for the current global bot policy decreased, and in the past years, no bots were appointed via that policy. That is mainly given Wikidata were estabilished in 2013, and it is no longer necessary to have dozens of bots that maintain interwiki links.

A proposal was made at Meta-Wiki, which proposes that the stewards will be authorized to determine whether an uncontroversial task may be assigned a global bot flag. The stewards already assign permissions that are more impactful on many wikis, namely, global sysops and global renamers, and I do not think that trust should be an issue. The stewards will assign the permission only to time-proven bots that are already approved at a number of projects, like ListeriaBot.

By this message, I would like to invite you to comment in the global RFC, to voice your opinion about this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Martin Urbanec (talk) 11:49, 24 Obubuo 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist

Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!

As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.

Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.

This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.

Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.

If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 14:39, 30 Obubuo 2020 (UTC)

2020 Coolest Tool Award Ceremony on December 11th

Hello all,

The ceremony of the 2020 Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award will take place virtually on Friday, December 11th, at 17:00 GMT. This award is highlighting tools that have been nominated by contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and the ceremony will be a nice moment to show appreciation to the tools developers and maybe discover new tools!

You will find more information here about the livestream and the discussions channels. Thanks for your attention, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 10:55, 7 Ɔpenimma 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.

In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.

We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.

You can view and vote all proposals here.

We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

00:52, 15 Ɔpenimma 2020 (UTC)

Moving Wikimania 2021 to a Virtual Event

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

Wikimania will be a virtual event this year, and hosted by a wide group of community members. Whenever the next in-person large gathering is possible again, the ESEAP Core Organizing Team will be in charge of it. Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved in the planning process and other aspects of the event. Please read the longer version of this announcement on wikimedia-l.

ESEAP Core Organizing Team, Wikimania Steering Committee, Wikimedia Foundation Events Team, 15:15, 27 Ɔpɛpɔn 2021 (UTC)

Project Grant Open Call

This is the announcement for the Project Grants program open call that started on January 11, with the submission deadline of February 10, 2021.
This first open call will be focussed on Community Organizing proposals. A second open call focused on research and software proposals is scheduled from February 15 with a submission deadline of March 16, 2021.

For the Round 1 open call, we invite you to propose grant applications that fall under community development and organizing (offline and online) categories. Project Grant funds are available to support individuals, groups, and organizations to implement new experiments and proven ideas, from organizing a better process on your wiki, coordinating a campaign or editathon series to providing other support for community building. We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:

• Weekly proposals clinics via Zoom during the Open Call. Join us for #Upcoming_Proposal_Clinics|real-time discussions with Program Officers and select thematic experts and get live feedback about your Project Grants proposal. We’ll answer questions and help you make your proposal better. We also offer these support pages to help you build your proposal:
• Video tutorials for writing a strong application
  
• General planning page for Project Grants
  
• Program guidelines and criteria
  

Program officers are also available to offer individualized proposal support upon request. Contact us if you would like feedback or more information.

We are excited to see your grant ideas that will support our community and make an impact on the future of Wikimedia projects. Put your idea into motion, and submit your proposal by February 10, 2021!

Please feel free to get in touch with questions about getting started with your grant application, or about serving on the Project Grants Committee. Contact us at projectgrantsTemplate:Atwikimedia.org. Please help us translate this message to your local language. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:01, 28 Ɔpɛpɔn 2021 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Collections Available Now (February 2021)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL owl says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing new free, full-access, accounts to reliable sources as part of our research access program. You can sign up to access research materials on the Library Card platform:

• Taxmann – Taxation and law database
• PNAS – Official journal of the National Academy of Sciences
• EBSCO – New Arabic and Spanish language databases added

We have a wide array of other collections available, and a significant number now no longer require individual applications to access! Read more in our blog post.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

--12:57, 1 Ɔgyefuo 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 is back!

Please help translate to your language

You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

Please support us in translating the project page and a banner message to help us spread the word in your native language.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 6 Ɔgyefuo 2021 (UTC)

Feminism & Folklore 1 February - 31 March

Please help translate to your language

Greetings!

You are invited to participate in Feminism and Folklore writing contest. This year Feminism and Folklore will focus on feminism, women's biographies and gender-focused topics for the project in league with Wiki Loves Folklore gender gap focus with folk culture theme on Wikipedia. folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, fairy tales, folk plays, folk arts, folk religion, mythology, etc.

You can help us in enriching the folklore documentation on Wikipedia from your region by creating or improving articles centered on folklore around the world, including, but not limited to folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, women and queer personalities in folklore, folk culture (folk artists, folk dancers, folk singers, folk musicians, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch-hunting, fairy tales and more. You can contribute to new articles or translate from the list of suggested articles here.

You can also support us in translating the project page and help us spread the word in your native language.

Learn more about the contest and prizes from our project page. Thank you.

Feminism and Folklore team,

Joy Agyepong (talk) 02:40, 16 Ɔgyefuo 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Set two-letter project shortcuts as alias to project namespace globally

Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

I apologize for posting in English. I would like to inform everyone that I created a new global request for comment (GRFC) at Meta Wiki, which may affect your project: m:Requests for comment/Set short project namespace aliases by default globally.

In this GRFC, I propose that two-project shortcuts for project names will become a default alias for the project namespace. For instance, on all Wikipedias, WP will be an alias to the Wikipedia: namespace (and similar for other projects). Full list is available in the GRFC.

This is already the case for Wikivoyages, and many individual projects asked for this alias to be implemented. I believe this makes it easier to access the materials in the project namespace, as well as creating shortcuts like WP:NPOV, as well as helps new projects to use this feature, without having to figure out how to request site configuration changes first.

As far as I can see, Wikipedia currently does not have such an alias set. This means that such an alias will be set for you, if the GRFC is accepted by the global community.

I would like to ask all community members to participate in the request for comment at Meta-Wiki, see m:Requests for comment/Set short project namespace aliases by default globally.

Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions about this proposal.

Best regards,
--Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:11, 18 Ɔgyefuo 2021 (UTC)

Wikifunctions logo contest

Hello. Please help to choose a design concept for the logo of the new Wikifunctions wiki. Voting starts today and will be open for 2 weeks. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-Wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

01:46, 2 Ɔbenem 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations

Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2

Please help translate to your language

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects. The project is currently in Phase 2, outlining clear enforcement pathways. You can read more about the whole project on its project page.

Drafting Committee: Call for applications

The Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting volunteers to join a committee to draft how to make the code enforceable. Volunteers on the committee will commit between 2 and 6 hours per week from late April through July and again in October and November. It is important that the committee be diverse and inclusive, and have a range of experiences, including both experienced users and newcomers, and those who have received or responded to, as well as those who have been falsely accused of harassment.

To apply and learn more about the process, see Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee.

2021 community consultations: Notice and call for volunteers / translators

From 5 April – 5 May 2021 there will be conversations on many Wikimedia projects about how to enforce the UCoC. We are looking for volunteers to translate key material, as well as to help host consultations on their own languages or projects using suggested key questions. If you are interested in volunteering for either of these roles, please contact us in whatever language you are most comfortable.

To learn more about this work and other conversations taking place, see Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations.

-- Xeno (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 5 Oforisuo 2021 (UTC)

Global bot policy changes

Hello!

I apologize for sending a message in English. Please help translate to your language. According to the list, your wiki project is currently opted in to the global bot policy. As such, I want to let you know about some changes that were made after the global RfC was closed.

• Global bots are now subject to a 2 week discussion, and it'll be publicized via a MassMessage list, available at Bot policy/New global bot discussion on Meta. Please subscribe yourself or your wiki if you are interested in new global bots proposals.
• For a bot to be considered for approval, it must demonstrate it is welcomed in multiple projects, and a good way to do that is to have the bot flag on at least 5 wikis for a single task.
• The bot operator should make sure to adhere to the wiki's preference as related to the use of the bot flag (i.e., if a wiki doesn't want a bot to use the flag as it edits, that should be followed).

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
—Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 18:48, 6 Oforisuo 2021 (UTC)

Line numbering coming soon to all wikis

Example

From April 15, you can enable line numbering in some wikitext editors - for now in the template namespace, coming to more namespaces soon. This will make it easier to detect line breaks and to refer to a particular line in discussions. These numbers will be shown if you enable the syntax highlighting feature (CodeMirror extension), which is supported in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors.

More information can be found on this project page. Everyone is invited to test the feature, and to give feedback on this talk page.

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 15:06, 12 Oforisuo 2021 (UTC)

Suggested Values

From April 29, it will be possible to suggest values for parameters in templates. Suggested values can be added to TemplateData and will then be shown as a drop-down list in VisualEditor. This allows template users to quickly select an appropriate value. This way, it prevents potential errors and reduces the effort needed to fill the template with values. It will still be possible to fill in values other than the suggested ones.

More information, including the supported parameter types and how to create suggested values: [1] [2]. Everyone is invited to test the feature, and to give feedback on this talk page.

Timur Vorkul (WMDE) 14:08, 22 Oforisuo 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

• Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
• 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
• Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
• Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:05, 11 Ayɛwohomumu 2021 (UTC)

Wikimania 2021: Individual Program Submissions

Dear all,

Wikimania 2021 will be hosted virtually for the first time in the event's 15-year history. Since there is no in-person host, the event is being organized by a diverse group of Wikimedia volunteers that form the Core Organizing Team (COT) for Wikimania 2021.

Event Program - Individuals or a group of individuals can submit their session proposals to be a part of the program. There will be translation support for sessions provided in a number of languages. See more information here.

Below are some links to guide you through;

• Program Submissions
• Session Submission Guidelines
• FAQ

Please note that the deadline for submission is 18th June 2021.

Announcements- To keep up to date with the developments around Wikimania, the COT sends out weekly updates. You can view them in the Announcement section here.

Office Hour - If you are left with questions, the COT will be hosting some office hours (in multiple languages), in multiple time-zones, to answer any programming questions that you might have. Details can be found here.

Best regards,

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:18, 16 Ayɛwohomumu 2021 (UTC)

On behalf of Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team

Editing news 2021 #2

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

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.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:13, 24 Ayɛwohomumu 2021 (UTC)

Server switch

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of June 28. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 Ayɛwohomumu 2021 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library collections and design update (August 2021)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says log in today!

The Wikipedia Library is pleased to announce the addition of new collections, alongside a new interface design. New collections include:

• Cabells – Scholarly and predatory journal database
• Taaghche - Persian language e-books
• Merkur, Musik & Ästhetik, and Psychologie, Psychotherapie, Psychoanalyse - German language magazines and journals published by Klett-Cotta
• Art Archiv, Capital, Geo, Geo Epoche, and Stern - German language newspapers and magazines published by Gruner + Jahr

Additionally, De Gruyter and Nomos have been centralised from their previous on-wiki signup location on the German Wikipedia. Many other collections are freely available by simply logging in to The Wikipedia Library with your Wikimedia login!

We are also excited to announce that the first version of a new design for My Library was deployed this week. We will be iterating on this design with more features over the coming weeks. Read more on the project page on Meta.

Lastly, an Echo notification will begin rolling out soon to notify eligible editors about the library (T132084). If you can translate the notification please do so at TranslateWiki!

--The Wikipedia Library Team 13:23, 11 Ɔsannaa 2021 (UTC)

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Request for comment notification

Here is a link to a RFC on Meta concerning all Wikimedia projects. Best, Lionel Scheepmans (talk) 00:09, 17 Ɔsannaa 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct - Enforcement draft guidelines review

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.

Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

Wikimania 2021 session (recorded 16 August)

Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC

Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC

Summaries of discussions will be posted every two weeks here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Xeno (WMF) 23:19, 17 Ɔsannaa 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election has come to an end

Thank you for participating in the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election! Voting closed August 31 at 23:59. The official data, including the four most voted candidates, will be announced as soon as the Elections Committee completes their review of the ballots. The official announcement of the new trustees appointed will happen later, once the selected candidates have been confirmed by the Board.

6,946 community members from 216 wiki projects have voted. This makes 10.2% global participation, 1.1% higher than in the last Board elections. In 2017, 5167 people from 202 wiki projects cast their vote. A full analysis is planned to be published in a few days when the confirmed results are announced. In the meantime, you can check the data produced during the election.

Diversity was an important goal with these elections. Messages about the Board election were translated into 61 languages. This outreach worked well. There were 70 communities with eligible voters voting in this election for the first time. With your help, next year’s Board of Trustees election will be even better.

10:03, 2 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey will happen in January

Hello everyone,

We hope all of you are as well and safe as possible during these trying times! We wanted to share some news about a change to the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. We would like to hear your opinions as well.

Summary:

We will be running the Community Wishlist Survey 2022 in January 2022. We need more time to work on the 2021 wishes. We also need time to prepare some changes to the Wishlist 2022. In the meantime, you can use a dedicated sandbox to leave early ideas for the 2022 wishes.

Proposing and wish-fulfillment will happen during the same year

In the past, the Community Tech team has run the Community Wishlist Survey for the following year in November of the prior year. For example, we ran the Wishlist for 2021 in November 2020. That worked well a few years ago. At that time, we used to start working on the Wishlist soon after the results of the voting were published.

However, in 2021, there was a delay between the voting and the time when we could start working on the new wishes. Until July 2021, we were working on wishes from the Wishlist for 2020.

We hope having the Wishlist 2022 in January 2022 will be more intuitive. This will also give us time to fulfill more wishes from the 2021 Wishlist.

Encouraging wider participation from historically excluded communities

We are thinking how to make the Wishlist easier to participate in. We want to support more translations, and encourage under-resourced communities to be more active. We would like to have some time to make these changes.

A new space to talk to us about priorities and wishes not granted yet

We will have gone 365 days without a Wishlist. We encourage you to approach us. We hope to hear from you in the talk page, but we also hope to see you at our bi-monthly Talk to Us meetings! These will be hosted at two different times friendly to time zones around the globe.

We will begin our first meeting September 15th at 23:00 UTC. More details about the agenda and format coming soon!

Brainstorm and draft proposals before the proposal phase

If you have early ideas for wishes, you can use the new Community Wishlist Survey sandbox. This way, you will not forget about these before January 2022. You will be able to come back and refine your ideas. Remember, edits in the sandbox don't count as wishes!

Feedback

• What should we do to improve the Wishlist pages?
• How would you like to use our new sandbox?
• What, if any, risks do you foresee in our decision to change the date of the Wishlist 2022?
• What will help more people participate in the Wishlist 2022?

Answer on the talk page (in any language you prefer) or at our Talk to Us meetings.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee ending 14 September 2021

Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 14, 2021.

The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.

We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:

• Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
• Are ready to find compromises.
• Focus on inclusion and diversity.
• Have knowledge of community consultations.
• Have intercultural communication experience.
• Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
• Have experience negotiating with different parties.

The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions.

Xeno (WMF) 17:01, 10 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

Server switch

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, 14 September 2021.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 14 September 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday, 15 September).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 11 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

Talk to the Community Tech

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

Hello!

As we have recently announced, we, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will take place on September 15th, 23:00 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

• How we prioritize the wishes to be granted
• Why we decided to change the date from November 2021 to January 2022
• Update on the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes
• Questions and answers

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (first three points in the agenda) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

• Join online
• Meeting ID: 898 2861 5390
• One tap mobile
  • +16465588656,,89828615390# US (New York)
  • +16699006833,,89828615390# US (San Jose)
• Dial by your location

See you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 03:03, 11 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

Select You the question statements for candidates of Drafting Committee Movement Charter

Into 2021-10-04 11:59:59 UTC you can select question statements for the candidates of Drafting Committee Movement Charter. ✍️ Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 21:35, 29 Ɛbɔ 2021 (UTC)

Voting for the election for the members for the Movement Charter drafting committee is now open

In other languages • Please help translate to your language

Voting for the election for the members for the Movement Charter drafting committee is now open. In total, 70 Wikimedians from around the world are running for 7 seats in these elections.

Voting is open from October 12 to October 24, 2021.

The committee will consist of 15 members in total: The online communities vote for 7 members, 6 members will be selected by the Wikimedia affiliates through a parallel process, and 2 members will be appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation. The plan is to assemble the committee by November 1, 2021.

Learn about each candidate to inform your vote in the language that you prefer: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Candidates>

Learn about the Drafting Committee: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee>

We are piloting a voting advice application for this election. Click yourself through the tool and you will see which candidate is closest to you! Check at <https://mcdc-election-compass.toolforge.org/>

Read the full announcement: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Elections>

Go vote at SecurePoll on: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Elections>

Best,

Movement Strategy & Governance Team, Wikimedia Foundation

Xeno (WMF) 02:25, 14 Ahinime 2021 (UTC)

Learn how Movement Strategy Implementation Grants can support your Movement Strategy plans

Movement Strategy Implementation grants now provide more than $2,000 USD to put Movement Strategy plans into action. Find out more about Movement Strategy Implementation grants, the criteria, and how to apply.

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Meet the new Movement Charter Drafting Committee members

More languages • Please help translate to your language

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee election and selection processes are complete.

• The election results have been published. 1018 participants voted to elect seven members to the committee: Richard Knipel (Pharos), Anne Clin (Risker), Alice Wiegand (Lyzzy), Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom), Richard (Nosebagbear), Ravan J Al-Taie (Ravan), Ciell (Ciell).
• The affiliate process has selected six members: Anass Sedrati (Anass Sedrati), Érica Azzellini (EricaAzzellini), Jamie Li-Yun Lin (Li-Yun Lin), Georges Fodouop (Geugeor), Manavpreet Kaur (Manavpreet Kaur), Pepe Flores (Padaguan).
• The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed two members: Runa Bhattacharjee (Runab WMF), Jorge Vargas (JVargas (WMF)).

The committee will convene soon to start its work. The committee can appoint up to three more members to bridge diversity and expertise gaps.

If you are interested in engaging with Movement Charter drafting process, follow the updates on Meta and join the Telegram group.

With thanks from the Movement Strategy and Governance team

15:53, 5 Obubuo 2021 (UTC)

Upcoming Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

The Board of Trustees is preparing a call for feedback about the upcoming Board Elections, from January 7 - February 10, 2022.

While details will be finalized the week before the call, we have confirmed at least two questions that will be asked during this call for feedback:

• What is the best way to ensure fair representation of emerging communities among the Board?

• What involvement should candidates have during the election?

While additional questions may be added, the Movement Strategy and Governance team wants to provide time for community members and affiliates to consider and prepare ideas on the confirmed questions before the call opens. We apologize for not having a complete list of questions at this time. The list of questions should only grow by one or two questions. The intention is to not overwhelm the community with requests, but provide notice and welcome feedback on these important questions.

Do you want to help organize local conversation during this Call?

Contact the Movement Strategy and Governance team on Meta, on Telegram, or via email at msgwikimedia.org.

Reach out if you have any questions or concerns. The Movement Strategy and Governance team will be minimally staffed until January 3. Please excuse any delayed response during this time. We also recognize some community members and affiliates are offline during the December holidays. We apologize if our message has reached you while you are on holiday.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Thank you. Xeno (WMF) 17:56, 27 Ɔpenimma 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore is back!

Please help translate to your language

You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

You can also organize a local contest in your country and support us in translating the project pages to help us spread the word in your native language.

Feel free to contact us on our project Talk page if you need any assistance.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:14, 9 Ɔpɛpɔn 2022 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2022

Please help translate to your language

Greetings! You are invited to participate in Feminism and Folklore 2022 writing competion. This year Feminism and Folklore will focus on feminism, women biographies and gender-focused topics for the project in league with Wiki Loves Folklore gender gap focus with folk culture theme on Wikipedia.

You can help us in enriching the folklore documentation on Wikipedia from your region by creating or improving articles focused on folklore around the world, including, but not limited to folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, women and queer personalities in folklore, folk culture (folk artists, folk dancers, folk singers, folk musicians, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales and more. You can contribute to new articles or translate from the list of suggested articles here.

You can also support us in organizing the contest on your local Wikipedia by signing up your community to participate in this project and also translating the project page and help us spread the word in your native language.

Learn more about the contest and prizes from our project page. Feel free to contact us on our talk page or via Email if you need any assistance...

Thank you.

Feminism and Folklore Team,

Tiven2240 --05:49, 11 Ɔpɛpɔn 2022 (UTC)

Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections is now open

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

The Call for Feedback: Board of Trustees elections is now open and will close on 7 February 2022.

With this Call for Feedback, the Movement Strategy and Governance team is taking a different approach. This approach incorporates community feedback from 2021. Instead of leading with proposals, the Call is framed around key questions from the Board of Trustees. The key questions came from the feedback about the 2021 Board of Trustees election. The intention is to inspire collective conversation and collaborative proposal development about these key questions.

Join the conversation.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Xeno (WMF) 01:04, 15 Ɔpɛpɔn 2022 (UTC)

Subscribe to the This Month in Education newsletter - learn from others and share your stories

Dear community members,

Greetings from the EWOC Newsletter team and the education team at Wikimedia Foundation. We are very excited to share that we on tenth years of Education Newsletter (This Month in Education) invite you to join us by subscribing to the newsletter on your talk page or by sharing your activities in the upcoming newsletters. The Wikimedia Education newsletter is a monthly newsletter that collects articles written by community members using Wikimedia projects in education around the world, and it is published by the EWOC Newsletter team in collaboration with the Education team. These stories can bring you new ideas to try, valuable insights about the success and challenges of our community members in running education programs in their context.

If your affiliate/language project is developing its own education initiatives, please remember to take advantage of this newsletter to publish your stories with the wider movement that shares your passion for education. You can submit newsletter articles in your own language or submit bilingual articles for the education newsletter. For the month of January the deadline to submit articles is on the 20th January. We look forward to reading your stories.

Older versions of this newsletter can be found in the complete archive.

More information about the newsletter can be found at Education/Newsletter/About.

For more information, please contact spatnaikTemplate:@wikimedia.org.

---

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony ^(Talk), Wednesday 14:31, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 5

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 5, January 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.

• Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 16th February 2022. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
• The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Xeno (WMF) 03:27, 29 Ɔpɛpɔn 2022 (UTC)

Updates on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines Review

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees released a statement on the ratification process for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines.

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement. The UCoC and the Enforcement Guidelines were written by volunteer-staff drafting committees following community consultations.

The revised guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the policy across the movement. There is a list of changes made to the guidelines after the enforcement draft guidelines review. Comments about the guidelines can be shared on the Enforcement Guidelines talk page on Meta-wiki.

To help to understand the guidelines and process, the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team will be hosting Conversation Hours on 4 February 2022 at 15:00 UTC, 25 February 2022 at 12:00 UTC, and 4 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Join the conversation hours to speak with the UCoC project team and drafting committee members about the updated guidelines and voting process.

The timeline is available on Meta-wiki. The voting period is March 7 to 21. All eligible voters will have an opportunity to support or oppose the adoption of the Enforcement guidelines, and share why. See the voting information page for more details.

Many participants from across the movement have provided valuable input in these ongoing conversations. The UCoC and MSG teams want to thank the Drafting Committee and the community members for their contributions to this process.

Sincerely,

Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Xeno (WMF) 03:55, 4 Ɔgyefuo 2022 (UTC)

Leadership Development Task Force: Your feedback is appreciated

The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is supporting the creation of a global, community-driven Leadership Development Task Force. The purpose of the task force is to advise leadership development work.

The team is looking for feedback about the responsibilities of the Leadership Development Task Force. This Meta page shares the proposal for a Leadership Development Task Force and how you can help. Feedback on the proposal will be collected from 7 to 25 February 2022.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:14, 11 Ɔgyefuo 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore is extended till 15th March

Please help translate to your language

Greetings from Wiki Loves Folklore International Team,

We are pleased to inform you that Wiki Loves Folklore an international photographic contest on Wikimedia Commons has been extended till the 15th of March 2022. The scope of the contest is focused on folk culture of different regions on categories, such as, but not limited to, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, etc.

We would like to have your immense participation in the photographic contest to document your local Folk culture on Wikipedia. You can also help with the translation of project pages and share a word in your local language.

Best wishes,

International Team
Wiki Loves Folklore

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:50, 22 Ɔgyefuo 2022 (UTC)

Coming soon

Several improvements around templates

Hello, from March 9, several improvements around templates will become available on your wiki:

• Fundamental improvements of the VisualEditor template dialog (1, 2),
• Improvements to make it easier to put a template on a page (3) (for the template dialogs in VisualEditor, 2010 Wikitext and New Wikitext Mode),
• and improvements in the syntax highlighting extension CodeMirror (4, 5) (which is available on wikis with writing direction left-to-right).

All these changes are part of the “Templates” project by WMDE Technical Wishes. We hope they will help you in your work, and we would love to hear your feedback on the talk pages of these projects.

- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 12:38, 28 Ɔgyefuo 2022 (UTC)

Remember to Participate in the UCoC Conversations and Ratification Vote!

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

A vote in SecurePoll from 7 to 21 March 2022 is scheduled as part of the ratification process for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines. Eligible voters are invited to answer a poll question and share comments. Read voter information and eligibility details. During the poll, voters will be asked if they support the enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct based on the proposed guidelines.

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement. The revised enforcement guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the policy across the movement. A Wikimedia Foundation Board statement calls for a ratification process where eligible voters will have an opportunity to support or oppose the adoption of the UCoC Enforcement guidelines in a vote. Wikimedians are invited to translate and share important information. For more information about the UCoC, please see the project page and frequently asked questions on Meta-wiki.

There are events scheduled to learn more and discuss:

• A community panel recorded on 18 February 2022 shares perspectives from small- and medium-sized community participants.
• The Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team is hosting Conversation Hours on 4 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Please sign-up to interact with the project team and the drafting committee about the updated enforcement guidelines and the ratification process. See the Conversation Hour summaries for notes from 4 February 2022 and 25 February 2022.

You can comment on Meta-wiki talk pages in any language. You may also contact either team by email: msgwikimedia.org or ucocprojectwikimedia.org

Sincerely,

Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Xeno (WMF) 02:17, 2 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification voting open from 7 to 21 March 2022

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) is now open! Voting commenced on SecurePoll on 7 March 2022 and will conclude on 21 March 2022. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details.

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement. The revised enforcement guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the policy across the movement. You can read more about the UCoC project.

You can also comment on Meta-wiki talk pages in any language. You may also contact the team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org

Sincerely,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Wikimedia Foundation

Xeno (WMF) 00:52, 8 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to Hubs event: Global Conversation on 2022-03-12 at 13:00 UTC

Hello!

The Movement Strategy and Governance team of the Wikimedia Foundation would like to invite you to the next event about "Regional and Thematic Hubs". The Wikimedia Movement is in the process of understanding what Regional and Thematic Hubs should be. Our workshop in November was a good start (read the report), but we're not finished yet.

Over the last weeks we conducted about 16 interviews with groups working on establishing a Hub in their context (see Hubs Dialogue). These interviews informed a report that will serve as a foundation for discussion on March 12. The report is planned to be published on March 9.

The event will take place on March 12, 13:00 to 16:00 UTC on Zoom. Interpretation will be provided in French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Portuguese. Registration is open, and will close on March 10. Anyone interested in the topic is invited to join us. More information on the event on Meta-wiki.

Best regards,

Kaarel Vaidla
Movement Strategy

01:31, 10 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 ends tomorrow

International photographic contest Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 ends on 15th March 2022 23:59:59 UTC. This is the last chance of the year to upload images about local folk culture, festival, cuisine, costume, folklore etc on Wikimedia Commons. Watch out our social media handles for regular updates and declaration of Winners.

(Facebook , Twitter , Instagram)

The writing competition Feminism and Folklore will run till 31st of March 2022 23:59:59 UTC. Write about your local folk tradition, women, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, folklore, and tradition, including ballads, folktales, fairy tales, legends, traditional song and dance, folk plays, games, seasonal events, calendar customs, folk arts, folk religion, mythology etc. on your local Wikipedia. Check if your local Wikipedia is participating

A special competition called Wiki Loves Falles is organised in Spain and the world during 15th March 2022 till 15th April 2022 to document local folk culture and Falles in Valencia, Spain. Learn more about it on Catalan Wikipedia project page.

We look forward for your immense co-operation.

Thanks Wiki Loves Folklore international Team MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:40, 14 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Leadership Development Working Group: Apply to join! (14 March to 10 April 2022)

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone who participated in the feedback period for the Leadership Development Working Group initiative. A summary of the feedback can be found on Meta-wiki. This feedback will be shared with the working group to inform their work. The application period to join the Working Group is now open and will close on April 10, 2022. Please review the information about the working group, share with community members who might be interested, and apply if you are interested.

Thank you,

From the Community Development team

Xeno (WMF) 02:20, 18 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2022 ends soon

Feminism and Folklore 2022 which is an international writing contest organized at Wikipedia ends soon that is on 31 March 2022 11:59 UTC. This is the last chance of the year to write about feminism, women biographies and gender-focused topics such as folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, fairy tales, folk plays, folk arts, folk religion, mythology, folk artists, folk dancers, folk singers, folk musicians, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales and more

Keep an eye on the project page for declaration of Winners.

We look forward for your immense co-operation.

Thanks Wiki Loves Folklore international Team MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:28, 26 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification voting is now closed

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Greetings,

The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) came to a close on 21 March 2022. Over 2300 Wikimedians voted across different regions of our movement. Thank you to everyone who participated in this process! The scrutinizing group is now reviewing the vote for accuracy, so please allow up to two weeks for them to finish their work.

The final results from the voting process will be announced here, along with the relevant statistics and a summary of comments as soon as they are available. Please check out the voter information page to learn about the next steps. You can comment on the project talk page on Meta-wiki in any language. You may also contact the UCoC project team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org

Best regards,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Xeno (WMF) 01:53, 30 Ɔbenem 2022 (UTC)

Proposal for Closure of ak Wikipedia

I have proposed to close the ak Wikipedia. Find link to the proposal here -Robertjamal12 (talk) 12:49, 19 Oforisuo 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

• Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
• Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
• Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about Movement Strategy on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Also, a draft of the 2022-23 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan has been published. Input is being sought on-wiki and during several conversations with Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander.

See full announcement on Meta-wiki. Xeno (WMF) 01:45, 22 Oforisuo 2022 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Collections Available Now - April 2022

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL owl says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library has free access to new paywalled reliable sources. You can these and dozens more collections at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/:

• Wiley – journals, books, and research resources, covering life, health, social, and physical sciences
• OECD – OECD iLibrary, Data, and Multimedia​​ published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
• SPIE Digital Library – journals and eBooks on optics and photonics applied research

Many other sources are freely available for experienced editors, including collections which recently became accessible to all eligible editors: Cambridge University Press, BMJ, AAAS, Érudit and more.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: log in today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 13:16, 26 Oforisuo 2022 (UTC)

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Coming soon: Improvements for templates

Fundamental changes in the template dialog.

Hello, more changes around templates are coming to your wiki soon:

The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the 2017 Wikitext Editor (beta) will be improved fundamentally: This should help users understand better what the template expects, how to navigate the template, and how to add parameters.

• project page, talk page

In syntax highlighting (CodeMirror extension), you can activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme with a user setting.

• project page, talk page

Deployment is planned for May 10. This is the last set of improvements from WMDE Technical Wishes' focus area “Templates”.

We would love to hear your feedback on our talk pages!

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 11:13, 29 Oforisuo 2022 (UTC)

Editing news 2022 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

New editors were more successful with this new tool.

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 18:54, 2 Kɔtonimma 2022 (UTC)

2022 Board of Trustees Call for Candidates

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

The Board of Trustees seeks candidates for the 2022 Board of Trustees election. Read more on Meta-wiki.

The 2022 Board of Trustees election is here! Please consider submitting your candidacy to serve on the Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three year term. The Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for community-and-affiliate selected trustees.

The Wikimedia community will vote to fill two seats on the Board in 2022. This is an opportunity to improve the representation, diversity, and expertise of the Board as a team.

Who are potential candidates? Are you a potential candidate? Find out more on the Apply to be a Candidate page.

Thank you for your support,

Movement Strategy and Governance on behalf of the Elections Committee and the Board of Trustees
10:39, 10 Kɔtonimma 2022 (UTC)

Revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

We'd like to provide an update on the work on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct. After the conclusion of the community vote on the guidelines in March, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Board asked that several areas of the guidelines be reviewed for improvements before the Board does its final review. These areas were identified based on community discussions and comments provided during the vote. The CAC also requested review of the controversial Note in 3.1 of the UCoC itself.

Once more, a big thank you to all who voted, especially to all who left constructive feedback and comments! The project team is working with the Board to establish a timeline for this work, and will communicate this next month.

Members of the two prior UCoC Drafting Committees have generously offered their time to help shape improvements to the Guidelines. You can read more about them and their work here, as well as read summaries of their weekly meetings in 2022.

Wikimedians have provided many valuable comments together with the vote and in other conversations. Given the size and diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are even more voices out there who can give ideas on how to improve the enforcement guidelines and add even more valuable ideas to the process. To help the Revisions committee identify improvements, input on several questions for the committee’s review is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to get your ideas to the Committee - it is very important that viewpoints are heard from different communities before the Committee begins drafting revision proposals.

On behalf of the UCoC project team

Xeno (WMF) 22:56, 3 Ayɛwohomumu 2022 (UTC)

Results of Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 is out!

Please help translate to your language

Hi, Greetings

The winners for Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 is announced!

We are happy to share with you winning images for this year's edition. This year saw over 8,584 images represented on commons in over 92 countries. Kindly see images here

Our profound gratitude to all the people who participated and organized local contests and photo walks for this project.

We hope to have you contribute to the campaign next year.

Thank you,

Wiki Loves Folklore International Team

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:12, 4 Kutawonsa 2022 (UTC)

Propose statements for the 2022 Election Compass

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi all,

Community members in the 2022 Board of Trustees election are invited to propose statements to use in the Election Compass.

An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.

Here is the timeline for the Election Compass

• July 8 - 20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass
• July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
• July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
• August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
• August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
• August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision

The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August. The Elections Committee will oversee the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. MSG will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) (talk) 11:34, 14 Kutawonsa 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 7

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 7, July-September 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

• Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
• Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
• Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
• Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
• Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
• Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
• Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
• Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
• Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)
• Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)

Thank you for reading! RamzyM (WMF) 01:37, 18 Kutawonsa 2022 (UTC)

Announcing the six candidates for the 2022 Board of Trustees election

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi everyone,

The Affiliate voting process has concluded. Representatives from each Affiliate organization learned about the candidates by reading candidates’ statements, reviewing candidates’ answers to questions, and considering the candidates’ ratings provided by the Analysis Committee. The selected 2022 Board of Trustees candidates are:

• Tobechukwu Precious Friday (Tochiprecious)
• Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)
• Shani Evenstein Sigalov (Esh77)
• Kunal Mehta (Legoktm)
• Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom)
• Mike Peel (Mike Peel)

You may see more information about the Results and Statistics of this Board election.

Please take a moment to appreciate the Affiliate Representatives and Analysis Committee members for taking part in this process and helping to grow the Board of Trustees in capacity and diversity. These hours of volunteer work connect us across understanding and perspective. Thank you for your participation.

Thank you to the community members who put themselves forward as candidates for the Board of Trustees. Considering joining the Board of Trustees is no small decision. The time and dedication candidates have shown to this point speaks to their commitment to this movement. Congratulations to those candidates who have been selected. A great amount of appreciation and gratitude for those candidates not selected. Please continue to share your leadership with Wikimedia.

Thank you to those who followed the Affiliate process for this Board election. You may review the results of the Affiliate selection process.

The next part of the Board election process is the community voting period. You may view the Board election timeline here. To prepare for the community voting period, there are several things community members can engage with in the following ways:

• Read candidates’ statements and read the candidates’ answers to the questions posed by the Affiliate Representatives.
• Propose and select the 6 questions for candidates to answer during their video Q&A.
• See the Analysis Committee’s ratings of candidates on each candidate’s statement.
• Propose statements for the Election Compass voters can use to find which candidates best fit their principles.
• Encourage others in your community to take part in the election.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) 14:03, 27 Kutawonsa 2022 (UTC)

Vote for Election Compass Statements

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi all,

Volunteers in the 2022 Board of Trustees election are invited to vote for statements to use in the Election Compass. You can vote for the statements you would like to see included in the Election Compass on Meta-wiki.

An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.

Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:

• July 8 - 20: Volunteers propose statements for the Election Compass
• July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
• July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
• August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
• August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
• August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision

The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) 21:01, 27 Kutawonsa 2022 (UTC)

The 2022 Board of Trustees election Community Voting period is now open

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi everyone,

The Community Voting period for the 2022 Board of Trustees election is now open. Here are some helpful links to get you the information you need to vote:

• Try the Election Compass, showing how candidates stand on 15 different topics.
• Read the candidate statements and answers to Affiliate questions
• Learn more about the skills the Board seeks and how the Analysis Committee found candidates align with those skills

If you are ready to vote, you may go to SecurePoll voting page to vote now. You may vote from August 23 at 00:00 UTC to September 6 at 23:59 UTC. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

MNadzikiewicz (WMF)

Invitation to join the Movement Strategy Forum

Template:More languages

Hello everyone,

The Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) is a multilingual collaborative space for all conversations about Movement Strategy implementation.

We are inviting all Movement participants to collaborate on the MS Forum. The goal of the forum is to build community collaboration, using an inclusive multilingual platform.

The Movement Strategy is a collaborative effort to imagine and build the future of the Wikimedia Movement. Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy, from a comment to a full-time project.

Join this forum with your Wikimedia account, engage in conversations, and ask questions in your language.

The Movement Strategy and Governance team (MSG) launched the proposal for the MS Forum in May 2022. There was a 2-month community review period, which ended on 24 July 2022. The community review process included several questions that resulted in interesting conversations. You can read the Community Review Report.

We look forward to seeing you at the MS Forum!

Best regards,

the Movement Strategy and Governance Team

User:MNadzikiewicz (WMF) 11:32, 29 Ɔsannaa 2022 (UTC)

The Vector 2022 skin as the default in two weeks?

The slides for our presentation at Wikimania 2022

Hello. I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team. In two weeks, we would like to make the Vector 2022 skin the default on this wiki.

We have been working on it for the past three years. So far, it has been the default on more than 30 wikis, including sister projects, all accounting for more than 1 billion pageviews per month. On average 87% of active logged-in users of those wikis use Vector 2022.

It would become the default for all logged-out users, and also all logged-in users who currently use Vector legacy. Logged-in users can at any time switch to any other skins. No changes are expected for users of these skins.

• Top of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

• A section of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

About the skin

[Why is a change necessary] The current default skin meets the needs of the readers and editors as these were 13 years ago. Since then, new users have begun using Wikimedia projects. The old Vector doesn't meet their needs.

[Objective] The objective for the new skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. It draws inspiration from previous requests, the Community Wishlist Surveys, and gadgets and scripts. The work helped our code follow the standards and improve all other skins. We reduced PHP code in Wikimedia deployed skins by 75%. The project has also focused on making it easier to support gadgets and use APIs.

[Changes and test results] The skin introduces a series of changes that improve readability and usability. The new skin does not remove any functionality currently available on the Vector skin.

• The sticky header makes it easier to find tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%.
• The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jumped to different sections of the page 50% more than with the old table of contents. It also looks a bit different on talk pages.
• The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the wikis we tested on.
• The skin does not negatively affect pageviews, edit rates, or account creation. There is evidence of increases in pageviews and account creation across partner communities.

[Try it out] Try out the new skin by going to the appearance tab in your preferences and selecting Vector 2022 from the list of skins.

How can editors change and customize this skin?

It's possible to configure and personalize our changes. We support volunteers who create new gadgets and user scripts. Check out our repository for a list of currently available customizations, or add your own.

Our plan

If no large concerns are raised, we plan on deploying in the week of October 3, 2022. If your community would like to request more time to discuss the changes, hit the button and write to us. We can adjust the calendar.

Request for more time to discuss the change

If you'd like ask our team anything, if you have questions, concerns, or additional thoughts, please ping me here or write on the talk page of the project. We will gladly answer! Also, see our FAQ. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 04:14, 22 Ɛbɔ 2022 (UTC)

Update on Vector 2022

Hello. I'm sorry for not communicating in your language. I'll be grateful if you translated my message. I'm writing on behalf of the Web team working on the new skin, Vector 2022.

We wanted to apologize for the delays in the deployment of Vector 2022. We know many of you are waiting for this eagerly. We have been delaying the deployment because we have been working on the logos. It has taken us more time than originally expected. Once the logos are ready, we will let you know the exact date of deployment. We are planning for either the next (more likely) or the following week. If your wiki doesn't currently have a localized logo, we encourage you to reach out to us and we can help make one.

We invite you to get involved in the project. Contact us if you have any questions or need any help, particularly with the compatibility of gadgets and user scripts. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 19 Ahinime 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to attend “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” Sessions

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

During the 2022 Wikimedia Summit, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) presented the first outline of the Movement Charter, giving a glimpse on the direction of its future work, and the Charter itself. The MCDC then integrated the initial feedback collected during the Summit. Before proceeding with writing the Charter for the whole Movement, the MCDC wants to interact with community members and gather feedback on the drafts of the three sections: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (intentions statement). The Movement Charter drafts will be available on the Meta page here on November 14, 2022. Community wide consultation period on MC will take place from November 20 to December 18, 2022. Learn more about it here.

With the goal of ensuring that people are well informed to fully participate in the conversations and are empowered to contribute their perspective on the Movement Charter, three “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter" sessions have been scheduled in different time zones. Everyone in the Wikimedia Movement is invited to attend these conversations. The aim is to learn about Movement Charter - its goal, purpose, why it matters, and how it impacts your community. MCDC members will attend these sessions to answer your questions and hear community feedback.

The “Ask Me Anything” sessions accommodate communities from different time zones. Only the presentation of the session is recorded and shared afterwards, no recording of conversations. Below is the list of planned events:

• Asia/Pacific: November 4, 2022 at 09:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Chinese and Japanese.
• Europe/MENA/Sub Saharan Africa: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Arabic, French and Russian.
• North and South America/ Western Europe: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Spanish and Portuguese.

On the Meta page you will find more details; Zoom links will be shared 48 hours ahead of the call.

Call for Movement Charter Ambassadors

Individuals or groups from all communities who wish to help include and start conversations in their communities on the Movement Charter are encouraged to become Movement Charter Ambassadors (MC Ambassadors). MC Ambassadors will carry out their own activities and get financial support for enabling conversations in their own languages. Regional facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance team are available to support applicants with MC Ambassadors grantmaking. If you are interested please sign up here. Should you have specific questions, please reach out to the MSG team via email: strategy2030@wikimedia.org or on the MS forum.

We thank you for your time and participation.

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) 15:33, 7 Obubuo 2022 (UTC)

Apply for Funding through the Movement Strategy Community Engagement Package to Support Your Community

Template:More languages

The Wikimedia Movement Strategy implementation is a collaborative effort for all Wikimedians. Movement Strategy Implementation Grants support projects that take the current state of a Movement Strategy Initiative and push it one step forward. If you are looking for an example or some guide on how to engage your community further on Movement Strategy and the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants specifically, you may find this community engagement package helpful.

The goal of this community engagement package is to support more people to access the funding they might need for the implementation work. By becoming a recipient of this grant, you will be able to support other community members to develop further grant applications that fit with your local contexts to benefit your own communities. With this package, the hope is to break down language barriers and to ensure community members have needed information on Movement Strategy to connect with each other. Movement Strategy is a two-way exchange, we can always learn more from the experiences and knowledge of Wikimedians everywhere. We can train and support our peers by using this package, so more people can make use of this great funding opportunity.

If this information interests you or if you have any further thoughts or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us as your regional facilitators to discuss further. We will be more than happy to support you. When you are ready, follow the steps on this page to apply. We look forward to receiving your application.

Best regards,
Movement Strategy and Governance Team
Wikimedia Foundation

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) 16:25, 14 Obubuo 2022 (UTC)

Opportunities open for the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi everyone! The Ombuds commission (OC) and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for members. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to do so. There is more information below about the opportunity and the skills that are needed.

About the Ombuds commission

The Ombuds commission (OC) works on all Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight (also known as Suppression) tools. The Commission mediates between the parties of the investigation and, when violations of the policies are identified, advises the Wikimedia Foundation on best handling. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Chief Executive Officer, or the Board of Trustees of the Foundation in these investigations when legally necessary. For more on the OC's duties and roles, see Ombuds commission on Meta-Wiki.

Volunteers serving in this role should be experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser/Oversight tools OR who have the technical ability to understand these tools and the willingness to learn them. They must be able to communicate in English, the common language of the commission. They are expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict. Commissioners will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).

About the Case Review Committee

The Case Review Committee (CRC) reviews appeals of eligible Trust & Safety office actions. The CRC is a critical layer of oversight to ensure that Wikimedia Foundation office actions are fair and unbiased. They also make sure the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t overstep established practices or boundaries. For more about the role, see Case Review Committee on Meta-Wiki.

We are looking for current or former functionaries and experienced volunteers with an interest in joining this group. Applicants must be fluent in English (additional languages are a strong plus) and willing to abide by the terms of the Committee charter. If the work resonates and you qualify, please apply. Committee members will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).

Applying to join either of these groups

Members are required to sign the Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation board policies (such as the access to non-public information policy and the Foundation privacy policy). These positions requires a high degree of discretion and trust. Members must also be over 18 years of age.

If you are interested in serving in either capacity listed above, please write in English to the Trust and Safety team at cawikimedia.org (to apply to the OC) or to the Legal Team at legalwikimedia.org (to apply to the CRC) with information about:

• Your primary projects
• Languages you speak/write
• Any experience you have serving on committees, whether movement or non-movement
• Your thoughts on what you could bring to the OC or CRC if appointed
• Any experience you have with the Checkuser or Oversight tools (OC only)
• Any other information you think is relevant

The deadline for applications is 31 December 2022 in any timezone.

Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think may be qualified and interested. Thank you!

On behalf of the Committee Support team,

Community Wishlist Survey 2023 opens in January!

Please help translate to your language

Hello

The Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) 2023, which lets contributors propose and vote for tools and improvements, starts next month on Monday, 23 January 2023, at 18:00 UTC and will continue annually.

We are inviting you to share your ideas for technical improvements to our tools and platforms. Long experience in editing or technical skills is not required. If you have ever used our software and thought of an idea to improve it, this is the place to come share those ideas!

The dates for the phases of the Survey will be as follows:

• Phase 1: Submit, discuss, and revise proposals – Monday, Jan 23, 2023 to Sunday, Feb 6, 2023
• Phase 2: WMF/Community Tech reviews and organizes proposals – Monday, Jan 30, 2023 to Friday, Feb 10, 2023
• Phase 3: Vote on proposals – Friday, Feb 10, 2023 to Friday, Feb 24, 2023
• Phase 4: Results posted – Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023

If you want to start writing out your ideas ahead of the Survey, you can start thinking about your proposals and draft them in the CWS sandbox.

We are grateful to all who participated last year. See you in January 2023!

Thank you! Community Tech, STei (WMF) 12:59, 13 Ɔpenimma 2022 (UTC)

Vote for your favourite Wikimedia sound logo

We are really sorry for posting in English

Voting in the Wikimedia sound logo contest has started. From December 6 to 19, 2022, please play a part and help chose the sound that will identify Wikimedia content on audio devices. Learn more on Diff.

The sound logo team is grateful to everyone who participated in this global contest. We received 3,235 submissions from 2,094 participants in 135 countries. We are incredibly grateful to the team of volunteer screeners and the selection committee who, among others, helped bring us to where we are today. It is now up to Wikimedia to choose the Sound Of All Human Knowledge.

Best wishes, Arupako-WMF (talk) 08:02, 15 Ɔpenimma 2022 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2023

Please help translate to your language

Dear Wiki Community,

Christmas Greetings and a Happy New Year 2023,

You are humbly invited to organize the Feminism and Folklore 2023 writing competition from February 1, 2023, to March 31, 2023 on your local Wikipedia. This year, Feminism and Folklore will focus on feminism, women's issues, and gender-focused topics for the project, with a Wiki Loves Folklore gender gap focus and a folk culture theme on Wikipedia.

You can help Wikipedia's coverage of folklore from your area by writing or improving articles about things like folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, women and queer folklore figures, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales, and more. Users can help create new articles, expand or translate from a list of suggested articles.

Organisers are requested to work on the following action items to sign up their communities for the project:

1. Create a page for the contest on the local wiki.
2. Set up a fountain tool or dashboard.
3. Create the local list and mention the timeline and local and international prizes.
4. Request local admins for site notice.
5. Link the local page and the fountain/dashboard link on the meta project page.

This year we would be supporting the community's financial aid for Internet and childcare support. This would be provided for the local team including their jury and coordinator team. This support is opt-in and non mandatory. Kindly fill in this Google form and mark a mail to support@wikilovesfolklore.org with the subject line starting as [Stipend] Name or Username/Language. The last date to sign up for internet and childcare aid from our team is 20th of January 2023, We encourage the language coordinators to sign up their community on this link by the 25th of January 2023.

Learn more about the contest and prizes on our project page. Feel free to contact us on our meta talk page or by email us if you need any assistance.

We look forward to your immense coordination.

Thank you and Best wishes,

Feminism and Folklore 2023 International Team

Stay connected  

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:23, 24 Ɔpenimma 2022 (UTC)

Global ban for PlanespotterA320/RespectCE

Per the Global bans policy, I'm informing the project of this request for comment: m:Requests for comment/Global ban for PlanespotterA320 (2) about banning a member from your community. Thank you.--Lemonaka (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing news 2023 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 22 Ɔgyefuo 2023 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read only soon

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

All traffic will switch on 1 March. The test will start at 14:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 1 March 2023.
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
• GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

Trizek (WMF) (Discussion) 21:20, 27 Ɔgyefuo 2023 (UTC)

Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month 2023: We are back!

Please help translate to your language

Hello, dear Wikipedians!

Wikimedia Ukraine, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Ukrainian Institute, has launched the third edition of writing challenge "Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month", which lasts from 1st until 31st March 2023. The campaign is dedicated to famous Ukrainian artists of cinema, music, literature, architecture, design and cultural phenomena of Ukraine that are now part of world heritage. We accept contribution in every language! The most active contesters will receive prizes.

We invite you to take part and help us improve the coverage of Ukrainian culture on Wikipedia in your language! Also, we plan to set up a banner to notify users of the possibility to participate in such a challenge!

ValentynNefedov (WMUA) (talk) 07:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikimania 2023 Welcoming Program Submissions

Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.

Your wiki will be in read-only soon

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

All traffic will switch on 26 April. The test will start at 14:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 26 April 2023.
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
• GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:41, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Seeking volunteers for the next step in the Universal Code of Conduct process

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello,

As follow-up to the message about the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Vice Chair, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, I am reaching out about the next steps. I want to bring your attention to the next stage of the Universal Code of Conduct process, which is forming a building committee for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). I invite community members with experience and deep interest in community health and governance to nominate themselves to be part of the U4C building committee, which needs people who are:

• Community members in good standing
• Knowledgeable about movement community processes, such as, but not limited to, policy drafting, participatory decision making, and application of existing rules and policies on Wikimedia projects
• Aware and appreciative of the diversity of the movement, such as, but not limited to, languages spoken, identity, geography, and project type
• Committed to participate for the entire U4C Building Committee period from mid-May - December 2023
• Comfortable with engaging in difficult, but productive conversations
• Confidently able to communicate in English

The Building Committee shall consist of volunteer community members, affiliate board or staff, and Wikimedia Foundation staff.

The Universal Code of Conduct has been a process strengthened by the skills and knowledge of the community and I look forward to what the U4C Building Committee creates. If you are interested in joining the Building Committee, please either sign up on the Meta-Wiki page, or contact ucocprojectwikimedia.org by May 12, 2023. Read more on Meta-Wiki.

Best regards,

Xeno (WMF) 19:00, 26 April 2023 (UTC)