User:Discott/talk archive 1

File:Observetory CT.png
Hello. A question about this: did you make all of the photos in this montage as well as the montage itself? Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:14, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for reminding me, I forgot to credit one person and this has now been rectified. All of the pictures except for the picture of, which was taken by Danie van der Merwe (who is credited) and published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, all the other pictures were indeed taken by me. I also made the montage as well. --Discott (talk) 11:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC) I hope that adequately answers your question?--Discott (talk) 11:30, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That's great. It's much easier if we can get that information from you rather than someone trying to work it out later. Thanks very much. Have a good weekend, Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:04, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Non-free files in your user space
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File:Observetory CT.png
Hi there. I have moved this photo to commons and cropped the photo of the McClean telescope out of this image. You can find the new images at The photo of the McClean telescope is now used on South African Astronomical Observatory
 * File:Observetory_CT.png
 * File:McClean_telescope-001.jpg

--NJR_ZA (talk) 09:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks, it is good to see that the image is being used for more articles then just the Observatory one. Especially considering the hoops I had to jump through to take the photograph I am pleased to see it in commons and used more frequently.--Discott (talk) 11:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:RSA invite
Thank you for the offer, I believe that I am already a member of the South Africa Wikiproject but I would like to get involved more. Do you have any ideas on what tasks you think I could do to help out more?--Discott (talk) 11:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that, seems I missed your name on the project page.
 * There are a huge amount of South African related work outstanding. One can basically just pick any article and will find it in need of expansion, improvement and references. I am currently trying to get Boyden Observatory up to the same standard as South African Astronomical Observatory. Portal:South_Africa is totally neglected and can do with a complete overhaul and someone that updates it on a regular basis. There are a large number of articles that requires assessment; User:Ron2K is currently busy trying to clear the backlog and has requested help with it. The list goes on. --NJR_ZA (talk) 05:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I will be delighted to help out on the article assessments and will try to add to any articles I can.  I am hoping to do some more updates on South African companies and bios and also help out on a the Involvement of China in Africa article so that might take up my time for a while.--Discott (talk) 15:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

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DYK for Peucedanum galbanum
— HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   12:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Great work!
Hi there, I just want to compliment you on the fine work you've done in creating the China bilateral relations articles for Zambia etc. I put the remaining Africa-China individual bilateral articles on my wishlist some time ago and have been gradually chipping away at them, so it is great to see someone else doing it as well. If you are curious for other ideas, others are still on my wish list. Thank you and keep up the great work!--TM 04:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the support, I still want to greatly expand the Sino-South African page and there are few more I want to work on. I will take a look at the list.  Cheers, --Discott (talk) 07:21, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Stellenbosch to bid for Wikimania 2012!
Hi Mr. Scott!

The nascent South African Wikimedia chapter has decided to bid to host Wikimania in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2012. This would be the first Wikimania in South Africa, and would be a great advertisement for our country. Please take a look at meta:Wikimania_2012/Bids/Stellenbosch. If you can add to the discussion, please do. If you feel that you are able to do anything to help, please join the Wikimedia South Africa mailing list and let us know. Even simple messages of support are valued!

Best regards,

David Richfield


 * Thanks Daivd, this sounds very interesting and I fully support the effort for Stellenbosch to host Wikimania 2012. I see that a relatively extensive discussion is already underway on the Talk:Wikimania 2012/Bids/Stellenbosch page.  Please let me know what I can do to help out.  Cheers, --Discott (talk) 12:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

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SABMiller
Hi, I believe that you have edited on SABMiller articles in the past and would be most grateful for your input in a discussion at Template talk:SABMiller, and at the talk pages of the Polish subsidiary and brands of SAB at Talk:Kompania Piwowarska, Talk:Dojlidy Brewery and Talk:Żubr (beer). The issue concerns whether the SABMiller template should be included on Poland-related SAB articles, and whether the SAB template should include the brands and main subsidiaries/joint ventures of SAB. Rangoon11 (talk) 13:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Excellent work!
Sir, I must commend you on a job well done on Economy of the Western Cape and Taxation in South Africa! With the creation of these two articles you have laid the groundwork for more edits to come. Keep fighting the good fight! --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 02:51, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Disciple, still working on some of the other items on the list. --Discott (talk) 17:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Permission request regarding the use of photographs
Hello there,

I am in the process of editing a travel guide on South Africa and wondered whether you would be prepared to share some of your photographs with me please.

My book covers the heritage of South Africa, upliftment projects, arts & crafts and a variety of other categories and it would be really great to have access to some of your photographs of the western cape / west coast particularly as I have lost thousands of pictures that I had taken over the years due to a hard drive crash.

Please contact me on kaymark@vodamail.co.za to discuss the issure.

best regards,

Dee — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.215.2.76 (talk) 21:10, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia Stories Project
My name is Victor Grigas and I'm a Storyteller at the Wikimedia Foundation. We're exploring new ways to explain why Wikipedia is so special and we’ve started a Wikipedia Stories Project, where we’re chronicling the inspiring stories of the Wikipedia community, especially editors and active contributors in the movement like you. I'll be traveling to Wikimania next month to collect stories for our 2011 Fundraiser. While there I'd love the chance to meet with you and hear your thoughts about Wikipedia. We’ll have a schedule of available times for you to sign up if you’re interested, but right now, we’d like to make the initial contact to gauge your interest. Please let me know by emailing me at vgrigas@wikimedia.org or responding on my talk page.

thank you,

Victor Grigas (talk) 21:30, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-free rationale for File:Louis Botha sign.png
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Portal:South_Africa
Thanks for dating the portal --NJR_ZA (talk) 16:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You're welcome, I am going to try and do it on a weekly basis for the next few months. Fingers crossed.--Discott (talk) 19:55, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

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Re: Small Cape Town Wiki meet up
I'd love to attend (especially given the venue), but my schedule confines me to Gauteng on December 15. Regards to all, Crusoe (talk) 06:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

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Metrorail
Hi there, I see we are both editing the Cape Metrorail article. I just had the idea to include the recent stats in the article and when I refreshed you jumped ahead of me, well done! I think the reference to "560 yards" might be incorrect. There are definately not 560 coaching yards (more than the amount of stations???). I suspect that it might be 560 loops / interloops / sidings, but will need to check that. Are you going to add reference to the operations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luca Lategan (talk • contribs) 09:40, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the kudos. You could be right about the 560 yards part of it. I just cut and pasted the data that Metrorail grave out (and that is referenced on their stats list).--Discott (talk) 09:47, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

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Inviting you to WikiAfrica Incubator!
Hey Douglas,

We are inviting you to join our membership list on the wikiafrica incubator.we will be glad to have you as an admin or an active wikipedian, our membership is slowly growing. Please check WikiAfrica incubator and join us. See you there bro!--Awinda 09:51, 6 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Awinda (talk • contribs)

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 * Thanks for informing me of this. This problem has now been corrected and the image is no longer an orphan image and is only being used to illustrate the organisational logo of the organisation in question on their relevant wiki page. --Discott (talk) 17:54, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

EduWiki Conference 5-6 September in Leicester, UK
I am writing to you as you have signed up to the Education Meetup at Wikimania 2012 and perhaps are interested in how Wikipedia links to education. Wikimedia UK is now running a education related event that may be of interest to you: the EduWiki Conference on 5-6 September in Leicester. This event will be looking at Wikipedia and related charitable projects in terms of educational practice, including good faith collaboration, open review, and global participation. It's a chance to talk about innovative work in your institution or online community, and shape the future of Wikimedia UK's work in this area!

The conference will be of interest to educators, scholarly societies members, contributors to Wikipedia and other open education projects, and students.

For details please visit the UK Chapter Wiki.

Please feel welcome to register or promote within your network.

Thank you, Daria Cybulska (talk) 16:26, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Daria, I am indeed interested in linking Wikipedia to education and the EduWiki Conference. However I am not currently in the UK for the foreseeable future as I am back in South Africa these days and so will be unable to attend.  Thanks for the heads up though. Discott (talk) 21:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Ackermans logo.png)
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Wiki Loves Monuments in South Africa
Dear WikiProject South Africa Wikipedians

This is an urgent call from Wikimedia South Africa. We are currently working hard on the South African side of the exciting international photographic competition, Wiki Loves Monuments. We have been planning to make this national competition really take off, but to do so, we need your help! The competition starts on the 1st September, and we need your help now! If you are interested in being part of or can help the Wiki Loves Monuments national organising team, then please join here [ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012_in_South_Africa]. If you have limited time, but want to help out at an upload marathon at a heritage site near you, please then contact either Lourie [louriepieterse@yahoo.com] or Isla [islahf@africacentre.net]. We look forward to hearing from you!"

Kind regards, Lourie

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Call for Wikipedians in Residence in Africa
Hello,

I hope you are well and thriving!! WikiAfrica has just put out a call for two Wikipedians in Residence. One in Cape Town at WikiAfrica, at the Africa Centre; and the other for WikiAfrica Cameroon in Douala, at doual’art. If you are interested, please contact either Marilyn [marilyn.doualabell@undefineddoualart.org] for the WikiAfrica Cameroon call or Isla [islahf@undefinedafricacentre.net] for the WikiAfrica position in Cape Town.

If you are not interested in applying, I would be very grateful if you could spread this call far and wide among your networks to ensure that both projects get excellent candidates. Here is the link for the information page: http://www.wikiafrica.net/two-wikipedians-in-residence-for-africa/

Best regards, Islahaddow

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Gigantopithecus size
Could you attribute from where the Gigantopithecus size chart is derived from. It is after all very similar to the one that appears on www.prehistoric-wildlife.com in terms of layout and wording. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.72.9 (talk) 08:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The chart is inspired by the version on prehistoric-wildlife but not derived from it as all graphics I made my self from scratch using a orangutang and a human silhouette. The wording however is derived from prehistoric-wildlife.  Because of this very indirect nature of this chart with the one on prehistoric-wildlife I was unsure as to whether or not I should site it.  Now that you bring it up I think I will cite it and clarify its relationship to the chart on prehistoric-wildlife. Thanks. --Discott (talk) 14:35, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:International Crisis Group logo.svg)
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Orphaned non-free media (File:Icisid IDA logo.svg)
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Files missing description details
Dear uploader: The media files you uploaded as: are missing a description and/or other details on their image description pages. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors make better use of the images, and they will be more informative to readers.
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 * File:James Graaff.png
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 * File:Punch- Income Tax 1907.jpg
 * File:Abandon Free Trade.jpg
 * File:Punch Anglo-Japanese Alliance.jpg
 * File:Queens 21st bday in Ottery 1947.jpg
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VisualEditor newsletter
Hey Discott. We've just rolled out a new version of the VisualEditor :). Changes and patches include:


 * Newly added templates now list their available parameters if TemplateData is available;
 * The load for the VisualEditor on apages is now 4 KiB, down from 119 KiB;
 * Feedback dialog is no longer chased off the screen by typing (bug 50538)
 * Fixed the Monobook issues around z-indexes (bug 50241)
 * Undoing an image resize doesn't make everything look bad
 * In the image dialog, "Caption content" is now just "Caption"
 * Tweaked tooltip references to VisualEditor to instead talk about "source mode"

Those are the big ones; more coming at the end of this week or early next week :). It's a short list, but the load issue took up a lot of time, as did TemplateData, and are both pretty big changes. If you've got any questions, drop them on my talkpage. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter
Hey Discott! We've just deployed some fixes to the VisualEditor. These include:
 * "Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you're looking at (bug 49943)
 * "Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you edited last time if this is your second edit (bug 50441)
 * VE edit section links will load the latest, not original, version in diff view preview (bug 50925)
 * Foo and similar repeated tags will not get corrupted any more (bug 49755)

In the meantime, testing is proceeding well, and hopefully we can get some more fixes out over the next couple of days. If you're interested in helping out, we have a set of open tasks we'd really appreciate your assistance with :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

VE newsletter
Hey Discott

We just deployed another VisualEditor release; bugs fixed include:
 * Firefox 13/14 has been temporarily blacklisted, to avoid the insertion of broken links ./that look like this (50720)
 * Changing a reference in a template should no longer produce the bright red "you don't have a references block!" error (50423)
 * Notices are now shown if you're editing a protected or semi-protected page (50415)
 * The template inspector will no longer invite you to insert parameters that are already being used (50715)
 * Same as above, but with aliases (50717)
 * Parameter names in the template dialogue now word-wrap (50800)
 * The link inspector will not show in the top left if you hit the return key while opening it (49941)
 * Hitting return twice in the link editor will no longer introduce a new line that overwrites the link (51075)
 * Oddly-named categories no longer cause corruption (50702)
 * The toolbar no longer occasionally covers the cursor (48787)
 * Changing the formatting of text no longer occasionally scrolls you upwards (50792)

Not specific bugs, but other things; cacheing is now improved, so people should stop seeing temporary breaking when the VisualEditor updates, and RTL support has received some patches. I hope this newsletter is helpful to people; I'll send out another one with the next deployment :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

VE newsletter
Hey Discott! Another set of patches :). Today we have:


 * Required template parameters are now automatically added to new templates (50747)
 * Templates with piped links now display correctly when you alter them (50801)
 * If your edit token expires, you're now informed of it (50424).
 * You still won't be able to save - that's due to be fixed on Monday :).

More on Monday, I suspect. Hope you have a good weekend :). I should also have some news about the IP launch pretty soon. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

(if you're seeing this and aren't the newsletter recipient - please do sign up here)

VE newsletter
Hey Discott; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:


 * If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
 * If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
 * If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
 * sub tags are no longer removed ((49873)
 * If you type at the end of links, they now extend
 * Templates now only take a single click to insert
 * Clear annotations clears links (50461)
 * The link inspector stays open when you click to another item (50895)
 * Typing after multi-byte characters no longer creats pawn icons (51140)
 * Resizing thumbnails that have a default size set now works (50645)
 * References made by tag:ref now display properly (50978)
 * The VE is integrated with the spam blacklist (50826)
 * Feedbacl link goes to the right language (47730)

There are a lot more improvements coming, but that's it for Monday and Tuesday. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

VE newsletter
Hey Discott. The newest updates: Along with some miscellaneous language support fixes. That's all for today; as always, let us know if you spot more bugs. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Links now don't extend over space/punctuation/workbreaks when you type (51463)
 * Users with the "minoredit" preference set get working functionality (51515)
 * You can tab to buttons in dialogs, including the save dialog (50047)
 * We now show the (or ) message as an edit notice (51459)
 * You can scroll dialog panels like in transclusions' templates' parameter listings (51739)
 * Templates that only create meta-data and no display content at all (like Template:Use dmy dates) now can't be deleted accidentally or deliberately, but still don't show up (51322)
 * FlaggedRevisions integration (49699)
 * Edit summary will get the section title pre-added if you launched from a section edit link (50872)

WLM 2013 Stellenbosch
Discott said: "As part of WLM 2013 competition I am planning to organise a treasure hunt and mini upload marathon in Stellenbosch on Sunday the 8th September. I would like to know if you would be interested in joining us or, even better for us in the organising team :-), if you would be interested in helping us organise the event."


 * Thanks for the invite, sounds good. I can help in the Stellenbosch area. Let me know how to proceed. Helen  Online  11:23, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for 06 August 2013
It's been almost two weeks since the last newsletter, and a lot of improvements have been made during that time. The main things that people have noticed are significant improvements to speed for typing into long pages, scrolling and deleting  on large pages. There have also been improvements to references, with the latest being support for list-defined references, which are s defined inside a ) (bug 53345).  Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text.  This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).

Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Helen Online  15:28, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Typo in picture for Gigantopithecus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gigantopithecus_v_human_v1.svg#metadata

There is a typo in this picture. Compared is spelled wrong. Thanks.
 * Thank you very much for letting me know, spelling has always been one of my weaknesses. I have just corrected it. --Discott (talk) 10:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Stellenbosch WLM treasure hunt
The weather gods are not being kind to us, South African Weather Service predicts rain showers (80% rainfall probability) on Saturday and moderate rain (60% rainfall probability) on Sunday. Helen Online  11:32, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I noticed that as well. I have been putting it off to the last moment in hopes that it might clear up but I am going to have to postpone Stellenbosch to next week Saturday.  Same time, same place.--Discott (talk) 13:27, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013
VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.

As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add  (underline),   (subscript), and   (superscript),   (strikethrough) and   (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.

In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).

In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl up to Ctrl sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.

Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).

Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.

Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).

Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, " ".

The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).

There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).

Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments ZA
Hello. I saw the finalist pictures of WLM ZA 2013 on Facebook and Commons, but not in the WLM mailing list. The international organization needs an email from Southafrican organization with the 10 nominees to the international contest today. So, please, send an email to Lodewijk and Monica Mora, with a member of the jury in copy. Regards. --Millars (talk) 12:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Millars, thanks for notifying me of this. I have emailed it to the South African mailing list and I was unaware that it needed to go to the WLM mailing list as well. I will email it through now.--Discott (talk) 12:32, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.

A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:


 * Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed.  The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
 * Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
 * Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
 * File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
 * Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
 * Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
 * Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
 * Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through   and   both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
 * Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
 * Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
 * Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
 * Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
 * Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
 * Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
 * Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
 * Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ( set to true) (bug 44483).  (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)

Looking ahead: If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:09, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
 * Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions.  Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
 * In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done.  Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.

VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
 * Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved.  This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation.  Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings).  If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control or Command  (Mac).
 * Auto-numbered external links like can now be edited just like any other link.  However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
 * Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here.  The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified.  If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
 * There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters.  Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
 * Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
 * It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally.  To do so, append  to the end of the page name.  For example, change   to   to open a random page in VisualEditor.  This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Files missing description details
Dear uploader: The media files you uploaded as: are missing a description and/or other details on their image description pages. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors make better use of the images, and they will be more informative to readers.
 * File:James Graaff.png
 * File:Punch Free Trade.jpg
 * File:Punch- Income Tax 1907.jpg
 * File:Punch Anglo-Japanese Alliance.jpg
 * File:Queens 21st bday in Ottery 1947.jpg

If you have any questions, please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Message delivered by Theo's Little Bot (opt-out) 04:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Media of the day
Congratulations for making the Commons main page today! Helen Online  07:32, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Helen, it was quite by accident. I did not mean for the Xmas day featured media to be my clip of a  protest but I guess that's just how it panned out.  Good to see that it made it though.--Discott (talk) 06:57, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Dasnois protest images
Hi Douglas. FYI I have added some categories for these images including a new one for the Right2Know Campaign. I removed the TAC category from the video as I could not find any evidence of them in the photos or video. I categorised those with Zackie Achmat under a new category for him (he is no longer with TAC and was wearing an Ndifuna Ukwazi T-shirt and not displaying any TAC logos). BTW your Commons user page redirects new messages here so I am assuming this is where you want it posted. Please let me know if you have any questions. Helen Online  10:52, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Helen, thanks for doing all of that. I think it is much needed.  I believe Zachie is still, some what, associated with the TAC but you are right in pointing out that he is more deeply involved in the Right2Know campaign and particularly in the Khayelitsha policing inquiry and Social Justice Coalition generally. Thanks for directing all enquiries here.  I am trying to centralise my Wiki correspondence to this page as much as possible these days.--Discott (talk) 11:10, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I thought I was going insane until I realized I was being redirected here. I would love to sort out all the SA Commons categories but I fear it may be a black hole from which I never return. :) Helen  Online  11:36, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2015_bids/Cape_Town Idyllic press (talk) 14:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Death and state funeral of Nelson Mandela
— Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Queens 21st bday in Ottery 1947.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:Queens 21st bday in Ottery 1947.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

If the necessary information is not added within the next days, the image will be deleted. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please refer to the image use policy to learn what images you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. Please also check any other files you have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is a [ list of your uploads]. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 00:08, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Non-free rationale for File:Div Hottentots Victory.jpg
Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Div Hottentots Victory.jpg. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under non-free content criteria, but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia is acceptable. Please go to the file description page, and edit it to include a non-free rationale.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified the non-free rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 01:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.

As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.


 * The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
 * meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
 * You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog –    and   as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and   as a checkbox (bug 57166).
 * The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
 * VisualEditor/User guide was updated recently to show some new and upcoming features.

Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.

Subscriptions to this newsletter are managed at VisualEditor/Newsletter. Please add or remove your name to change your subscription settings. If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:04, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Cape town meetup
You going to make it? Wizzy&hellip; &#9742; 09:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Now 11:45. At Truth Cafe since 11. You still coming? Zingi (talk) 09:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Guys, I have been here since 10:30am and am still here now. I have put up a small sign on the main table.--Discott (talk) 11:17, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Quick question, are you at the Truth Coffee on Buitenkant St.?--Discott (talk) 11:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep a lookout for this sign on the main table.  We are still here. --Discott (talk) 11:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Zingi, it seems like we missed each other some how today. Sorry about that. In the future I will inform everyone to lookout for the Wikimeetup sign which will be on the table we are using.  I will also seek to keep it at the same place at Truth Coffee on Buitenkant Street to avoid confusion.  Last time we had it at the other Truth coffee at Preswitch so I think that caused some confusion.--Discott (talk) 12:28, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Understood. Apology acccepted. Note that the Prestwich Truth Cafe is on Buitengacht Street - not too dissimilar to Buitenkant Street. So it is best to take care to avoid this type of confusion in future - as you say. I certainly will try to attend the next meet. Having your phone number will certily help! Zingi (talk) 13:09, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Re South Africa Taxation
Thank you for the welcome. I build and edit tax information documents on certain tax jurisdictions worldwide as freelance. The documents I edit are professional quality and are produced for very large accounting firms to onsell to their clients. I used to edit three different S. African ones on a monthly basis for changes in tax legislation. They tend to be around 20,000 to 50,000 words, so are highly detailed. South Africa is not one of my jurisdictions any more, but I was doing a short piece for a new project. I have never edited anything on Wikipedia before and I was not sure about etiquette. The information on the S. African page is fairly sparse compared to others I have looked at. I noticed the out-of-date entries and just thought I would dip my toe in. When I get a chance I will have another look at the page and see if I can help some more. The tax year changes in at the end of next month, so it will need updating after that anyway.Taxtaxtax (talk) 20:16, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Good to know and thank you again, it was a good addition to the article. I don't know if I would have spotted it as I am no tax expert. --Discott (talk) 06:49, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

About your Tsinghua userbox
Hi Discott,

I want to grab and use your Tsinghua University userbox. It has the right color scheme but without the emblem. Do you have plans to add the emblem to the userbox? If not, would you mind I to grab your code and make my own version? Ahyangyi (talk) 06:29, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Ahyangyi, you are welcome to grab it but I must tell you that the reason way it does not have the Tsinghua emblem is because of copyright issues. A few years ago a banner using the emblem was made but the emblem was deleted for copyright reasons.  So before you do create it I suggest you find a way around the copyright issue.  I think the Beijing University userbox has found a way around this. Good luck--Discott (talk) 09:09, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.

The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.


 * The main priority is redesigning the reference dialog, with the goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs and URLs and streamlining the process. Current concept drawings are available at VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
 * A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog.  When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name.  If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g.   in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML.
 * You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext.  It will see significant improvements at a later date.
 * The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu is being redesigned. Your feedback on the special character inserter is still wanted, especially if you depend on Wikipedia's character inserters for your normal editing rather than using the ones built into your computer.
 * You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu (three bars next to the Cancel button).
 * If you edit categories, your changes will now display correctly after saving the page.
 * Saving the page should be faster now.
 * Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at.

Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:21, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.


 * The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages.
 * Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
 * The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has been slightly redesigned, to introduce larger buttons. Your suggestions for more significant changes to the special character inserter are still wanted.
 * The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like ,   and   , and more.  New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window.  If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
 * It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better.  If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size.  You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
 * VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
 * You can use the Ctrl or Command shortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
 * After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
 * Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.

The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of  size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.

Looking ahead:  Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on 19 April 2014 at 2000 UTC. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Burger King and South Africa
Hi, regarding your addition of the information on the South African Burger King expansion I did not delete it, I moved it to the Burger King franchises article. It is because the main Burger King article is in summary style, and does not focus on specifics. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 16:51, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Jeremy, thanks for the clarification. Sorry for the confusion. --Discott (talk) 12:06, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Khayelitsha Commission
I've moved the draft to article-space at Khayelitsha Commission, FYI. There's still plenty of scope to add more info, especially on what's been revealed during the hearings. - htonl (talk) 00:13, 21 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks htonl for adding, editing, and moving the article. I agree, there is still plenty to add particularly as the commission concludes.  I will continue to add to it. --Discott (talk) 08:51, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

 * Thanks for the coffee. I will indeed be at Wikimania London this year and would be happy to talk about OSF stuff.  I am even helping Ed out on a few things in preparation for it.--Discott (talk) 18:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Bluerasberry, I thought you might like to know that I a proposed presentation on funding at London where I will talk about our experiences in getting funding from OSF amongst other things.--Discott (talk) 09:45, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.


 * In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
 * You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing  Return.  This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
 * VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
 * When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
 * The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
 * The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
 * If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "" item is currently housed). On the English Wikipedia, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "" and "" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
 * After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.

Looking ahead:  A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Monday, 19 May 2014 at 18:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this on your own page, subscribe at VisualEditor for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Cape Town Arial Photo
Hi Discott! I see you uploaded an back in March showing an aerial view of Capetown currently used in the Wikimania 2015 bid. According to the upload info, this was an image licensed by the Cape Town International Convention Center. Can you confirm if that's indeed the source and if they licensed it to you? We're investigating since we received a notice and invoice from this company claiming they own the rights to the image and asking for licensing fees. Any background you could provide would be helpful. Thanks! AVoinigescu (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. I did receive permission to use a collection of photographs that that particular photograph was a part of from the Cape Town International Convention Centre for use in the Cape Town bid to host Wikimania and so upload them onto Commons.  However that bid is now over and if there is a company that is trying to claim rents from it then I suggest that the picture just gets removed from Commons.  Better safe than sorry.  As such I have nominated the file in question for deletion.--Discott (talk) 11:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Election coverage
Hi Douglas :) Would it be possible to get some kind of Wikimedia ZA ID for the election day? I plan to take photos and would like to avoid any potential problems. Helen  Online  13:39, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * BTW we aren't allowed to take cameras inside or photograph marked ballot papers (new law to prevent voter intimidation). On a related note, I would like to know in due course if Wikimedia ZA stocks Wikimedia branded clothing or must I order it from the US? This might make it easier for me photographing such events. Helen  Online  08:04, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Helen, I will see if we can get press acreditation. We managed to get for covering Mandela's funeral so I think we should be able to do it for the election.  Pity about the ballot paper law but it dose make sense.  I know that after the election it is sometimes possible to get unmarked ballots that were not used.  I think taking a picture of one of them is the answer.  As for branded merchandise; I am afraid we only have project related T-shirts (for Wiki Loves Monuments, Jobergpedia, and so on) so you will have to order them from the US.  I do have a spare Wikipedia T-shirt you can borrow for the day however?--Discott (talk) 08:29, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Douglas, I don't want you to go to any trouble. I was thinking more in terms of visibility than formal accreditation. I think I will definitely order a T-shirt from overseas, should have thought of it sooner. Helen  Online  09:49, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Hellen, here is what Dumi has told me about the process for getting a press card. Do you want to go ahead and registe?, It will have to be done now though.--Discott (talk) 10:08, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks Douglas, I will leave it for now. Helen  Online  10:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Cape Town meetup - attending
Hi, I am Karl. I was wanting to come to tomorrow's meetup. I will be late though as I have earlier commitments - I will be there about 11:45 or just after. My number is 0832122491. Thanks, Karl Karlhof26 (talk) 19:19, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Karl, that is fine. Everyone is welcome to join us anytime from 11am to 2pm.  --Discott (talk) 08:11, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Jean-Pierre Smith (politician) for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Jean-Pierre Smith (politician) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Jean-Pierre Smith (politician) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. The Banner talk 22:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Portside Tower cape town .jpg
 Thanks for uploading File:Portside Tower cape town .jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 21:43, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014


Did you know? The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "" menu, press "" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "" item in the "" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "" item in the "" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.


 * There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction.  This allows editors who have opted in to use the "" tool in the "" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:   . This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
 * The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "" item in the "" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
 * The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field.  Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
 * TemplateData has been expanded:  You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones.  "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work.  There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names.  The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
 * Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
 * Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency.  The message shown when you "" out of an edit is clearer.  The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie.  As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
 * Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
 * In the "" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
 * There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData.  You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box.  If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
 * There have been multiple small changes to the appearance:  External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki.  This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links.  The styling of the "" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin.  VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images.  Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
 * The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
 * At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead:  The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "" link will be moved out of the "" menu, into the "" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

List of casualties of the South African 1976 uprising
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Disambiguation link notification for June 17
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Orphaned non-free image File:Sanlam Logo no background.png
 Thanks for uploading File:Sanlam Logo no background.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 15:37, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

WikiIndaba 2014
Greetings. Just noticed WikiIndaba 2014 (too late). I would like to be involved in future Wikimedia African events. How can I engage further? Part (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of List of casualties of the South African 1976 uprising


A tag has been placed on List of casualties of the South African 1976 uprising requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article or image appears to be a clear copyright infringement. This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://sahistory.co.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising-casualties. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website or image but have permission from that owner, see Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:54, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
Did you know? The character formatting menu, or "" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.

Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.


 * They have moved the "" link out of the "" menu, into the "" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
 * You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
 * The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type  "  for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and  "  for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like   →  ) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964).  You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.
 * Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
 * They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references.  When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
 * It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed.  Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
 * You can now add and edit   and   in the "" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.
 * The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.

Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.

The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.

Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.

If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact me if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).

To change your subscription to this newsletter, please see the subscription pages on Meta or the English Wikipedia. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 25
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 * added a link pointing to Ngwane


 * Shaka (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
 * added a link pointing to Ngwane


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Orphaned non-free image File:Murry and Roberts logo.png
 Thanks for uploading File:Murry and Roberts logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 23:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

File source problem with File:University of Cape Town 1930.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:University of Cape Town 1930.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

If the necessary information is not added within the next days, the image will be deleted. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please refer to the image use policy to learn what images you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. Please also check any other files you have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is a [ list of your uploads]. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

SAAO Library
Thanks for the note. As you can see from the history, I had already withdrawn the speedy once more content had been added.

I hope some consideration will be given to some modifications will be made to the article-creation method that's being taught to these nice folks. It doesn't strike me as a good idea to have them create a version of an article in mainspace that is speedy-able, even if it's only intended to be temporary. That's what sandboxes and Draft: space are for. Also, she accidentally re-added the speedy tag twice after it had been withdrawn first my myself and later by another editor--surely they should have automatically been warned about the edit conflict?

Anyway, thank you for your time in mentoring these folks. -- Finngall  talk  18:11, 12 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I did consider having them create the articles in their sandbox first and then migrate them to mainspace when the articles were more polished but I decided against it for two reasons and I wanted to experiment a bit. The first reason was that it is more easy to teach them from scratch how to directly create an article in mainspace rather than write in a sandbox first and migrate it and I wanted to keep things as simple as possible.  The second reason is that they are going to get feedback and/or criticism on their articles sooner or later and I wanted it to be sooner and in an environment where I am around to coach them through it so they are not put off by it.  There building up there confidence if they should experience it again in the future. --Discott (talk) 18:47, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:Abandon Free Trade.jpg
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Abandon Free Trade.jpg, has been listed at Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at if you object to the listing for any reason. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 19:32, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Why was it nominated for deletion? The period of copyright has clearly passed.--Discott (talk) 20:19, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Talkback
Alexf(talk) 11:24, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Rona1964/Biblionef


A tag has been placed on User:Rona1964/Biblionef, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Mr. Guye (talk) 01:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Mr. Guye. Well this is unexpected.  I am going to request that you speedily un-delete the page for the following reasons:
 * It is not spam!
 * It is a page that is being worked on on a user's sandbox page by that user, deleting such a page is unusual.
 * The user in question is new to editing Wikipedia and was a participant in the Western Cape Libraries edit-a-thon. I moved the page from mainspace Wikipedia to her user page so she could continue working on the page and migrate it to mainspace once it is properly written up and ready for it.  This will take some time as we only meet once every Saturday and she is new to Wikipedia.  I agree that it needs to be "fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic" but that is part of the learning process for workshop attendees.
 * Thanks, --Discott (talk) 08:42, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * It concerns me that you do not see the article as promotional in tone At Biblionef we believe, strongly, that children should be able to read for pleasure doesn't strike me as neutral and encyclopaedic in tone, and  They call on the public to help them provide one million brand new books to southern African children by 2016. Contact details: Address 4 Central Square 7405 Cape Town Pinelands E-Mail: bibsa@iafrica.com Web: www.biblionefsa.org.za Facebook: https://www.facebook.c/pages/Biblionef-South-Africa/466544616750675 Phone: +27 21-5310447 Fax: +27 21-5310455 is simply canvassing donations. There is more in a similar tone. There is some leeway in user space, but obvious spamming or copyright infringements cannot be accepted anywhere. I'm not unsympathetic, though, and I'll restore a version edited to remove the worse of the spam if that is acceptable? Jimfbleak - talk to me?  10:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Jim, I think your concern is misplaced. I am not denying that it is promotional in tone and that this is problematic.  What I am saying is that the person who wrote this, who is a new editor from a edit-a-thon program we are currently running and have only so far run once (so it is by no means completed yet), currently has very limited experience with writing articles on Wikipedia.  I am waiting until our next edit-a-thon to sit down with her to go over what makes a quality article.  I am very happy to a have a restored version with the promotional material edited out.  Many thanks.--Discott (talk) 10:11, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, I've restored an edited version, and commented here Jimfbleak - talk to me?  12:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks Jim! --Discott (talk) 12:23, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014
''The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.'' VisualEditor - Link editing inline box.png.

The user guide is also being updated.
 * alt=Screenshot of VisualEditor's link tool|240px]]

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
 * Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments.  You can click on the icon to see the comment.
 * You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item.  Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
 * All references and footnotes (  tags) are now made through the "" menu, including the "" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "" menu. The "" is still added via the "" menu.
 * When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
 * All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
 * The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
 * The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

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

Disambiguation link notification for August 27
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Photos
Hi Douglas. Thanks for the school picture, I have also added it to List of heritage sites in the Cape. I left a message on your Commons talk page and that of an IP re Quality images, please ask if you have questions about that. There is nothing to stop anyone from nominating those images here. Helen Online  06:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Helen, I was perhaps a bit cavalier in moving them to quality image status. Thanks for the update.  --Discott (talk) 07:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Best and Less logo.png
 Thanks for uploading File:Best and Less logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 21:05, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

IMAGE OF PORTSIDE
HI DISCOT I AM MOCKING UP A CONFERENCE PAGE AND LOOKING FOR A CAPE TOWN CONSTRUCTION IMAGE TO USE AS A BACKGROUND, WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO USE YOUR IMAGE? DO YOU HAVE A COST INVOLVED FOR A HIGH RES IMAGE/ USAGE? REGARDS KAREN SMITH KAREN@NOBULL.CO.ZA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.86.148.155 (talk) 11:32, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Karen, the image is licensed CC-BY-SA and available full size on Commons. This means that you are welcome to use it for what ever purpose you wish, at no cost, without my permission (although thank you for taking the time to ask, it is very nice of you), and you can share it with whom ever you like.  The only requirement is that you cite me as the author of the image and that you share it under the same circumstances that I have shared it with everyone else.  Isn't a creative commons licence wonderful!  Cheers,--Discott (talk) 18:23, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

The photo's you posted of the SA Naval Museum are actually photo's of the Selbourne Dry Dock, which is not listed as a heritage site although it should be.Lennon001 (talk) 17:04, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Cannon size
Hi Discott. Are you sure this image is of a 10 ton gun? All the sources I could find including the navy say 12 tons which is what the article is for. I had trimmed the caption to make it more concise per MOS:CAPTIONS but you have overwritten that. Helen Online  16:27, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Helen, you are absolutely right, it is a 12 ton gun. My reference to a 10 ton gun is a typo.  I have already trimmed the caption to focus the picture of the firing gun for that article and the gun its self is clearly a mark I 9 inch 12 ton.  I will correct it now.  I have to say that it is one of the best photographs from WLM.  What a fantastic action shot! --Discott (talk) 19:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. sorry for over righting your changes, I suspect that was due to an edit conflict that took place when I was updating the photograph.--Discott (talk) 19:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for correcting it, I have copy edited the caption again to bring it in line with MOS:CAPTIONS. It is a great shot, and the cropped version is much better in my opinion. Helen  Online  08:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Helen, it looks a lot better now. I have also nominated this image as a 'valued image' on commons.--Discott (talk) 08:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Cannon costs in today's money
Hi there, I welcome your initiative to translate unit costs at the time to today's equivalent (e.g for 1860s RML 9-inch gun, ₤740 then), it's something I've been thinking about for a while. However... which index to use ? Based on wages we get an enormous cost in today's pounds : ₤456,200, out of all proportion to its real value and affordability - no government would order pretty average guns at this price today. Perhaps using the "real price" which would give ₤61,730 today which seems more realistic. Another problem : how do we compare technology costs of different eras : do we compare how much it would cost to produce an exact replica today, or the cost of its modern equivalent ? In this case, there is no modern equivalent : the 9-inch was intended to take on armoured opponents which don't exist today, as well as deliver high explosive at (by today's standards) short range : accuracy was poor; modern equivalents are general-purpose intended primarily to deliver high explosive extremely accurately at long range such as the RN's 4.5-inch Mk 8 gun, which is much smaller but can send you back to your maker more effectively... not sure what the purchase price is. I'm no economist, so I stand to be educated and corrected. Regards, Rod in Sydney. Rcbutcher (talk) 08:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Rcbutcher, good question. Measuring economic value over long periods of time can be quite tricky and usually depends on what you want to measure.  I tend to use the 'labour value' or 'labour cost' value as my metric of choice as the relative wage of a person's labour over time is a pretty stable unit of value over time.  Also the equivalent amount for a heavy peice of artilery at ₤456,200 in today's money is not too far off from how much it would cost to buy a relatively equivalent piece of military equipment like a M198 howitzer which costs US$527,337 per unit.  Using the amount it would cost to make a replica today would, I feel, be a misleading metric of value today to use as it would not take into account the R&D costs to develop the equipment nor the relatively higher value of skills and technology brought to bear in making the unit.  Skills and technology which in today's world is much more common and cheaper.  Military equipment is expensive! --Discott (talk) 08:52, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * phew, I didn't realize how much this stuff affects the modern taxpayer. Indeed expensive. The RML 9-inch gun in its day could be equated to a 155-mm gun of today. I suppose it makes sense : how much does today's functional equivalent of 1800s artillery cost ? Rcbutcher (talk) 09:06, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * $527,337 in 2013 would be worth $2,440 in 1850 by the labour value of measuring worth. Alternative measures are often more so if you were using the relative size of the GDP as a measure of value then it would be worth less in 1850 as a share of the total output of the economy at $81.20 but if you were to use the historic economic cost of $527,337 (2013) in 1850 then it would be worth $23,800 in 1850 dollars.  The other nice thing about the labour cost as a measure of historic value is that it is also typically in between the other two types of measuring worth.  Ultimately though it really depends on what you are measuring.  So I would rather use the historic economic cost of as a measure when comparing the cost of say an expedition or military campaign as it gives an idea of how much the country is loosing out if they invested the money else where.  But if I was measuring the cost of a project like a new harbour or a war an wanted to get an idea of its impact on the economy at the time then I would use the 'economy cost' measure. --Discott (talk) 11:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
Did you know? TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.

With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.

See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.

There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.

Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.

Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.

TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon.  Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.

VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the  or   class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.

Templates' fields can be marked as ' required ' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).

Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a  attribute but no   set (bug 69955).

Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.

The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.

In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.

Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.

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

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

VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014
Did you know? VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.

It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web. Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.

Recent improvements
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.

The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.

VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.

The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)

Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.

TemplateData
''' The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. '''   This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.

In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.

Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.

The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.  You can influence VisualEditor's design . Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!

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

Proposed deletion of 1 Thibault Square


The article 1 Thibault Square has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * The only working source, from SA Property News, doesn't look like enough to show this passes WP:GNG.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:41, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the notification Stradivarius. I am going to remove the proposed deletion banner and explain why it should not be deleted on the talk page.--Discott (talk) 12:41, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of 1 Thibault Square for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 1 Thibault Square is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/1 Thibault Square until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)



Meet a Wikipedian from ZA
Hi Discott,

I guess you might want to talk to each other. I've seen lot of contributions from relating to SA whilst patrolling SA topics for sometime now and he lives in SA too. . Best! →Enock 4 seth (talk) 18:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks Rexford, yes is very active and has done a great deal of very good work on Wikipedia.  I believe I dropped him a line some time ago inviting him to one of our events but I should certainly do more to contact him.  Thanks, --Discott (talk) 14:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014


Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor. Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid  and   elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing  ⌃ Ctrl + F  or  ⌘ Cmd + F.

You can now create and edit simple  paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "" into a "".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing " *  " will make the line a bullet list; " 1.  " or " # " will make it a numbered list; " == " will make it a section heading; " : " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: " [[ " for opening the link tool, and " {{ " for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl + K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.
 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
 * Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
 * File requests for language-appropriate "" and "" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
 * The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.

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

Wiki meetup Cape Town
Hi, please see my request here :) Adriaan Joubert (talk) 08:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Great suggestion Adriaan Joubert! I have just created an event on the Wikimedia ZA FB page which you can see and sign up for here.  --Discott (talk) 09:04, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Q&A
Hi there. We running a story about the local Wikipedia meetup happening in CT on htxt and would love to get a quote from you for the story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.69.113.83 (talk) 13:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello, you are welcome to join us as it is an open event to anyone interested in talking about Wikipedia. It is usually a pretty small event with only about 4 or 5 people attending so I don't know how exciting you might find it but we will give you as much free coffee from Truth Cafe' as you can drink :-). We try to host one on the 1st Sunday of every third month and it is inspired by Wikimedia UK's monthly Wiki meetup which is intended to foster a greater sense of community amoungst local Wikipedia editors.  If you are going to join us I would encourage you to sign up on our meetup page so others will know you will be there.  All the best,--Discott (talk) 13:13, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Terrorist
Hi. I reverted your change on the 1989 page. If you want to change it back, let's open a discussion on the talk page first. A terrorist by definition is someone who has the stated intention to make some political point by means of terrorising people. The ANC (and MK) had declared an "Armed Struggle" against the South African state. They were defined by the legislation at the time as terrorists. They were NOT insurgents, which carries connotations of it's own. You could call them "freedom fighters" if you wished, but that's not neutral. As much as anyone might object to the actions of the government of SA at the time, they were the legally elected government and as such people engaging in armed insurrection are not insurgents but closer to the definition of terrorists. Maybe we can agree on a different term? "armed insurrectionists" is clumsy, but probably the most neutral.. BoonDock (talk) 12:00, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi BoonDock, you weren't the only one to change this change of mine. I feel this is an important discussion so I have moved to the talk page of the first page where this change was reverted.  Lets talk about this there.  Cheers and thanks for the heads up, --Discott (talk) 12:14, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News 2015—#1


Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action: The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.
 * starts a new task, like opening the dialog: blue ,
 * takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
 * might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red, or
 * is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
 * Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
 * Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.

Subscribe or unsubscribe at VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Naspers.svg.png
 Thanks for uploading File:Naspers.svg.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 23:23, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Ankerlig Power
Hi Discott Thank you for the informative piece on the Ankerlig Power station. I tried to contribute to this article by mounting a composite (stitched) photo of this power sation to enhance the information available. Unfortunately the image has been deleted twice for no apparent reason. Can you tell me why or how this happens? It mystifies me why somebody would dismiss someone else's contribution like this. Hope to hear from you Regards Braam van Zyl e-mail bvanzyl@7-11.co.za — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.237.240.169 (talk) 06:16, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter
That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge,  led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.

In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:
 * took Bumblebee, a level-4 vital article, to Good Article;
 * worked-up the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, also to Good Article status;
 * developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
 * And last but not least, worked up a number of Featured Pictures during round 1, including the 1948 one Deutsche Mark (pictured right), receiving the maximum bonus due to the number of Wikis that the related article appears in.

You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. , and

Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Wikimedia ZA
Portal:Wikimedia ZA, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wikimedia ZA and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Wikimedia ZA during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. DexDor (talk) 21:09, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #2—2015
Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:



Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:



After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language.  Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
 * The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
 * File requests for language-appropriate "" and "" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Happy Easter!

 * Thanks Wilhelmina Will, that is very kind of you. Happy Easter to you too.  --Discott (talk) 22:37, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Rhodes Must Fall
— Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:03, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 May newsletter
The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus. Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.
 * was one of several users who worked on improving Ulysses S. Grant. Remember, you do not need to work on an article on your own - as long as each person has completed significant work on the article during 2015, multiple competitors can claim the same article.
 * took Dragonfly to Good Article for a 3x bonus - and if that wasn't enough, they also took Damselfly there as well for a 2x bonus.
 * worked up Alexander Hamilton to Good Article for the maximum bonus. Hamilton was one of the founding fathers of the United States and is a level 4 vital article.

The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! , and  17:05, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015
Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information: The link tool has been re-designed: There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (,, or ). The cite button is now labeled with the word "" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.  You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker.  Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
 * If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
 * If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Re:
Dear Discott, thanks for the congrats! We are happy to know that you enjoyed the event. --ProtoplasmaKid (talk) 05:48, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language •  Local subscription list  •  Subscribe to the multilingual edition

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 and the future of editing.

Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince,  जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.

For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).

For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).

We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.

Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.

In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.

Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.

On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * 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 VisualEditor/IME Testing 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 "" and "" 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 Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 13
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Port of Cape Town, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Devils Peak (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Thank you for taking part in the Community Health learning campaign!
Hi Discott, Thanks for contributing a drawing in the Community Health mural at Wikimania 2015! In case you haven't seen it yet, the campaign is still ongoing until Sunday. We have posted a few questions related to what makes a healthy community online, and we've had some interesting contributions. I was wondering if you wanted to share your views there, as well? Happy editing! Best, María (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:22, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:22, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 September newsletter
The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.

In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.

The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:


 * , who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy.  A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.
 * , second place both in Pool B and overall, earned the bulk of his points with FPs, mostly depicting currency.
 * , first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany.  Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.
 * , second in Pool A, took fourth overall. He tends to focus on articles about cricket and military history, specifically the 1640s First English Civil War.
 * , from Pool A, was our highest-scoring wildcard. West Virginia tends to focus on articles about the history of (what for it!) the U.S. state of West Virginia.
 * , from Pool A, likes to work on articles about British geography and places. Most of his points this round were earned from two impressive accomplishments: a GT about Scheduled monuments in Somerset and a FT about English Heritage properties in Somerset.
 * , from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.
 * , also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.

The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.

Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!

, and  11:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

My requested adminship on Northern Sotho wiki
Hi Doug, we haven't met before!

I'm mostly active (no 6) on af:wiki but created 650+ local place names on nso:wiki the last month. Problem is that I got the "tail" wrong with most Sepedi entities, e.g. nso:Mmušoselegae wa Moqhaka instead of my nso:Moqhaka Mmusogae.

I am of the opinion that if I can do the moves of articles to correct namespaces, but simultaneously deleting the wrong ones, it would be best practice. For this I request temporary adminship on the Northern Sotho wiki. Can u please assist, I did put in a request last night.

Regards home, Aliwal2012 (talk) 09:17, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Aliwal2012, happy to help how ever I can. I generally try to avoid becoming an admin so I am not very familiar with the process but I will second your nomination and also try and loop in one or two other editors who I know are active on other African language Wikipedias. I will see if I can dig up someone who can give admin rights on that Wiki.  Good luck.--Discott (talk) 09:40, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks Doug, noted. Aliwal2012 (talk) 14:01, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Paraphrasing when citing sources
Hello Discott. You may like to take a few moments to read Close paraphrasing, in conjunction with COPYPASTE, as some of your additions to articles, for example Argentina–United Kingdom relations and Canada–South Africa relations, are very very close to the wording and structure of the original sources. Thank you. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 12:41, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing this out. I recall thinking at the time of adding those edits that it might be a bit too close to the original text but I wasn't too sure how to word it without having to use quotes as the source did such a good job of making the text concise.  I suppose now is a good time to tinker with it a bit more and make it more different.--Discott (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, these can be tricky. I often end up resorting to short quotations, but I guess we are supposed to avoid too much of that as well. Thanks. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 08:54, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Your country needs more of you
Hey Discott, I've setup a style guide for anything South Africa places related. Would you be interested in writing a style guide for future editors? I noticed you've contributed alot in the places lately, but even if it's in the People or Government style guides that would be awesome. The idea is to get more standardisation across these articles. The guide is should be structured in the same way as the article layout, you can have a look at the one I started for government cabinets.

Lastly, if you're keen, you might wanna help get the WP:POLITICSZA task force off the ground? At the moment, it's only me - but trying to collect all the editors interested in South African politics.

- That Video Shop Guy (talk) 21:54, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi That Video Shop Guy, thanks for the invite and thanks for taking the initiative in setting this up. Looks like a great project.  I will happy join.  I am happy to write up a style guide some time if you feel there is a need for it.  Might have to wait a little while as I am currently a bit distracted with other commitments.  Glad to see you have also notified Htonl about this.  He immediately comes to mind as someone who is very dedicated and done a lot of good work on Wikipedia with regards to South Africa politics topics.--Discott (talk) 10:36, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:57, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:23, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor update

 * This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.

The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.

This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.

We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for thanking me for my edits of the Cape Fold Belt. I'm glad you liked it. Oggmus (talk) 15:20, 18 October 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 "".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the and  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 " " tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile:  Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630)  Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "" 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 and T113354)  When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "" and "" tabs into a single "" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw: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 VisualEditor/IME Testing if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - [//jp.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ビジュアルエディター/フィードバック/IME 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 can't read this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015: The results
WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.

This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is. All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. , a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.

Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to. Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.

A full list of our award winners are:


 * wins the prize for first place and the FP prize for 330 featured pictures in the final round.
 * wins the prize for second place and the DYK prize for 160 did you knows in the final round (310 in all rounds).
 * wins the prize for third place and the FA prize for 26 featured articles in all rounds.
 * wins the prize for fourth place
 * wins a final 8 prize.
 * wins a final 8 prize.
 * wins a final 8 prize and the FL prize for 11 featured lists.
 * wins the most prizes: a final 8 prize, the GA prize for 41 good articles, and the topic prize for a 13-article good topic and an 8-article featured topic, both in round 3.
 * wins the news prize for the most news articles in round 3.

We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

, and  18:39, 8 November 2015 (UTC)