User talk:Alsee/Archive 3

Please comment on Talk:Revolver (Beatles album)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Revolver (Beatles album). Legobot (talk) 04:30, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-10
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't.
 * When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view.

Problems
 * Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed.
 * Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately.

Changes this week
 * The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view.
 * The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Clarification
 * The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikiproject!
Hello, Alsee! I saw you recently edited a page related to the Green party and green politics. There is a new WikiProject that has been formed - WikiProject Green Politics and I thought this might be something you'd be interested in joining! So please head on over to the project page and take a look! Thanks for your time. Me-123567-Me (talk) 03:10, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process
''Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.''

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

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

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:
 * Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
 * Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
 * Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
 * Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
 * Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
 * Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions

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

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:42, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Updates/Overview 2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process • Get help

Please comment on Talk:Field-programmable gate array
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Field-programmable gate array. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-11
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes this week
 * You will be able to show references from  tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use   tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version.
 * Octicons-tools.svg CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:North American Aerospace Defense Command
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:North American Aerospace Defense Command. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Interwiki language links in navboxes
Regarding your close at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates, has taken to citing this close as a reason to add interwiki language links to navboxes. The way I read the close, this is not the intention, and that we remain at the status quo, where external links (and you state interwiki links are considered external) are not allowed. I would be grateful if you could clarify this for me and Tony. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:05, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , Join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:51, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

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

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

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams 05:02, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Smith & Wesson M&P15
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Smith & Wesson M&P15. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-03
Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

We have focused all our efforts on the New filters for edit review. You will discover these filters on your wiki soon (see below).

Edit Review Improvements [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * Translation icon cropped.svg The documentation concerning the new filters for recent changes has been written and marked for translation.

Future changes
 * We will release the mw:Help:New filters for edit review beta option on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias March 28. This beta option adds powerful filtering and other tools as well as an improved filtering interface to the Recent Changes page (and Recent Changes Linked). To try out these new tools on these two wikis, go to the Beta tab of the Preferences page (after the 28th) and select.
 * In the weeks following the initial release to Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias, the New Filters for Edit Review beta will go out to the following list of Wikipedias in waves (schedule to be done):
 * Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech Wikipedias and Wikidata.
 * English Wikipedia.
 * All other wikis.

Flow [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * shortcuts are now working on Flow visual editing mode. Type a shortcut in the visual editing mode will open the control panel for the chosen option.
 * Concerning, footnotes will be automatically included at the end of the message, unless if they are displayed elsewhere in the message by the appropriate template.
 * Flow has been removed from Metawiki.

Future changes


 * The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It will be a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 17:02, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-12
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The  button now says   or   on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.   is when you save a new page and   when you edit an existing page.
 * DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage.
 * You can see monthly page views when you click on  in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API.
 * The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers.

Problems
 * On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it.

Changes this week
 * When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut + +  on PCs or  + +  on Macs.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

== Please comment on Talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming ==

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Sebastian Gorka
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Sebastian Gorka. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes.

Problems
 * Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed.

Changes this week
 * New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:American Pekin
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:American Pekin. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Article on "Angst" by Fritz Zorn
I see that at Village pump (proposals) you state that there are significant sources that discuss this book. Do you think that you could improve this article by using some of these sources? Many thanks in advance for any co-operation. Carltonio (talk) 18:35, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The  button now says   or   on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.   is when you save a new page and   when you edit an existing page.
 * The tracking category    : is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template.
 * English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again.

Problems
 * Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:John Fleming (American politician)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:John Fleming (American politician). Legobot (talk) 04:27, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Bot policy
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Bot policy. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Tullock's spike
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Tullock's spike. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it.

Changes this week
 * Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version.
 * New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later.
 * The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
 * RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Borderline personality disorder
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Borderline personality disorder. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can add  to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example:  . This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them.
 * You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from . If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way.

Problems
 * Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week
 * There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
 * Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-04
Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The fourth fiscal quarter began the first of this month, and Collaboration Team has begun work on our new quarterly goals. In the coming months, we'll be working to release the New Filters for Edit Review beta on all wikis and then to improve the beta as much as possible based on user feedback. On that score, we're planning a round of user interviews on the new tools in May to get detailed information about usability and usefulness. If you've tried the new features and have thoughts, please share them with us in any language.

Our other focus right now is to look at what changes will be needed to spread the new filtering interface to other review pages, especially Watchlist. We're also exploring how to incorporate the tools we didn't include in the new interface in this round, like the Tag Filters, time-frame selector and Namespace filter.

Edit Review Improvements [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * New Filters for Edit review are now available on Polish, Portuguese, Persian, Russian and Turkish Wikipedias as a Beta feature. French Wikipedia and Mediawikiwiki have the filters as a Beta feature too, but without the quality and intent filters.
 * Special:RecentChangesLinked now displays a message when no results are found for a given combination of filters.

Problems
 * Polish Wikipedia is experiencing an issue with predictions (quality and intent filters using ORES). The different predictions are in conflict. An edit can be considered as "good" and "bad" at the same time, and the filter levels are somewhat redundant. We have formulated a plan to address this and are working on a fix, which is deployed progressively on Polish Wikipedia.
 * The issue on Polish Wikipedia is shared by a few other wikis: Dutch, Czech and Hebrew, and Wikidata. The deployment for those wikis has been postponed to Tuesday, May 9. Wikis without this predictions problem have been deployed or will be deployed with no change on the schedule.
 * Interestingly, the "problem" with those wikis is that they perform better than we anticipated. Once the fix is in place, the tools will work with particular simplicity on these wikis.

Future changes
 * English Wikipedia and all wikis without ORES prediction services will get the New Filters for Edit review on Monday, April 24.
 * All remaining wikis will get the New Filters for Edit review on Tuesday, May 9.
 * Wikidata edits will be added as a type of change on New Filters for Edit review.

Notifications [ More information • Help pages ]


 * Notifications badges were overlapping other tabs on Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox 3.6, using MonoBook skin. This is now fixed.

Flow [ More information • Help pages ]


 * Flow is now available as a Beta feature on French Wikiversity.
 * All Flow documentation is now available on one page gathering all information, to help users to search for an information.
 * Flow's AbuseFilter integration now allows blocking a particular user from participating on a talk page, or any topic within it.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 13:04, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Microscope
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Microscope. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Protests against Donald Trump
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Protests against Donald Trump. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May.
 * When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups.

Problems
 * Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved.

Changes this week
 * The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit.
 * Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox person
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox person. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Speed of light
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Speed of light. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-18
<section begin="technews-2017-W18"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The content translation tool works again. It was turned off because of a database problem.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to add  block for your scripts also, or add   dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition.

Problems
 * Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.

Changes this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again.
 * The,   and   buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding   to the URL.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W18"/> 19:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Economic Freedom of the World
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Economic Freedom of the World. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19
<section begin="technews-2017-W19"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on  in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off   in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw.
 * There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May.

Changes this week
 * When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say  and   instead of   and  . This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If  is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use   for transclusions and   in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use   in a template:  . This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W19"/> 02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017
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<div style="float:right;width:230px;margin-left:1em;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;padding:1em;"> Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "". In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.



Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.



The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

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

Recent changes
A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences to enable the.

A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. 

The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The  block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. 

Other changes:
 * You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this.
 * The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow.
 * The item has been moved to the top of the  menu (from clicking on the  VisualEditor - Icon - Menu.svg icon) for quicker access.  There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there.
 * You can now create   tags (sometimes used as  ) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor.
 * Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed.
 * The menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) .  The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt.
 * A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed.  The team are sorry for the disruption.
 * There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:  + +  on a PC, or  + +  on a Mac.  It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is  +  on a PC or  +  on a Mac.

Future changes

 * The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of   tags and other types of wikitext syntax.  You will be able to turn it on and off.  It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017.
 * The kind of button used to, , and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI.  The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read.  The labels will remain the same.  You can test the new button by editing a page and adding   to the end of the URL, like this:  https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1  The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes.
 * The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors.  See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2017-20
<section begin="technews-2017-W20"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid.
 * The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page.

Problems
 * The  library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding   as the first line in the file and   as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue.

Changes this week
 * The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes
 * Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If   is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use   for transclusions and   in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix.

Older unreported changes
 * Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word  to your Meta user page to stop this.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W20"/> 21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)