User talk:Bill william compton/Archive 32

Tech News: 2015-29
 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 see a list of pages with errors in code coloring.

Problems
 * There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes.
 * There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:06, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 12
 The Wikipedia Library Books & Bytes

Issue 12, May-June 2015 by, , ,

 Read the full newsletter The Interior 15:23, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * New donations - Taylor & Francis, Science, and three new French-language resources
 * Expansion into new languages, including French, Finnish, Turkish, and Farsi
 * Spotlight: New partners for the Visiting Scholar program
 * American Library Association Annual meeting in San Francisco

The Signpost: 15 July 2015

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 * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:43, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-30
 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
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
 * You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person.

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

Future changes
 * Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  03:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2015

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Tech News: 2015-31
 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 redirects to link to JavaScript pages.
 * You cannot use the compact user bar any more.
 * You can change your options to see bigger images.
 * You can watch short videos about how to use VisualEditor.
 * You can now edit pages linked in "what links here" more easily.

Problems
 * There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
 * There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
 * JavaScript authors: You cannot use  to get edit counts anymore.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 July 2015

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Tech News: 2015-32
 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 Problems Changes this week
 * The ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
 * You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts.
 * Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look.
 * The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo.
 * MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages.
 * Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore.
 * There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error.
 * We can't search by file type on Wikimedia wikis now.
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 August 2015

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Tech News: 2015-33
 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
 * MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page.
 * The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times.
 * You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later.
 * You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers.
 * It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script.
 * JavaScript authors:
 * You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix.
 * You can no longer use  on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix.
 * The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added.

Problems
 * More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed.
 * Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed.
 * Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
 * UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon.
 * You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes.

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

Future changes
 * Some things in the watchlist will get a new look.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W33"/> 14:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 August 2015
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Tech News: 2015-34
<section begin="technews-2015-W34"/> 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
 * Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article.
 * Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems.

Problems
 * Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated.
 * On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
 * You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W34"/> 16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 August 2015
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Tech News: 2015-35
<section begin="technews-2015-W35"/> 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
 * Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function.

Problems
 * There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).

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

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W35"/> 13:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 August 2015
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Tech News: 2015-36
<section begin="technews-2015-W36"/> 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
 * VisualEditor will now automatically create a link when you type in or paste an ISBN, PMID, or RFC.
 * The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool.
 * VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module . Use   instead.
 * Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 3 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 1 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikidata API will be updated with breaking changes. This will probably happen on September 9.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W36"/> 21:36, 31 August 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  11:47, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 September 2015
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Tech News: 2015-37
<section begin="technews-2015-W37"/> 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 mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users.
 * A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support.
 * You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version.

Problems
 * There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed.
 * The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
 * The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters.
 * The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours.
 * Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W37"/> 17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 September 2015
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Tech News: 2015-38
<section begin="technews-2015-W38"/> 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 the Wikidata query service.
 * Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved.
 * Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems.

Problems Changes this week
 * There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed.
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later.
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations.
 * The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W38"/> 16:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2015
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Tech News: 2015-39
<section begin="technews-2015-W39"/> 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
 * There is now an experimental Wikimedia maps service. You can give feedback here.
 * Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong.
 * More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article.
 * The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users.

Problems
 * Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time.
 * Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week.
 * UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
 * The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms.
 * You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it.
 * Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on September 23 at 17:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can register to the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 in San Francisco 4–6 January 2016. Gadget, template, bot, and tool developers are welcome as well. Call for participation and travel sponsorship requests are open until 2 October.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W39"/> 18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 September 2015
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