Wikipedia:Community Portal
- ki:
- 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.
Old talk entries have been archived to Wikipedia:Community Portal/archive
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2018)[edit source]
Hello Wikimedians!
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 May 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[edit source]
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) 20:58, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Global preferences are available[edit source]
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 July 2018 (UTC)
Consultation on the creation of a separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS[edit source]
(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 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)
New user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS[edit source]
(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 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)
Enabling a helpful feature for Template editors[edit source]
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 August 2018 (UTC)
Editing of sitewide CSS/JS is only possible for interface administrators from now[edit source]
(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 August 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)
Read-only mode for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October[edit source]
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)
13:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
The Community Wishlist Survey[edit source]
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)11:06, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2018[edit source]
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[edit source]
- 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. [1]
Let's work together[edit source]
- 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!
14:17, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web[edit source]
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Please help translate to your language
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 November 2018 (UTC)
Community Wishlist Survey vote[edit source]
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 November 2018 (UTC)
Advanced Search[edit source]
Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:02, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
New Wikimedia password policy and requirements[edit source]
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) 20:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019[edit source]
Please help translate to your language
.svg){kind=logo}
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,
Imagine... the sum of all love!
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
FileExporter beta feature[edit source]
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 January 2019 (UTC)
No editing for 30 minutes on 17 January[edit source]
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Talk to us about talking[edit source]
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:
- First, sign up your group here.
- 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.
- 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:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- 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) 15:01, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2019)[edit source]
Hello Wikimedians!
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 March 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[edit source]
10:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request[edit source]
Please help translate to your language
Wikidata Bridge: edit Wikidata’s data from Wikipedia infoboxes[edit source]
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 June 2019 (UTC)
Editing News #1—July 2019[edit source]
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:
Recent releases[edit source]
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:
- 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.
- 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[edit source]
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[edit source]
- 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[edit source]
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.
18:32, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Update on the consultation about office actions[edit source]
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 08:03, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
New tools and IP masking[edit source]
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 August 2019 (UTC)
The consultation on partial and temporary Foundation bans just started[edit source]
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 September 2019 (UTC)
Feedback wanted on Desktop Improvements project[edit source]
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 October 2019 (UTC)
Beta feature "Reference Previews"[edit source]
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 October 2019 (UTC)
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages[edit source]
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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[edit source]
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[edit source]
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[edit source]
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[edit source]
- 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[edit source]
- 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[edit source]
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[edit source]
- 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 October 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia Asian Month 2019[edit source]
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 October 2019 (UTC)
Extension of Wikipedia Asian Month contest[edit source]
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 November 2019 (UTC)
Wiki Loves Folklore[edit source]
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 January 2020 (UTC)
Movement Learning and Leadership Development Project[edit source]
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 January 2020 (UTC)
Additional interface for edit conflicts on talk pages[edit source]
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) 14:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools[edit source]
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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.
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 April 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #2[edit source]
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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.
20:33, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Annual contest Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos[edit source]
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 July 2020 (UTC)
feel free to translate this message to your local language when this helps your community
Feedback on movement names[edit source]
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 July 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[edit source]
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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.
12:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia[edit source]
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 [1] 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 [2]. 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 [3]. 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) 20:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC) - m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC): we want to hear from you.[edit source]
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 July 2020 (UTC)
Technical Wishes: FileExporter and FileImporter become default features on all Wikis[edit source]
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 August 2020 (UTC)
Important: maintenance operation on September 1st[edit source]
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 August 2020 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Collections Now Available (September 2020)[edit source]
Hello Wikimedians!
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 September 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[edit source]
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 September 2020 (UTC)Wiki of functions naming contest[edit source]
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)21:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Call for feedback about Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws changes and Board candidate rubric[edit source]
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.
Important: maintenance operation on October 27[edit source]
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.
-- Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2[edit source]
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 November 2020 (UTC)
Community Wishlist Survey 2021[edit source]
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!
18:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Global bot policy proposal: invitation to a Meta discussion[edit source]
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 November 2020 (UTC)
Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist[edit source]
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 November 2020 (UTC)
2020 Coolest Tool Award Ceremony on December 11th[edit source]
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 December 2020 (UTC)
Community Wishlist Survey 2021[edit source]
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!
00:52, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Moving Wikimania 2021 to a Virtual Event[edit source]
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 January 2021 (UTC)
Project Grant Open Call[edit source]
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 January 2021 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Collections Available Now (February 2021)[edit source]
Hello Wikimedians!
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 February 2021 (UTC)
Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 is back![edit source]
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 February 2021 (UTC)
Feminism & Folklore 1 February - 31 March[edit source]
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 February 2021 (UTC)
Proposal: Set two-letter project shortcuts as alias to project namespace globally[edit source]
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) 14:12, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
Wikifunctions logo contest[edit source]
01:47, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations[edit source]
Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2[edit source]
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[edit source]
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[edit source]
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) 22:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Global bot policy changes[edit source]
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 April 2021 (UTC)
Line numbering coming soon to all wikis[edit source]
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) 15:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Suggested Values[edit source]
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 April 2021 (UTC)
Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1[edit source]
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 June 2021 (UTC)
Wikimania 2021: Individual Program Submissions[edit source]
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;
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 June 2021 (UTC)
On behalf of Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team
Editing news 2021 #2[edit source]
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
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.
14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Server switch[edit source]
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.
SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 June 2021 (UTC)