User talk:Hydriz/Archive 41

Editing News #1—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for the English Wikipedia • Subscription list for the multilingual edition Did you know? Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?



Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.

If you enable the Beta Feature for "", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.

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

In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.



This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location.

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

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

Recent changes

 * The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools.  The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments.  They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing.  The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January.  Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor.  Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits.  More information will be posted at Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
 * The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor.  When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs.  You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs".  The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges.
 * Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor.
 * The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time.  It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up.  Other wikis can have this service, too.  Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.

Let's work together

 * The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
 * Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
 * The  block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens.  This makes footnotes easier to read.  This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia.  If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either   or the plain (no parameters)   template.  If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki.
 * If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

—User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-02
Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?
 * Collaboration and Language are now going their way separately. Updates about Content Translation are not included in this newsletter anymore. Please refer to the Language report.
 * Collaboration has a new project: Map improvements 2018.
 * The team’s engagement with maps is based on 2017 Community Wishlist proposal Kartographer Improvements, though the work won’t be restricted to items named there.
 * The project is currently in its very early research and planning stages.
 * It has a limited term that’s scheduled to conclude at the end of June 2018.

Edit Review Improvements [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * es.wikipedia, es.wikibooks, sv.wikipedia, and simple.wikipedia get ORES predictions on Recent Changes (and on Watchlist through "" Beta feature).

Problems
 * The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed.
 * On Related changes it was not possible to use Saved filters for several articles. It has been fixed.
 * Transclude special:relatedchanges on a subpage removed #contentSub. This is now fixed.

Notifications [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * The wording when you send a thanks message has changed. Instead of  or   it says   and  . It is also now easier to understand that all thanks are public.
 * A notification is now sent to account owner on multiple unsuccessful login attempts.

Problems
 * Between week 7 and 20 February, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed.
 * Long page titles on Special:Notifications were not truncated. This is now fixed.

Structured discussions [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * You can now press CTRL + ENTER to post a new message.
 * It wasn't possible to create a description of a Structured discussions board. This has been fixed.

Problems
 * On wikis using the Beta feature, it is not possible to enable or disable Structured discussion from the Beta page. However, admins can create and move the pages.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10
 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 make longer edit summaries.

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page.
 * On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
 * You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-11
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons.
 * Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made.
 * Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be [ tagged] for review.
 * Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab.

Problems
 * The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC).

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week.
 * It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users.
 * Octicons-tools.svg A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 March at 16:00 (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.  19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-12
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed.

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

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg There is no Editing team meeting this week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days.
 * In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:56, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-03
Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The Collaboration team has announced the start of a new project: In-Context Help and Onboarding. The idea is to improve retention of new wiki editors by giving them short tutorials and other training experiences related to, and triggered by, their current activities on the wikis (that’s the “in context” part). The project follows from the conclusions of the New Editor Experiences research. The work is in its very early stages, but we’d like to hear from people with ideas on the subject—particularly if you have experience supporting or training new contributors.

Map improvements 2018 [ More information ]


 * Maps using Maplink and Mapframe functions now include an extra zoom level (level 19). This is part of the Kartographer Improvements, the number one request of the 2017 Community Wishlist survey.

Edit Review Improvements [ More information • Help pages ]
 * Number of edit to show in recent changes information text was incorrect in Special:Preferences. It has been rephrased.

Notifications [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. That new feature has been documented.
 * Preferences panel on Special:Notifications was overlapping other elements. This has been fixed.

Future changes
 * An important work is under progress to allow thanks of log entry. This is done by the Community Tech team.

Structured discussions [ More information • Help pages ]

Recent changes
 * Structured Discussions extension has been uninstalled from wikis not using it. However, it is still possible for a community to request a trial of Structured discussions.

Problems
 * It was not possible to opt-in and opt-out Structured discussions on wikis using it as a Beta feature. It is now fixed.

Future changes Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 12:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The visual editor and 2017 wikitext editor interface is going to change for consistency. The toolbar, dialogs and menus will appear slightly bigger; some icons will look different. Content or functionality will not change. That change will apply to Structured Discussions as well.

Tech News: 2018-13
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate.
 * TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details.
 * Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:49, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-14
 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
 * Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.

Problems
 * MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week.
 * The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg User subpages ending in  will now be protected from other people editing them, like   and   pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like   to do this without concerns.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time.
 * Octicons-tools.svg AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks.
 * In Special:Preferences, the preference "" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist.
 * You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed.
 * You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
 * Octicons-tools.svg On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:28, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-15
 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
 * Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it.
 * You can now thank users for many more actions than edits to a page. This was one of the top ten requests in the Wishlist Survey last year.
 * The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details.
 * Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left).

Problems
 * The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed.
 * For a week in March rollbacks got both the  and the   tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
 * Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The iOS and Android apps will get synced reading lists later in April.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-16
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons ( and  ) will be affected leaving the values unchanged.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Volunteer developers can fill out the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey. The last day is April 22 (UTC). This is a third-party service survey. See the privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)