Newsletter talk:Tech Showcase

Here you can ask any questions about Tech Showcase. You can also propose new links to be announced.

While interwiki links are not supported by the Newsletter extension (phab:T174664), we will create new topics to link to pages out of MediaWiki.org.

Invitation to test the new Two Column Edit Conflict view

m:WMDE Technical Wishes/Edit Conflicts/Feedback Round Test Page Qgil-WMF (talk) 16:21, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Alpha of Wikistats 2.0 in the next couple weeks

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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We are working on our editing APIs and we will think we will have an alpha in the next couple of months. See community consultation (completed): Wikistats 2.0 Design Project/RequestforFeedback and in-progress work: https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/ar.wikipedia.org Nurieta (talk) 16:28, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Very cool! You say that the alpha release is in a couple of weeks or months? Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:08, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nurieta Ping? Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:14, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Announced, thank you! Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:00, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

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New article creation wizard in English Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard

(This is a soft redirect due to lack of support of interwiki links -- see phab:T174664.) Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Experimental Tor onion routing service for all Wikimedia projects

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-November/089157.html Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

The world’s most popular audio file format arrives at Wikimedia

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/04/wikimedia-mp3-support/ Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

URLs with section IDs are now readable in non-Latin scripts as well

phab:T176828 Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:38, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Alpha Launch of Wikistats 2

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2017-December/006083.html Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:59, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki code search

Legoktm's new tool for searching cross Gerrit code repositories might be an interesting bit of tech to showcase.

https://codesearch.wmflabs.org/search/

Announcement: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2017-December/089305.html CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

[Suggestion] Bare-Bones Basic of Full-Text Search

Trey Jones (@TJones (WMF), one of the WMF search engineers, put together a 45 minute presentation covering the very basics on how search works. There's more information in the description on Commons.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BareBonesSearch.webm CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Mmm... isn't this too hardcore for Tech Showcase. I confess that I haven't gone through the 45 minute session  :) but clicking here and there I don't see any specific plans being showcased? Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:18, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata Vandalism Dashboard (for Wikipedians)

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-January/089443.html Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

A new landing page for the Wikimedia Research team

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2018-February/006162.html Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

New MediaWiki podcast: "Between the Brackets"

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2018-February/047178.html Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:38, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Workshop: Data visualization literacy

http://dataviz-literacy.wmflabs.org/ Qgil-WMF (talk) 15:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Machine_Translation/Matxin

(sorry, no context for now) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

(didn't mean that I would add context. You can do your research if interested :) ) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Announced. Sorry for this long delay! Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:58, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Feedback round: New paragraph-based prototype to solve edit conflicts

m:WMDE Technical Wishes/Edit Conflicts/Feedback Round Paragraph-Based Prototype Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:20, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

[suggestion] Wikistats 2.0 new thing

• new Wikistats UI functionality, pageviews per project per country. Example: Spanish Wikipedia pageviews around the world: https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/es.wikipedia.org/reading/pageviews-by-country Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

(@Qgil-WMF, just curious, is this how you envisioned suggestions working? I don't think any of these were accepted but I also didn't hear anything about whether they were good or not, so I thought I'd ask :) ) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, it was just me missing the notifications. :shameonme: Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:00, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

5 Year NASA Wikiversary?

5 Year NASA Wikiversary. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Announced. Thank you! Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:56, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Feedback wanted on proposed changes to the rollback action

If you have rollback rights, this unpleasant situation might sound familiar: You want to thank someone for their edit, but you accidentally click the rollback link instead.

A top wish from the German Technical Wishlist asked for a technical solution that prevents this from happening.

WMDE’s Technical Wishes team now suggests a change to the rollback action. All users with rollback rights are invited to participate in this feedback round and comment if the suggested solution works for them. The feedback round ends on May 4th.

Thanks! Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Call for feedback: Referencing multiple sections of the same book more easily

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Editors from all wikis are invited to give feedback here on Meta. Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:47, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE), this and the previous one look like suggestions for the newsletter, but never went out AFAICS? cc @Qgil-WMF. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

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New interface for edit conflicts

Announced

The beta feature Two column edit conflict from WMDE’s Technical Wishes team was released in early 2017 to make the handling of edit conflicts more intuitive. Now, the team will replace their beta feature with a new version, which allows to merge conflicting revisions line by line. If you want to give it a try, activate the feature in your preferences. The feature will automatically be replaced for people who use the current beta feature. As always, feedback is very welcome!

Thanks! Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 10:41, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

There was a major bug in the new version of the beta-test, wich caused the edit conflict resolution page to be shown even when there was no edit conflict. The beta-feature has been disabled temporary and the bug was fixed. It's planed to reenable the beta-feature as soon that we are 100% sure the bug is fixed for good. Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 13:22, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Advanced Search becomes default feature

Announced

Have you ever tried to find a specific wiki page but you didn't know how because you’re not a search expert? The Advanced Search feature allows you to perform specialized searches, even if you don’t know expressions like hastemplate, intitle, subpageof and more.

After a beta phase with more than 40.000 users across all wikis the new interface is now a default feature on deWP, faWP, arWP and huWP. The deployment to all other wikis is planned for Nov 28.

The Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. Feedback is welcome on this central talk page. Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:28, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Qgil-WMF It would be great if this could be posted around Nov 26 or 27. After Nov 28 is also fine, but the second paragraph then needs a little tweaking to:

After a beta phase with more than 40.000 users across all wikis the new interface is now a default feature on all wikis.

Thanks a lot! Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:33, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF) or @Trizek (WMF), see above. TY! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:13, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF), I've set a reminder last week, and it has pinged me just now. The announce is now done. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:24, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Some changes to help you find your way back up from footnotes

Announced

When you've jumped to a footnote that's referenced several times in an article, finding your way up to your previous reading position can be tricky. This software change hopes to make it easier for you to jump back to the right spot in the article body from a multi-referenced footnote:

You can now

1) click on the arrow at the beginning of the footnote (in some wikis, like enwiki, it's a caret ^), and it will take you back to your previous reading position.

2) Or you can click on the superscript jump mark in the footnote (e.g. ^{a b c}). The one which takes you back up to where you came from will be highlighted bold.

• Please note: 2) doesn’t work for wikis where these jump marks are bold by default, e.g. enwiki. If those wikis want to have highlighted superscript jump marks, they would need to change their default style for them to regular.

Have a look at the project page for more information. As always, feedback is very welcome on the project talk page. Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF)@Qgil-WMF@Trizek (WMF) Here's another topic suggestion. :) An ideal date for posting would be Nov 30 or the week after. Thanks a lot! Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I've set a reminder. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Move files to Commons with their history intact – with the beta feature FileExporter

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Files on Wikimedia Commons can be used on all wikis, and files from local wikis should be transferred there if their license allows it. However, in the past, you couldn’t move a file to Commons with all of its file and page history intact.

This is what the FileExporter allows you to do. This feature, which was developed in WMDE's Technical Wishes project, has already been a beta feature on first wikis since June 2018. Since then, bugs were fixed and features added. Now it’s becoming a beta feature on all wikis. The planned deployment date is January 16. If you wish to learn more about the project, have a look at the page of the wish.

We’re inviting you to give it a try and let us know what you think. Before you test, please read about how to get started. Your feedback is very appreciated on the central talk page. A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far!

Best,

Johanna from the Technical Wishes team Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:26, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

pinging @Trizek (WMF) and @Qgil-WMF: A happy new year to both of you!

It would be great if you could announce the upcoming release of our beta feature, ideally on January 14 or 15.

Thanks a lot!

Johanna Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:30, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure! I've scheduled it in my calendar for January 14 mid-day CET. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:35, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

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Test a new algorithm recommending section titles for new articles!

If you speak Arabic, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish: this week, please help the Research team test a new algorithm that recommends section titles for new articles! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Expanding_Wikipedia_articles_across_languages/Inter_language_approach/Feedback/Message Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF), @Trizek (WMF), can anyone please send this out ASAP? Thank you! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Done Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 08:14, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Try Reference Previews, a new beta feature!

<figure-inline></figure-inline>

A new beta feature called Reference Previews is now available on all Wikipedias and on three Wikivoyage projects.

As the name already suggests, 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. If specified, the preview also shows the type of a reference: whether it’s a web, journal, book or news reference. This can help readers evaluate the trustworthiness of a citation more quickly.

Reference Previews originated from a wish from the German-speaking wiki community to have the preview functionality that already exists in many wikis integrated into MediaWiki.

We’re inviting everyone to give the feature a try: Please activate the beta feature and let us know what you think on the central feedback page! If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page. Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:06, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Announced. Johan (WMF) (talk) 10:55, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

The "active the beta feature" link doesn't work because it goes to Meta where the feature isn't active, it was pointed out to me. You can go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures on you preferred language version of Wikipedia to activate it. Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Try refined referencing on beta cluster!

A new feature is now available on the beta cluster: It allows you to cite different parts of the same source without repeating the entire source every time. This feature also gives readers a way to identify which references originate from the same source.

For wikitext users, it is planned to make the feature available on first Wikipedias (as one of the many options to cite) beginning of 2020. More wikis will follow soon. At a later stage, it’s planned to also add implementation for Visual Editor.

This wish originated in the Technical Wishes project on German Wikipedia.

We’re inviting everyone to give the feature a try: Check it out on the beta cluster and let us know what you think on the central feedback page! If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.

-- For the TechWish Team: Max Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 14:46, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Link to example article on beta cluster: https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Draft:Cut_the_Crap#cite_ref-3 Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 14:47, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Announced. Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Also adding an item about this to Tech News. Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF) Cool, thanks. :) Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 07:08, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@Max Klemm (WMDE) You've got a question here:

https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/tech-news-2019-week-50/2606 Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF) Thanks. :D I will keep an eye on that page now. ;) Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 07:27, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: additional edit conflict interface for talk pages

To be able to solve edit conflicts on talk pages more effectively, an additional interface for this situation was designed by the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany.

This view is shown to you when you write on a talk page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you. With this additional editing conflict interface, you can adjust the order of the comments and edit yours. It is planned to be made available within the next two to three months. On the project page the interface is described in more detail.

The Technical Wishes team is looking forward to receiving feedback and questions about this on this discussion page, ideally by March 10, 2020. --For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 14:11, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Announced. Johan (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Spreading the word about a project proposal

I made a proposal for a new Wikiproject:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda

I tried to mark up the two main parts for translation and moved them to the beginning. I have no idea if I used the translation extension right, I haven't used it for half a decade.

Let me know what else you need. I would really appreciate if you could help me to translate the text, and reach the communities to spread the word about the proposal and to gather feedback.

I am sorry if I made the request wrongly - please point me to how to do it right, and I will gladly try to comply.

Thank you! Denny (talk) 03:22, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for writing.

Commenting on the last point only: no need to apologize.!

Just take a look at the opening posts on Newsletter_talk:Tech_Showcase (i.e., WMDE's ones) to get a sense of what your announcement should look like - that is what gets sent to people. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:12, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia language editions have large gaps in knowledge. We want to close these gaps by allowing to create and maintain content in one place and allow the Wikipedias to use this content if they choose so. This will allow more people to create, maintain, and read more knowledge in more languages.

In order to do this, we need to represent the content in a way that can be translated to many different natural languages. We do this by introducing a new Wikimedia project, Wikilambda, that allows to create, maintain, catalogue and evaluate functions as a new form of knowledge the communities work on. This will allow completely new use cases, and allow more people to share in more forms of knowledge.

The project proposal page leads to much more detail on the project. We are looking for feedback, supporting voices, questions, statements of opposition on the proposal talk page, and people to help with translating and disseminating the proposal page. Denny (talk) 02:16, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Denny Could you re-post the text above as a separate topic? That will make more sense to readers than if I link to this conversation, and I think it's better that people can see this is coming from you than if I post it in my name. Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:14, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF)Thanks, I did so. Denny (talk) 15:59, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Spreading the word: a new Wikimedia project proposal

Many Wikipedia language editions have large gaps in knowledge. We want to close these gaps by allowing to create and maintain content in one place and allow the Wikipedias to use this content if they choose so. This will allow more people to create, maintain, and read more knowledge in more languages.

In order to do this, we need to represent the content in a way that can be translated to many different natural languages. We do this by introducing a new Wikimedia project, Wikilambda, that allows to create, maintain, catalogue and evaluate functions as a new form of knowledge the communities work on. This will allow completely new use cases, and allow more people to share in more forms of knowledge.

The project proposal page leads to much more detail on the project. We are looking for feedback, supporting voices, questions, statements of opposition on the proposal talk page, and people to help with translating and disseminating the proposal page. Denny (talk) 15:58, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Announced. Johan (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: additional edit conflict interface for talk pages became default on Farsi, Arabic, and German Wikis

As posted on Tech Showcase earlier, the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany was designing an additional user interface to be able to solve edit conflicts on talk pages more effectively. Good news is that it was deployed as default on Farsi, Arabic, and German Wikis on June 24, 2020.

A short recap: This interface is shown to you when you write on a talk page and another person writes a post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional edit conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments by clicking on the button on the left side of the text fields, the indentation of the comments (by adding or removing colons) and you can edit your comment. If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.

If you do not want to use the new interface, you can disable it in the preferences. If you already disabled the paragraph-based edit conflict interface (former two-column edit conflict interface), the new feature will not be activated for you.

This interface was created as a result of the Technical Wishes survey in 2015, in which the German Wikipedia community wished for a simpler way to resolve edit conflicts. For regular edit conflicts on article pages, the Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface was created, which is available as a beta version since November 2018 and became a default feature in March 2020 on the dewiki, fawiki, and arwiki.

We are inviting everyone to have a look at the feature and let us know what you think on our central feedback page!
Feedback is especially helpful for us if you describe exactly what you like about the function or what bothers you. Screenshots can also be very helpful. A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far. -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 14:15, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Posted. Johan (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing a new sister project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia

Hello. Apologies for cross-posting, and that you are likely not reading this message in your native language: translations of the full announcement may be available at m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/June_2020_announcement, and will be posted to all the wikis in the next few days. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has approved a new sister project, temporarily titled "Abstract Wikipedia". Its goal is to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages.

You can learn more at m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/June_2020_announcement and also join the new dedicated mailing list. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Posted. Johan (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Milestones for the visual editor

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter 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.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Technical Wishes: FileExporter and FileImporter will become default features on all Wikis

The FileExporter and FileImporter will become default features on August 5, 2020 on all Wikis. They help you to move files from your local Wiki to Wikimedia Commons, while keeping all original file information (description, source, date, author, and revision history) intact. The project to improve moving files to Wikimedia Commons originates from WMDE’s 2013 Technical Wishes survey, where it was voted into the top wishes for technological improvements by the German-speaking Wikipedia Community.

How does it work?

1. Step: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link “Export to Wikimedia Commons” in the toolbar on the local file page.
2. Step: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can be moved to Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki’s configuration page which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.
3. Step: If the file is compatible with Commons, you will be taken to a preview page on Wikimedia Commons, where you can update or add information about the file, such as the description. You can also add the ‘Now Commons’ template to the file on the source wiki by clicking the corresponding check box on the preview page on Wikimedia Commons. Admins can delete the file from the local Wiki by clicking the checkbox ‘delete file on source wiki in my name’. 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. We are looking forward to answering your questions and getting your feedback on our central feedback page. --For the Technical Wishes Team Max Klemm (WMDE) (talk) 13:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)