Wikipedia:Noticeboard/Archive/2016

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This is an archive of Wikipedia:Noticeboard. It consists of messages placed there in the year 2016. To place new messages, go to Wikipedia:Noticeboard.
Archive list
Archive No. of Topics Page size
Before 2010 7 9404
2010 5 3928
2011 4 5228
2012 13 25930
2013 26 48315
2014 18 27698
2015 38 69998
2016 25 49152
2017 23 61420
2018 14 30940
2019 13 31570
2020 21 42722
2021 24 52654
2022 73 213510
Current 92 290738
All 396 963207

Wikimania 2016 Scholarships - Deadline soon!

Please help translate to your language

A reminder - applications for scholarships for Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy, are closing soon! Please get your applications in by January 9th. To apply, visit the page below:

Patrick Earley (WMF) via MediaWiki message delivery (वार्ता) ०१:४९, ५ ज्यानुवरी २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

2016 WMF Strategy consultation

Please help translate to your language

Hello, all.

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has launched a consultation to help create and prioritize WMF strategy beginning July 2016 and for the 12 to 24 months thereafter. This consultation will be open, on Meta, from 18 January to 26 February, after which the Foundation will also use these ideas to help inform its Annual Plan. (More on our timeline can be found on that Meta page.)

Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) at the Meta discussion, 2016 Strategy/Community consultation.

Apologies for English, where this is posted on a non-English project. We thought it was more important to get the consultation translated as much as possible, and good headway has been made there in some languages. There is still much to do, however! We created m:2016 Strategy/Translations to try to help coordinate what needs translation and what progress is being made. :)

If you have questions, please reach out to me on my talk page or on the strategy consultation's talk page or by email to mdennis@wikimedia.org.

I hope you'll join us! Maggie Dennis via MediaWiki message delivery (वार्ता) १९:०६, १८ ज्यानुवरी २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

The visual editor is coming to this wiki

Hello. Please excuse the English. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

Hi everybody,

My name is Erica, and I am a Community Liaison at the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm here to let you know that the visual editor is coming to editors at this Wikipedia soon. It allows people to edit Wikipedia articles as if they were using word processing software.

You don't have to wait until the deployment to test it; you can test the visual editor right now. To turn it on, select "Beta" in your preferences. Choose "VisualEditor" and click save. When it is enabled, you will press the "Edit" button to edit an article in the new software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press "Edit source".

After the deployment, everyone will automatically have the option to use either the visual editor or the current wikitext editor. For more information about how to use the visual editor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

More information about preparing for the visual editor is posted here.

Thank you, and happy editing! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) १८:२९, ५ फ़रवरी २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Reminder: the visual editor is coming to this wiki soon

Hello again. Please excuse the English. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

This is a reminder that the visual editor is coming to all editors at this Wikipedia soon. As of this writing, the team is not aware of any issues specific to this language that should prevent the new software to be deployed here; therefore, please do let us know if you find any problems instead. You can report issues in Phabricator, the new bug tracking system or on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org. There is a short guide at mediawiki.org that you can follow (as if it was a "checklist") to learn about the community work necessary to adapt the visual editor, and its referencing system in particular, to your community's needs.

If you can translate from English into this wiki's language, or know anyone who can, please follow the links below, as this language still has 0% progress in translations (0% or slightly above, for interface messages). You'll help your community get the best possible experience when it comes to interface messages and documentation related to the visual editor. After you click on any links, your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. Once you've selected it, you'll see the document in English side by side with any translation work already done in your language. You can add new translations or modify existing ones. The interface is hosted at https://translatewiki.net; you'll need an account if you never translated there before. The user guide lives at Mediawiki.org, for which you can use your regular Wikipedia account. You're welcome to contact me personally whenever you need help.

Thank you for your cooperation, and happy editing! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) १६:३४, २६ फ़रवरी २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Completion suggestor

Updates to wiki search auto completion are arriving 10 March

Hello!

Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

The completion suggester beta feature will become the default at the first group of wikis on Thursday, 10 March. This initial rollout will start with some of the smaller wikis to ensure the change happens in an organized way. The remaining wikis will receive the update on Wednesday, 16 March. This update brings three major improvements to search. Improved search result ordering, a tolerance for a small number of spelling errors, and suggests fewer typos.

Since December 2015, 19,000 editors have already opted into the completion suggester beta feature. Contributors are encouraged to try out the feature ahead of the release. Please share any comments on the Completion Suggester discussion page in any language.

To learn more about the work of the Discovery department and other improvements to search, please check out the Wikimedia blog. Read about CirrusSearch, the MediaWiki extension that makes wiki search possible.

- User:CKoerner (WMF) (talk) २२:०९, ७ मार्च २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2016)

Apologies for writing in English. Please help translate to your language

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

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 access to research materials from:

  • Cambridge University Press - a major publisher of academic journals and e-books in a variety of subject areas. Access includes both Cambridge Journals Online and Cambridge Books. 25 accounts.
  • Alexander Street Academic Video Online - a large academic video collection good for a wide range of subjects, including news programs (such as PBS and BBC), music and theatre, lectures and demonstrations, and documentaries. 25 accounts.
  • Baylor University Press - a publisher of academic e-books primarily in religious studies and the humanities. 50 accounts.
  • Future Science Group - a publisher of medical, biotechnological and scientific research. 30 accounts.
  • Annual Reviews - a publisher of review articles in the biomedical sciences. 100 accounts.
  • Miramar Ship Index - an index to ships and their histories since the early 19th century. 30 accounts.

Non-English

  • Noormags - Farsi-language aggregator of academic and professional journals and magazines. 30 accounts.
  • Kotobna - Arabic-language ebook publishing platform. 20 accounts.

Expansions

  • Gale - aggregator of newspapers, magazines and journals. 50 accounts.
  • Elsevier ScienceDirect - an academic publishing company that publishes medical and scientific literature. 100 accounts.

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, De Gruyter, EBSCO, Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team २०:३०, १७ मार्च २०१६ (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.

Open Call for Individual Engagement Grants

Please help translate to your language:

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals until April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) १५:४७, ३१ मार्च २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Server switch 2016

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas. This will make sure 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 conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center 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 new data center on Tuesday, 19 April.
On Thursday, 21 April, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. 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 approximately 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

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 a code freeze for the week of 18 April.

No non-essential code deployments will take place.

This test was originally planned to take place on March 22. April 19th and 21st are the new dates. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) २१:०७, १७ अप्रैल २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia to the Moon

Hello! Sorry that this is in English only, but we are using village pump messaging in order to reach as many language communities as possible. Wrong page? Please fix it here.

This is an invitation to all Wikipedians: Wikimedia Deutschland has been given data space to include Wikipedia content in an upcoming mission to the Moon. (No joke!) We have launched a community discussion about how to do that, because we feel that this is for the global community of editors. Please, join the discussion on Meta-Wiki (and translate this invitation to your language community)! Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland १५:३५, २१ अप्रैल २०१६ (UTC)

Wikipedia to the Moon: voting has begun

Hello, after six weeks of community discussion about Wikipedia to the Moon, there are now 10 different proposals for content for the mission. Starting today, you can vote for them on Meta-Wiki, and decide what we will work on: a Wikipedia canon, different lists, the Moon in 300 languages, an astronomy editathon, featured articles, articles about technology, endangered things, or DNA-related topics. You can even vote against community involvement. Voting is open until 24 June. Sorry that this message is again in English only, but we are using village pumps to reach as many communities as possible, so that everyone knows they can vote. Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland १५:३१, १० जून २०१६ (UTC)

Compact Links coming soon to this wiki

Please help translate to your language

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Hello, I wanted to give a heads up about an upcoming feature for this wiki, which you may already seen in the latest issue of Tech News. Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). This will be enabled as a feature in the coming week for all users, which can be turned on or off using a preference setting. We look forward to your feedback and please do let us know if you have any questions. Details about Compact Language Links can be read in the project documentation.

Due to the large scale enablement of this feature, we have had to use MassMessage for this announcement and as a result it is only written in English. We will really appreciate if this message can be translated for other users of this wiki. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team: Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) १४:०१, २४ जून २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Compact Language Links enabled in this wiki today

Please help translate to your language

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). Based on several factors, this shorter list of languages is expected to be more relevant for them and valuable for finding similar content in a language known to them. More information about compact language links can be found in the documentation.

From today onwards, compact language links has been enabled as the default listing of interlanguage links on this wiki. However, using the button at the bottom, you will be able to see a longer list of all the languages the article has been written in. The setting for this compact list can be changed by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages

The compact language links feature has been tested extensively by the Wikimedia Language team, which developed it. However, in case there are any problems or other feedback please let us know on the project talk page. It is to be noted that on some wikis the presence of an existing older gadget that was used for a similar purpose may cause an interference for compact language list. We would like to bring this to the attention of the admins of this wiki. Full details are on this phabricator ticket (in English).

Due to the large scale enablement of this feature, we have had to use MassMessage for this announcement and as a result it is only written in English. We will really appreciate if this message can be translated for other users of this wiki. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team: Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk)-०४:२१, २८ जून २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia to the Moon: invitation to edit

Three weeks ago, you were invited to vote on how to take Wikipedia articles to the Moon. Community voting is over and the winning idea is to send all ‘’featured articles and lists’’ to the Moon. This decision means that, starting today, Wikipedians from all language communities are warmly invited to intensively work on their best articles and lists, and submit them to Wikipedia to the Moon. The central site to coordinate between communities will be Meta-Wiki. You will find an overview and more information there. Hopefully, we will be able to represent as many languages as possible, to show Wikipedia’s diversity. Please feel kindly invited to edit on behalf of your community and tell us about your work on featured content!

Best, Moon team at Wikimedia Deutschland १४:१०, १ जुलाई २०१६ (UTC)

Open call for Project Grants

Please help translate to your language:

Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals from July 1st to August 2nd to fund new tools, research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers.
Whether you need a small or large amount of funds, Project Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.
Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through July 15.
With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) १५:२५, ५ जुलाई २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Save/Publish

The Editing team is planning to change the name of the “Save page” button to “Publish page” and “Publish changes”. “Publish page” will be used when you create a new page. “Publish changes” will be used when you change an existing page. The names will be consistent in all editing environments.[१][२]

This change will probably happen during the week of 30 August 2016. The change will be announced in Tech News when it happens.

If you are fluent in a language other than English, please check the status of translations at translatewiki.net for “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

The main reason for this change is to avoid confusion for new editors. Repeated user research studies with new editors have shown that some new editors believed that “Save page” would save a private copy of a new page in their accounts, rather than permanently publishing their changes on the web. It is important for this part of the user interface to be clear, since it is difficult to remove public information after it is published. We believe that the confusion caused by the “Save page” button increases the workload for experienced editors, who have to clean up the information that people unintentionally disclose, and report it to the functionaries and stewards to suppress it. Clarifying what the button does will reduce this problem.

Beyond that, the goal is to make all the wikis and languages more consistent, and some wikis made this change many years ago. The Legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports this change. Making the edit interface easier to understand will make it easier to handle licensing and privacy questions that may arise.

Any help pages or other basic documentation about how to edit pages will also need to be updated, on-wiki and elsewhere. On wiki pages, you can use the wikitext codes {{int:Publishpage}} and {{int:Publishchanges}} to display the new labels in the user's preferred language. For the language settings in your account preferences, these wikitext codes produce “Publish page” and “Publish changes”.

Please share this news with community members who teach new editors and with others who may be interested.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) १८:०३, ९ अगस्त २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library accounts available now (August 2016)


Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our publisher donation program. You can now sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

  • Nomos – Primarily German-language publisher of law and social sciences books and journals - 25 accounts
  • World Scientific – Scientific, technical, and medical journals - 50 accounts
  • Edinburgh University Press – Humanities and social sciences journals - 25 accounts
  • American Psychological Association – Psychology books and journals - 10 accounts
  • Emerald – Journals on a range of topics including business, education, health care, and engineering - 10 accounts

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, DeGruyter, Gale and Newspaperarchive.com.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team १८:३८, ३० अगस्त २०१६ (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.

RevisionSlider

From September 13th on, RevisionSlider will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page, so that you can easily move between revisions. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) १५:०८, १२ सेप्टेम्बर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Grants to improve your project

Please help translate to your language:

Greetings! The Project Grants program is currently accepting proposals for funding. There is just over a week left to submit before the October 11 deadline. If you have ideas for software, offline outreach, research, online community organizing, or other projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) २०:११, ३० सेप्टेम्बर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Creative Commons 4.0

Hello! I'm writing from the Wikimedia Foundation to invite you to give your feedback on a proposed move from CC BY-SA 3.0 to a CC BY-SA 4.0 license across all Wikimedia projects. The consultation will run from October 5 to November 8, and we hope to receive a wide range of viewpoints and opinions. Please, if you are interested, take part in the discussion on Meta-Wiki.

Apologies that this message is only in English. This message can be read and translated in more languages here. Joe Sutherland (talk) ०१:३४, ६ ओक्टोबर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Editing news n.3-2016

Sorry for the delay in delivering this newsletter!


Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

VisualEditor
Did you know?
Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?
Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with options for editing the table structure


Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

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

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

  • You can now set text as small or big.[३]
  • Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[४] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[५]
  • Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[६]
  • At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department is adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more at mediawiki.org.[७]
  • The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[८] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
  • Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[९]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

  • If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF) २१:२२, १७ ओक्टोबर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (November 2016)


Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

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 from:

Expansions

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team १८:३०, १ नवम्बर २०१६ (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.

Password reset

I apologise that this message is in English. ⧼Centralnotice-shared-help-translate⧽

We are having a problem with attackers taking over wiki accounts with privileged user rights (for example, admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, checkusers). It appears that this may be because of weak or reused passwords.

Community members are working along with members of multiple teams at the Wikimedia Foundation to address this issue.

In the meantime, we ask that everyone takes a look at the passwords they have chosen for their wiki accounts. If you know that you've chosen a weak password, or if you've chosen a password that you are using somewhere else, please change those passwords.

Select strong passwords – eight or more characters long, and containing letters, numbers, and punctuation. Joe Sutherland (सम्भासनं) / MediaWiki message delivery (वार्ता) ००:००, १४ नवम्बर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the above section (Password reset)

Please accept my apologies - that first line should read "Help with translations!". Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) / MediaWiki message delivery (वार्ता) ००:११, १४ नवम्बर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

New way to edit wikitext

Summary: There's a new opt-in Beta Feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. Please go try it out.


We in the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing department are responsible for making editing better for all our editors, new and experienced alike. We've been slowly improving the visual editor based on feedback, user tests, and feature requests. However, that doesn't work for all our user needs: whether you need to edit a wikitext talk page, create a template, or fix some broken reference syntax, sometimes you need to use wikitext, and many experienced editors prefer it.

Consequently, we've planned a "wikitext mode" for the visual editor for a long time. It provides as much of the visual editor's features as possible, for those times that you need or want wikitext. It has the same user interface as the visual editor, including the same toolbar across the top with the same buttons. It provides access to the citoid service for formatting citations, integrated search options for inserting images, and the ability to add new templates in a simple dialog. Like in the visual editor, if you paste in formatted text copied from another page, then formatting (such as bolding) will automatically be converted into wikitext.

All wikis now have access to this mode as a Beta Feature. When enabled, it replaces your existing wikitext editor everywhere. If you don't like it, you can reverse this at any time by turning off the Beta Feature in your preferences. We don't want to surprise anyone, so it's strictly an opt-in-only Beta Feature. It won't switch on automatically for anyone, even if you have previously checked the box to "Automatically enable most beta features".

The new wikitext edit mode is based on the visual editor, so it requires JavaScript (as does the current wikitext editor). It doesn't work with gadgets that have only been designed for the older one (and vice versa), so some users will miss gadgets they find important. We're happy to work with gadget authors to help them update their code to work with both editors. We're not planning to get rid of the current main wikitext editor on desktop in the foreseeable future. We're also not going to remove the existing ability to edit plain wikitext without JavaScript. Finally, though it should go without saying, if you prefer to continue using the current wikitext editor, then you may so do.

This is an early version, and we'd love to know what you think so we can make it better. Please leave feedback about the new mode on the feedback page. You may write comments in any language. Thank you.

James Forrester (Product Manager, Editing department, Wikimedia Foundation) --१९:३१, १४ दिसम्बर २०१६ (UTC)[reply]

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