Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2013/July

Tech news: 2013-28
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * VisualEditor news:
 * VisualEditor deployment [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVisualEditor%2FFeedback&diff=563042612&oldid=563038914 has been delayed] by a week. It is now planned to enable the editor for logged–in editors on chosen Wikipedias on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 29.
 * A bug that made it impossible to save VisualEditor edits that triggered a CAPTCHA has been fixed.
 * Several bugs that occurred on right–to–left wikis have been fixed last week (bug #49416, bug #49613, bug #50543).
 * Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploader group. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287).
 * Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners.

Future software changes


 * MediaWiki will allow choosing a specific page of a PDF document or a thumbnail of a video file to show up inside the  tag (bug #8480).
 * It will now be possible to create empty  messages, for instance in order to disable them (bug #50124).
 * The Nearby feature will soon be enabled on Wikivoyage wikis again.
 * The Notifications extension messages will now include a direct link to diffs on wiki as well as in notification e-mails (bug #48183).
 * Table of contents will now use the HTML  element instead of , fixing a nine–year–old bug #658.
 * First mock–ups of a mobile Wikidata application have been published by Pragun Bhutani as part of his Google Summer of Code project.
 * A discussion on minimum documentation practices in MediaWiki code has been started and awaits comments from the community.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by User:PiRSquared17 • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 18:39, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment from deliverer: I delivered it to misc instead of tech because it was listed in the "Subscribe" link above. I will not do personal deliveries here, probably - just to the water cooler. BTW, I fixed several errors in the code per m:Talk:Tech/News. PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-29
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf10) was added to test wikis on July 11. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 15, and on all Wikipedias on July 18.
 * The Disambiguator extension was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis on July 9 (bug #50174). To use it, add the  code to disambiguation templates ([//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=120414784&oldid=76564202 see example]).
 * The Universal Language Selector was added to all remaining wikis on July 9, finishing the process of replacing the Narayam and WebFonts extensions.
 * The CommonsDelinker bot is now on-line and operating again, after a password problem was fixed (bug #51016).
 * VisualEditor news:
 * According to the schedule, VisualEditor will be available to all users on the English Wikipedia on July 15.
 * Users should add TemplateData to templates to prepare for VisualEditor. A tutorial is available.
 * Parameters marked as "required" in TemplateData are now auto-added when you add a template (bug #50747).
 * Warnings are now displayed in VisualEditor when users edit pages that are protected or have edit notices (bug #50415).
 * Many other bugs have been fixed in VisualEditor during the past two weeks.
 * The Wikimedia technical report for June has been published, with a summary that can be translated.

Future software changes
 * A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos.
 * The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed.
 * Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them.
 * Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later.
 * Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22.
 * A new [//tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Featured_pictures/Non-photographic_media image gallery design] has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
 * An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by User:PiRSquared17 • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 17:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment from deliverer: Seems fine this week. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

SISTER templates on English Wikipedia
w:en:Template:Wikinews category and w:en:Template:Wikinews portal have been nominated for deletion over at Wikipedia. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 03:21, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-30
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 18. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 25.
 * A new version of the Flow Prototype can be tested on Wikimedia Labs.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * The schedule to add VisualEditor to non-English Wikipedias has been changed: the new editor will be available for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias on July 24, and for all users on those wikis on July 29.
 * A warning is now displayed if an edit made with VisualEditor matches an edit filter (bug #50472).
 * SpamBlacklist messages are also supported (bug #50826).
 * Users can now edit  blocks (bug #47678).
 * When a user types text at the end of a link, the link now expands to that text.
 * Freely-licensed fonts for the Cree, Inuktitut and Urdu languages were added to Universal Language Selector, fixing bug #42421 and bug #46693.
 * A Wikidata search plugin for the Firefox web browser was released by Jeroen De Dauw and can be downloaded from the Mozilla add-ons website.

Future software changes


 * The change of the Wikimedia image scaling system from ImageMagick to VipsScaler (announced in the previous issue) has been postponed until bug #51370 is fixed.
 * Administrators will no longer see an unblock link for autoblocked IP addresses on the contributions page (bug #46457).
 * A request for comments on site-wide CSS was started on MediaWiki.org.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by User:PiRSquared17 • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 20:54, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Signpost op-ed
On the advice of Grydilla, I'm posting this here. I'm the editor-in-chief of the "Signpost", and after the recent scuffle on the English Wikipedia about the link to Wikinews in the Main page's "In the news" section, User:Adam Cuerden contacted me regarding a potential op-ed about the purpose and utility of Wikinews within the Wikimedia movement.

I am hoping to turn this into a "Room for debate"-style article, with both sides represented on one page. Would any of you be willing to make the case for Wikinews? I would need the article fairly quickly, by 20:00UTC today; sorry for the late notice, but several of your colleagues have declined my invitations.

Regards, Ed [talk] [w:majestic titan] 06:07, 10 July 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a non sequitur. Wikipedia makes a decision about the design of their main page, and you cite this as a reason for a discussion about a radical agenda, concerning a different project, that the wikimedian community already considered and rejected.  Perhaps you're trying to be neutral, but if so, you need to try harder.  --Pi zero (talk) 12:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We're an English Wikipedia journal; I think it's only natural that many of the topics we cover are dictated by recent related discussions. You and I may have different viewpoints on the matter, though. Ed [talk] [w:majestic titan] 16:23, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
 * You're only making a stronger case against yourself. You're a Wikipedia journal, and you want to give major air time to a wingnut view about a non-Wikipedian project.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:50, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
 * But then, this response is to be expected - David Gerard (talk) 09:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Relation of statistics to how a project works or reacts is a mystery to me. Gryllida 13:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks like the deadline has already passed but nobody looked interested. Sorry. Possibly some of us look forward to more motivating tasks from you in the future. Gryllida 08:46, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow thanks for trying to get a hold of specific users. Quite frankly, I see this as nothing more than an attack on the project. The powers that be in the Wikiworld have done and continue to do whatever it takes to see this project burnt straight to the ground. I see you less than a 2 day deadline as an example of that. But I guess that is to be expected. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:35, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * "Op-ed" or not...make sure you write facts. If you want to go on bad mouthing Wikinews, be prepared to do it with facts. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We specifically invited four Wikinews editors. All declined. As for the op-ed, I believe that the facts given are accurate. Is there a point you wish to dispute? Ed [talk] [w:majestic titan] 04:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * &lt;chiming in&gt; On first reading of the piece, I didn't actually notice anything that wasn't a misrepresentation of reality. I've learned the hard way, over the years on a project that receives chronic hate-based abuse from a subcommunity of wikimedians, that there's a threshold of misrepresentation in a post above which it becomes a spectacular waste of time to try to respond on a point-by-point basis.  My rule of thumb is, a post is over the threshold once the density of misrepresentations reaches about one per sentence sustained over a significant number of sentences, or if simply enumerating the misrepresentations would take significantly more space than the misrepresenting post did.  That piece is over the threshold.  --Pi zero (talk) 12:04, 26 July 2013 (UTC)