Wikipedia:Community Portal/Archive-6
| Village Pump archive: 2019 - 2020 | |
|---|---|
| This page contains discussions that have been archived from Community Portal. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic. | |
FileExporter beta feature
A new beta feature will soon be released on all wikis: The FileExporter. It allows exports of files from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons, including their file history and page history. Which files can be exported is defined by each wiki's community: Please check your wiki's configuration file if you want to use this feature.
The FileExporter has already been a beta feature on mediawiki.org, meta.wikimedia, deWP, faWP, arWP, koWP and on wikisource.org. After some functionality was added, it's now becoming a beta feature on all wikis. Deployment is planned for January 16. More information can be found on the project page.
As always, feedback is highly appreciated. If you want to test the FileExporter, please activate it in your user preferences. The best place for feedback is the central talk page. Thank you from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes project.
No editing for 30 minutes on 17 January
18:55, 16 Sunguti 2019 (UTC)
Talk to us about talking
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
- First, sign up your group here.
- Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
- Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.
Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2019)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:
- Kinige – Primarily Indian-language ebooks - 10 books per month
- Gale – Times Digital Archive collection added (covering 1785-2013)
- JSTOR – New applications now being taken again
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Baylor University Press, Taylor & Francis, Cairn, Annual Reviews and Bloomsbury. You can request new partnerships on our Suggestions page.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 17:40, 13 Nyenyankulu 2019 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Read-only mode for up to 30 minutes on 11 April
10:56, 8 Dzivamusoko 2019 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request
Please help translate to your language
Editing News #1—July 2019
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Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon 
to start editing.
Edit Cards
This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.
Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.
Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:
Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?
If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.
Follow these instructions and share your experience:
Recent releases
The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
- Section editing
- The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
- The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
- Loading overlay
- The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.
Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.
New and active projects
This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
- Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
- Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
- Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
- Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Looking ahead
- Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to the team about how editing can be improved.
- Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
Learning more
The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
18:32, 23 Mawuwani 2019 (UTC)
Update on the consultation about office actions
Hello all,
Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety team announced a future consultation about partial and/or temporary office actions. We want to let you know that the draft version of this consultation has now been posted on Meta.
This is a draft. It is not intended to be the consultation itself, which will be posted on Meta likely in early September. Please do not treat this draft as a consultation. Instead, we ask your assistance in forming the final language for the consultation.
For that end, we would like your input over the next couple of weeks about what questions the consultation should ask about partial and temporary Foundation office action bans and how it should be formatted. Please post it on the draft talk page. Our goal is to provide space for the community to discuss all the aspects of these office actions that need to be discussed, and we want to ensure with your feedback that the consultation is presented in the best way to encourage frank and constructive conversation.
Please visit the consultation draft on Meta-wiki and leave your comments on the draft’s talk page about what the consultation should look like and what questions it should ask.
Thank you for your input! -- The Trust & Safety team 08:03, 16 Mhawuri 2019 (UTC)
New tools and IP masking
Hey everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation wants to work on two things that affect how we patrol changes and handle vandalism and harassment. We want to make the tools that are used to handle bad edits better. We also want to get better privacy for unregistered users so their IP addresses are no longer shown to everyone in the world. We would not hide IP addresses until we have better tools for patrolling.
We have an idea of what tools could be working better and how a more limited access to IP addresses would change things, but we need to hear from more wikis. You can read more about the project on Meta and post comments and feedback. Now is when we need to hear from you to be able to give you better tools to handle vandalism, spam and harassment.
You can post in your language if you can't write in English.
Johan (WMF)14:18, 21 Mhawuri 2019 (UTC)
The consultation on partial and temporary Foundation bans just started
Hello,
In a recent statement, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees requested that staff hold a consultation to "re-evaluat[e] or add community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)".
Accordingly, the Foundation's Trust & Safety team invites all Wikimedians to join this consultation and give their feedback from 30 September to 30 October.
How can you help?
- Suggest how partial and temporary Foundation bans should be used, if they should (eg: On all projects, or only on a subset);
- Give ideas about how partial and temporary Foundation bans should ideally implemented, if they should be; and/or
- Propose changes to the existing Office Actions policy on partial and temporary bans.
We offer our thanks in advance for your contributions, and we hope to get as much input as possible from community members during this consultation!
Feedback wanted on Desktop Improvements project
Please help translate to your language
Hello. The Readers Web team at the WMF will work on some improvements to the desktop interface over the next couple of years. The goal is to increase usability without removing any functionality. We have been inspired by changes made by volunteers, but that currently only exist as local gadgets and user scripts, prototypes, and volunteer-led skins. We would like to begin the process of bringing some of these changes into the default experience on all Wikimedia projects.
We are currently in the research stage of this project and are looking for ideas for improvements, as well as feedback on our current ideas and mockups. So far, we have performed interviews with community members at Wikimania. We have gathered lists of previous volunteer and WMF work in this area. We are examining possible technical approaches for such changes.
We would like individual feedback on the following:
- Identifying focus areas for the project we have not yet discovered
- Expanding the list of existing gadgets and user scripts that are related to providing a better desktop experience. If you can think of some of these from your wiki, please let us know
- Feedback on the ideas and mockups we have collected so far
We would also like to gather a list of wikis that would be interested in being test wikis for this project - these wikis would be the first to receive the updates once we’re ready to start building.
When giving feedback, please consider the following goals of the project:
- Make it easier for readers to focus on the content
- Provide easier access to everyday actions (e.g. search, language switching, editing)
- Put things in logical and useful places
- Increase consistency in the interface with other platforms - mobile web and the apps
- Eliminate clutter
- Plan for future growth
As well as the following constraints:
- Not touching the content - no work will be done in terms of styling templates or to the structure of page contents themselves
- Not removing any functionality - things might move around, but all navigational items and other functionality currently available by default will remain
- No drastic changes to the layout - we're taking an evolutionary approach to the changes and want the site to continue feeling familiar to readers and editors
Please give all feedback (in any language) at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements
After this round of feedback, we plan on building a prototype of suggested changes based on the feedback we receive. You’ll hear from us again asking for feedback on this prototype.
Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk)
07:18, 16 Nhlangula 2019 (UTC)
Beta feature "Reference Previews"
A new beta feature will soon be deployed to your wiki: Reference Previews. As you might guess from the name, this feature gives you a preview of references in the article text. That means, you can look up a reference without jumping down to the bottom of the page.
Reference Previews have already been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April. Now they will become available on more wikis. Deployment is planned for October 24. More information can be found on the project page.
As always, feedback is highly appreciated. If you want to test Reference Previews, please activate the beta feature in your user preferences and let us know what you think. The best place for feedback is the central talk page. We hope the feature will serve you well in your work. Thank you from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes project.
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages
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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.
Help
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk pages project
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
- On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
- There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
- Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.
- In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
- One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
- New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
- Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
- Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Wikimania
The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.
Looking ahead
- Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
- Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
- Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)
11:12, 29 Nhlangula 2019 (UTC)
Movement Learning and Leadership Development Project
Hello
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Development team is seeking to learn more about the way volunteers learn and develop into the many different roles that exist in the movement. Our goal is to build a movement informed framework that provides shared clarity and outlines accessible pathways on how to grow and develop skills within the movement. To this end, we are looking to speak with you, our community to learn about your journey as a Wikimedia volunteer. Whether you joined yesterday or have been here from the very start, we want to hear about the many ways volunteers join and contribute to our movement.
To learn more about the project, please visit the Meta page. If you are interested in participating in the project, please complete this simple Google form. Although we may not be able to speak to everyone who expresses interest, we encourage you to complete this short form if you are interested in participating!
Additional interface for edit conflicts on talk pages
Sorry, for writing this text in English. If you could help to translate it, it would be appreciated.
You might know the new interface for edit conflicts (currently a beta feature). Now, Wikimedia Germany is designing an additional interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This interface is shown to you when you write on a discussion page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional editing conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments and edit your comment. We are inviting everyone to have a look at the planned feature. Let us know what you think on our central feedback page! -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) 14:15, 26 Nyenyenyani 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools
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The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.
The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.
- On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
- The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
- an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
- a rich-text visual editing option, and
- other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch 
these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)
19:27, 8 Dzivamusoko 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #2
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This issue of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature is called "Discussion tools". The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster now. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
20:33, 17 Khotavuxika 2020 (UTC)
Annual contest Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos
This is to invite you to join the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) campaign to help improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win prizes. The campaign starts today 1st July 2020 and closes 31st August 2020.
The campaign primarily aims at using images from Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles that are lacking images. Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.
Please visit the campaign page to learn more about the WPWP Campaign.
With kind regards,
Thank you,
Deborah Schwartz Jacobs, Communities Liaison, On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing Team - 08:24, 1 Mawuwani 2020 (UTC)
feel free to translate this message to your local language when this helps your community
Feedback on movement names
Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language if necessary. Thank you!
There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.
Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.
Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.
Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 19:42, 2 Mawuwani 2020 (UTC)
Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.
Editing news 2020 #3
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Seven years ago this month, the Editing team offered the visual editor to most Wikipedia editors. Since then, editors have achieved many milestones:
- More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.
- More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
- The visual editor is increasingly popular. The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has increased every year since its introduction.
- In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers (logged-in editors with ≤99 edits) used the visual editor. This percentage has increased every year.
- Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
- On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor. 🚀 👩🚀
- Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
12:55, 9 Mawuwani 2020 (UTC)
Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia, a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May 2020 [1] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation [2]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project, and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list [3]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours,
Katherine Maher (Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation)
Sent by m:User:Elitre (WMF) 20:10, 9 Mawuwani 2020 (UTC) - m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC): we want to hear from you.
Hello. Apologies that you may not be reading this message in your native language: translations of the following message may be available on Meta. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!
At times, our contributor communities and projects have suffered from a lack of guidelines that can help us create an environment where free knowledge can be shared safely without fear. There has been talk about the need for a global set of conduct rules in different communities over time.
Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees announced a Community Culture Statement, asking for new standards to address harassment and promote inclusivity across projects.
The universal code of conduct will be a binding minimum set of standards across all Wikimedia projects, and will apply to all of us, staff and volunteers alike, all around the globe. It is of great importance that we all participate in expressing our opinions and thoughts about UCoC and its values. We should think about what we want it to cover or include and what it shouldn’t include, and how it may create difficulties or help our groups.
This is the time to talk about it. Before starting drafting the code of conduct, we would like to hear from you and to solicit the opinions and feedback of your colleagues. In order for your voice to be heard, we encourage and invite you to read more about the universal code of conduct (UCoC) and then write down your opinions or feedback on the discussion page.
To reduce language barriers during the process, you are welcome to translate the universal code of conduct main page from English into your respective local language. You and your community may choose to provide your opinions/feedback using your local languages.
Thanks in advance for your attention and contributions, The Trust and Safety team at Wikimedia Foundation 16:42, 22 Mawuwani 2020 (UTC)
Technical Wishes: FileExporter and FileImporter become default features on all Wikis
The FileExporter and FileImporter will become a default features on all wikis until August 7, 2020. They are planned to help you to move files from your local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier while keeping all original file information (Description, Source, Date, Author, View History) intact. Additionally, the move is documented in the files view history. How does it work?
Step 1: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link "Move file to Wikimedia Commons" on the local file page.
Step 2: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can in fact be moved to Wikimedia Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki's configuration file which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.
Step 3: If the file is compatible with Wikimedia Commons, you will be taken to an import page, at which you can update or add information regarding the file, such as the description. You can also add the 'Now Commons' template to the file on the local wiki by clicking the corresponding check box in the import form. Admins can delete the file from the local wiki by enabling the corresponding checkbox. By clicking on the 'Import' button at the end of the page, the file is imported to Wikimedia Commons.
If you want to know more about the FileImporter extension or the Technical Wishes Project, follow the links. --For the Technical Wishes Team:Important: maintenance operation on September 1st
Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic to the secondary data centre on Tuesday, September 1st 2020.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
- You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, September 1st. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday September 2).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the week of September 1st, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community.
New Wikipedia Library Collections Now Available (September 2020)
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing new free, full-access, accounts to reliable sources as part of our research access program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials on the Library Card platform:
- Al Manhal – Arabic journals and ebooks
- Ancestry.com – Genealogical and historical records
- RILM – Music encyclopedias
Many other partnerships are listed on our partners page, including Adam Matthew, EBSCO, Gale and JSTOR.
A significant portion of our collection now no longer requires individual applications to access! Read more in our recent blog post.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 09:49, 3 Ndzhati 2020 (UTC)
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Invitation to participate in the conversation
Hello. Apologies for cross-posting, and that you may not be reading this message in your native language: translations of the following announcement may be available on Meta. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!
We are excited to share a draft of the Universal Code of Conduct, which the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees called for earlier this year, for your review and feedback. The discussion will be open until October 6, 2020.
The UCoC Drafting Committee wants to learn which parts of the draft would present challenges for you or your work. What is missing from this draft? What do you like, and what could be improved?
Please join the conversation and share this invitation with others who may be interested to join, too.
To reduce language barriers during the process, you are welcomed to translate this message and the Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review. You and your community may choose to provide your opinions/feedback using your local languages.
To learn more about the UCoC project, see the Universal Code of Conduct page, and the FAQ, on Meta.
Thanks in advance for your attention and contributions, The Trust and Safety team at Wikimedia Foundation, 17:55, 10 Ndzhati 2020 (UTC)Wiki of functions naming contest
Please help translate to your language
Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Wikimedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki where the community can work together on a library of functions. The community can create new functions, read about them, discuss them, and share them. Some of these functions will be used to help create language-independent Wikipedia articles that can be displayed in any language, as part of the Abstract Wikipedia project. But functions will also be usable in many other situations.
There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with voting beginning on 29 September and 27 October. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on 8 December. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)21:22, 29 Ndzhati 2020 (UTC)
Call for feedback about Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws changes and Board candidate rubric
Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language.
Today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees starts two calls for feedback. One is about changes to the Bylaws mainly to increase the Board size from 10 to 16 members. The other one is about a trustee candidate rubric to introduce new, more effective ways to evaluate new Board candidates. The Board welcomes your comments through 26 October. For more details, check the full announcement.
Thank you! Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:17, 7 Nhlangula 2020 (UTC)
Important: maintenance operation on October 27
Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language
The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, October 27 2020.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
- You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, October 27. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (14:00 WET, 15:00 CET, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 03:00 NZDT on Wednesday October 28).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the week of October 26, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2
Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)
22:10, 5 Hukuri 2020 (UTC)
The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 Hukuri, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 N'wendzamhala and 21 N'wendzamhala.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!
18:09, 20 Hukuri 2020 (UTC)
Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist
Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!
As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.
Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.
This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.
Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.
If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!
2020 Coolest Tool Award Ceremony on December 11th
Hello all,
The ceremony of the 2020 Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award will take place virtually on Friday, December 11th, at 17:00 GMT. This award is highlighting tools that have been nominated by contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and the ceremony will be a nice moment to show appreciation to the tools developers and maybe discover new tools!
You will find more information here about the livestream and the discussions channels. Thanks for your attention, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 10:55, 7 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
Proposal to enable an experimental open source machine translation system for Tsonga
Content translation has been used already by many communities to translate more than 700,000 Wikipedia articles. We want to help communities with potential to grow by using translation more. We propose to enable experimental support for a basic machine translation system for Tsonga within Content Translation. Over time, it can improve with the help of the community.
Background
For some languages, Content translation offers Machine Translation as a starting point for users to edit and improve. In addition, the tool provides mechanisms to encourage the creation of good quality content, which prevent the publication of only lightly edited machine translations. As a result, the translations produced with the tool are less likely to be deleted than the articles started from scratch.
Unfortunately, Tsonga is not supported by any of the translation services currently integrated in the tool such as Apertium, Google or Yandex. This requires editors to write their translations from scratch.
Proposal
We want to propose the integration of OpusMT, an Open source Neural Machine Translation system that supports the English-Tsonga language pair. You can try the translation engine on this example website (select "ts" in the dropdown menu on the right side). Although the translation service is based on MarianMT, a powerful neural network system, the quality of the final translations heavily depends on the availability of translation data which is limited for Tsonga at the moment. This means that:
- The translation quality will be very low initially. When using the translation service you should still expect that you'll have to rewrite most of the content. This may not be an extra effort compared to the current situation, given that users have to write their translations from scratch since there is no alternative machine translation system available.
- Quality will improve over time as more articles are translated. Each translation created with Content Translation (using machine translation or from scratch) will contribute to the global corpus of translation examples used by the system. Thus, the more translations are created with the tool, the better the machine translation service will become.
We believe that this approach will help the less-supported languages over time. We want to check if this plan sounds good to the Tsonga community, and encourage Tsonga editors to translate Wikipedia articles with the tool. In this way, your translations not only help expand the knowledge available in your language, but also become a way to improve the free machine translation service that can be used inside and outside Wikipedia.
Note that the usage of OpusMT machine translation is optional and editors are free to translate without using such services.
Impact
On the Tsonga Wikipedia, more than 150 articles have been created with Content Translation since 2015 (compared to more than 800 articles created from scratch in the same period). So we don’t expect a high volume of new content as an immediate result of this experiment. In any case, we want to encourage editors to report any issues they find with the tool while creating or reviewing translations.
In order to make sure that the content created using the new machine translation system results in a productive contribution, we’ll keep track of the translations created with the tool and their deletion ratios. In addition, we’ll set stricter limits on machine translation to enforce more intensive editing of the initial low quality machine translation.
We want to make sure the expectations are clear before enabling the new system. Please share your questions and your thoughts on the idea. We’ll proceed only if there are no major concerns from the community.
Thanks! --Amir E. Aharoni (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 14 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
Community Response
@Aaharoni-WMF:, This is such a welcome development and would greatly lighten the translation load on my end for sure. I am mindful that machine translation would not always be in line with the native sentence construction. will this tool enable me to revise the translation before deploying it? -- Thuvack (talk) 08:33, 17 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
- Thank for the response, Thuvack!
- Yes! In Content translation, machine translation is only provided as a first step, and the human editor must edit it before publishing. The software will prevent the publishing of machine translation that was not edited at all, and it will show warnings about machine translation that was edited very slightly. How much is "slightly" can be further adjusted according to the feedback from the community. --Amir E. Aharoni (WMF) (talk) 08:56, 17 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
- Awesomeness! looking forward to test driving this tool! -- Thuvack (talk) 12:02, 17 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
- Thuvack, it's deployed now!
- Just start a translation in Content Translation, try translating a paragraph of prose, and after a few moments you'll see a machine translation. There will probably be many mistakes, but the more you translate well, the better it will get over time.
- Also, Content Translation is currently defined as a beta feature. Is it OK to move it to being a usual preference? It will be enabled by default, but users will be able to disable it. It was already done in more than forty languages, and didn't cause any disruptions or increases in vandalism. --Amir E. Aharoni (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 17 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
- @Aaharoni-WMF:, Yes, I have been using the content translation tool for some time now. I support the mainstreaming of this tool. --Thuvack (talk) 10:42, 6 Sunguti 2021 (UTC)
- Awesomeness! looking forward to test driving this tool! -- Thuvack (talk) 12:02, 17 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)
Community Wishlist Survey 2021
We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.
In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.
We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.
You can view and vote all proposals here.
We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!
00:52, 15 N'wendzamhala 2020 (UTC)