User talk:Rdicerb (WMF)/Archive 1

Thank you!
Thanks for the love! Also, which Rachel are you? Were you at Wikimania? Deryck C.Meta 14:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was at Wikimania! I often sat at the Community Advocacy/ Community Engagement Table, though I was often also out and about/walking and talking! - Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 04:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-34
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
 * There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages. [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights]
 * You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
 * You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools.
 * You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.

Wikidata
 * After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews.
 * After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote.

Problems
 * There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed.

Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-35
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

VisualEditor news
 * There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed.
 * You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages.
 * If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
 * After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-36
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata.
 * You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the  keyword in your search.
 * A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog".
 * If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/status#2014-08-monthly]

VisualEditor news
 * You can no longer delete required fields in templates.
 * We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
 * VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook.
 * We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X).
 * You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
 * There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in  at freenode.
 * You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too.
 * You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
 * You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-37
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

VisualEditor news
 * From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (calendar).
 * You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog.
 * You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs.

Problems
 * There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #125
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. Read the full report &middot; Unsubscribe &middot; John F. Lewis 18:42, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Events/Blogs/Press
 * [//blog.wikimedia.de/2014/09/02/why-wikidata-is-so-important-to-histropedia Why Wikidata is so important to Histropedia]
 * [//blog.wikimedia.de/2014/09/08/outreach-program-for-women-at-wikidata Wikidata Outreach: What happened?]
 * Other Noteworthy Stuff
 * The new main page can now be translated.
 * Did you know?
 * Newest properties: reporting mark, maximum glide ratio, FIFA player code, WALS family code, WALS genus code, WALS lect code, category for people died here, category for people born here, PRDL Author ID
 * Development
 * Performance improvements for "in other projects sidebar" beta feature and bug fixes in the feature on wikis with sidebar cache enabled (e.g. zhwiki, commons)
 * Worked on performance improvements to badges feature
 * Fixing bug with xml format in the API, and added tests for it so hopefully this does not break again!
 * Worked more on enabling statements on properties
 * Further work on new user interface design groundwork - mostly refactoring and enabling editing of multiple sitelinks and label/alias/description at once
 * First pokes at usage tracking
 * Drafted an RfC to improve recent changes so we can show Wikidata changes also when enhanced recent changes is enabled
 * Monthly Tasks
 * Hack on one of these.
 * Help fix these items which have been flagged using Wikidata - The Game.
 * Help develop the next summary here!
 * Contribute to a Showcase item

Tech News: 2014-38
 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 software changes
 * You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the  CSS class.
 * There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names.
 * New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited.

Problems
 * There was a problem with loading images on September 10.

VisualEditor news
 * If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number.
 * The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet.
 * You can now use help buttons in the "" menu to see what the options are for.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf21 ) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (calendar).
 * These changes are coming with the new version:
 * If you use Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser. [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Grade_C]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-39
 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 software changes
 * You can test a new Beta Feature called HHVM. It should make editing faster. Please report bugs if you see them.

Problems
 * There was a problem on the English Wikipedia on September 19. It was due to edits on a template used on many pages.
 * Sites were down for users in the Pacific area around 7:00 UTC on September 20. It was due to a problem in the San Francisco data center.
 * There were two bad bugs messing up articles in some browsers in VisualEditor. We fixed the bugs and updated the sites.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf22 ) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 23, and on all Wikipedias on September 25 (calendar).
 * If you have more than 2000 notifications, the oldest ones will be removed.
 * In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender.
 * The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing.
 * The "Cancel" button of the VisualEditor save window is now called "Resume editing". This shows that you can still edit and you won't lose your changes.
 * There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for  and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough.
 * In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening.

Future site changes
 * You can see a plan for the move to Phabricator. It's the new tool to track bugs. A guided tour will be done via video on September 24.  

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-40
 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 software changes
 * On Commons, you can now see what files are most used across all wikis. You can also see the same list for deleted or uncreated files.
 * There are now many more translations for language names.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf1 ) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 30, and on all Wikipedias on October 2 (calendar).
 * Errors from Scribunto (Lua) are now shown on the page. Before, you had to click on "Script error" to see them.
 * You can add an "autovalue" for a field in TemplateData. When users add the template to a page, the value will be added automatically. An example is when a clean-up template shows the date it was added.
 * If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it.
 * The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats.

Future changes
 * You can watch a video showing Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. You can also read more about the move from Bugzilla.
 * JavaScript authors: Many old methods will be removed soon. Please check your scripts and gadgets and replace the old methods by the new ones if needed.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #126
<div style="margin-top:10px; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. <div style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Read the full report &middot; Unsubscribe &middot; Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 12:13, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Discussions
 * A new blocking policy has been accepted.
 * Proposal for an individual engagement grant to use Wikidata items for citations needs your input
 * RfC: redirect vs. deletion
 * Events/Blogs/Press
 * past: Open Government WikiHack organized by Wikimedia DC in Washington, DC
 * upcoming: Wikidata training organized by Wikimedia UK with Magnus in London
 * Other Noteworthy Stuff
 * With the deployment next Tuesday you will be able to edit all sitelinks at once as well as all fields of the "in other languages" box. This is an intermediate step towards the new user interface and will evolve further over the next weeks. You can see what is coming on Tuesday now already on test.wikidata.org.
 * WikiProject Names aims to improve name related data on Wikidata. Initial focus is on first names (given names). Half of items for first names still need cleaning up, but 15% of items for persons already have a given name defined.
 * Did you know?
 * Newest properties: Stack Exchange tag, vici.org ID, sourcing circumstances, has contributing factor, has immediate cause, birth name (Monolingual text), title, Nupill Literatura Digital - Document, Nupill Literatura Digital - Author, Commons Creator template, monogram, cause of, Cycling Quotient ID, male population, female population, number of households, contributing factor of, immediate cause of, used by, end cause, family name identical to this first name, country for sport, parents of hybrids, Glad identifier, kulturnoe-nasledie.ru identifier
 * Showcase items: Hessian Broadcasting Corporation, Fishing Creek
 * Development
 * Jan Zerebecki has joined the Wikidata dev team.
 * Worked on supporting statements on properties in WikibaseDataModelSerialization (66425)
 * Fixed broken xml api output (70531), as well as some inconsistencies in the xml format and added tests that should help avoid future breakage in the xml format
 * Finished performance improvements for badges
 * Worked on entity usage tracking
 * Pietro from the EAGLE project came to visit us, one of the first 3rd party users of Wikibase. See http://www.eagle-network.eu
 * Added a hook point to allow 3rd party users (like the EAGLE project) of Wikibase to control what goes into the search index
 * Started work on a widget that lets you edit badges right in the item instead of going to the special page
 * Use checkboxes instead of a multiselect to edit badges on d:Special:SetSiteLink
 * Work on hhvm-related issues in Wikibase and temporarily disabled the beta feature on Wikidata until fixes are deployed for the issues.
 * Deployed new code on test.wikidata! (to be deployed on wikidata on Tuesday), see mw:Wikidata_deployment
 * Work on fixing empty maps in the JSON serialization, differentiate them from empty lists (fixed prerequisite 70606)
 * Jeroen made a little video demonstrating how you can get a clone of Wikibase DataModel, set it up, and run it's tests: https://asciinema.org/a/12530
 * Monthly Tasks
 * Hack on one of these.
 * Help fix these items which have been flagged using Wikidata - The Game.
 * Help develop the next summary here!
 * Contribute to a Showcase item

Wikidata weekly summary #127
<div style="margin-top:10px; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. <div style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Read the full report &middot; Unsubscribe &middot; John F. Lewis 21:48, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Discussions
 * [[:d:Wikidata:Requests for comment/User conduct policies|Closed RfC: User conduct policies]
 * Other Noteworthy Stuff
 * Wikidata Toolkit 0.3.0 released - Wikidata Toolkit
 * ProteinBoxBot is making Wikidata the canonical resource for referencing and translating identifiers for genes and proteins from different species
 * Did you know?
 * Newest properties: depends on, motto, series ordinal, Federal Register Document Number, monogram, cause of, Cycling Quotient ID
 * Development
 * Investigated and fixed issues with time values
 * Investigated issues with coordinate value precision
 * Fixed a number of issues related to HHVM
 * Further work on usage tracking
 * Created smoke tests for items and properties
 * Created a widget to edit badges directly on the item without going through the special page
 * Prepared for a week of work with the WMF multimedia team and volunteers next week to get more planning done for structured data support for Commons
 * Monthly Tasks
 * Hack on one of these.
 * Help fix these items which have been flagged using Wikidata - The Game.
 * Help develop the next summary here!
 * Contribute to a Showcase item

Tech News: 2014-41
<section begin="technews-2014-W41"/> 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 use the  and   interwikis to link to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org.
 * Some wikis have a template to track bugs in Bugzilla. You should update it to work with Phabricator. You can look at the one on mediawiki.org to see how.
 * You can look at Special:MediaStatistics to see what kind of files are on your wiki.
 * A new tool can now create thumbnails of large TIFF images. This concerns files larger than 50 megapixels. These thumbnails are also sharpened. You can comment on Commons.
 * The Media Viewer tool has a clearer link to the file page. It also has buttons to download, share and embed the file. You can enlarge images by clicking on them. [//www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=1203037#2014-09-monthly]

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf2 ) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 7 October, and on all Wikipedias from 9 October (calendar).
 * If you make a code mistake when editing a Lua script, you won't be able to save your edit.
 * We fixed some more Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 10, you will be able to use VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
 * On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis. [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:TemplateData]
 * You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8.
 * 1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster.

Future changes
 * You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work.
 * More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image. [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements] [//www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=1203037#2014-09-monthly]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W41"/> 06:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #128
<div style="margin-top:10px; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. <div style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Read the full report &middot; Unsubscribe &middot; John F. Lewis 22:32, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Discussions
 * Open RfA: Nikosguard
 * Events/Blogs/Press
 * Upcoming IRC office hour about structured data on Commons
 * Other Noteworthy Stuff
 * All human genes are now wikidata items, for example: Here is one (of approximately 40,000) called "spinocerebellar ataxia 37" - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18081265. Blog post about this to appear here: http://blog.wikimedia.de/tag/wikidata/
 * Want to be kept up-to-date on structured data on Commons? There is now a new newsletter you can subscribe to.
 * Interested in some statistics about the data on Wikidata? Check Wikidata Stats every now and then. (Thanks Magnus for moving it to the new dump format.)
 * Did you know?
 * Newest properties: UBERON ID, Yandex.Music ID, has quality, Exceptionnal heritage of Wallonia ID, Orphanet ID, demonym (monoligual text), maximum Strahler number
 * Development
 * Spent the week with the WMF multimedia team and volunteers to get more clarity about structured data on Commons. We'll be asking for feedback on a lot of stuff over the next weeks. The main info hub is taking shape at Commons:Structured data.
 * More fixes for the switch to HHVM
 * Looked into possible performance improvements. Some of them will be taken into the next sprint.
 * Battled a handful of nasty issues on the live-site
 * Wikibase DataModel 1.1 was released
 * Monthly Tasks
 * Hack on one of these.
 * Help fix these items which have been flagged using Wikidata - The Game.
 * Help develop the next summary here!
 * Contribute to a Showcase item