Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2015/September

Introducing the Wikimedia public policy site
Hi all,

We are excited to introduce a new Wikimedia Public Policy site. The site includes resources and position statements on access, copyright, censorship, intermediary liability, and privacy. The site explains how good public policy supports the Wikimedia projects, editors, and mission.

Visit the public policy portal: https://policy.wikimedia.org/

Please help translate the statements on Meta Wiki. You can read more on the Wikimedia blog.

Thanks,

Yana and Stephen (Talk) 18:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

(Sent with the Global message delivery system)

Wikinews mailing list
Hello,

This is your friendly notice that I and Koavf have taken over the wikinews mailing list. Old list admin is still listed as moderator. Takeover procedures are logged at T110956. If anyone has a question, don't hestitate to contact me directly on my talk page or wikinews-l-owner@undefinedlists.wikimedia.org. Thank you!

&mdash; revi  ☏  09:02, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Seconded Let me know if you need anything and if I've been slacking, just message me. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:33, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-37
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users.
 * A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support.
 * You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version.

Problems
 * There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed.
 * The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
 * The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters.
 * The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours.
 * Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-38
 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 changes
 * You can now use the Wikidata query service.
 * Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved.
 * Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems.

Problems Changes this week
 * There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed.
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later.
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations.
 * The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Chile
Thought somebody would write something about last Wednesday's earthquake. --Diego Grez (talk) 03:55, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Wikinews is not as active as it could be. Do you think that you have anything to add on this story? Maybe on clean-up efforts? Are you in Chile? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:00, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yup, I am in Chile. I'd have written about it on Wednesday but I have been way too busy (national holidays, heh). I am a little concerned about Wikinews' sort of "permanent staleness". Speaking with Pi zero, a couple of weeks ago, I suggested we could make a way to make reviewing articles more "user-friendly" and less time-demanding (which is why, most people do not review WN articles). He told me he was working on something. I don't think Wikinews is going to become mainstream, but certainly, in some way, we could make it better. --Diego Grez (talk) 04:10, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * One thing that you can do is try to do some original reportage which is not necessarily as timely. Like an original interview which talks about the topic of disaster relief and which can be relevant for longer. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:12, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Somebody did try to write something, just after the tsunami warning was issued. It was reviewed very quickly, as it happens, but had a number of problems (not only because it was their first submission, but also because the story changed so rapidly that, as best one could tell,  by the time they'd finished writing it the source articles had already changed a lot).  I wrote a fairly detailed review, plus a more personal remark on their user talk, being honest about the challenges involved with writing synthesis about a fast-moving high-profile story; they decided they'd chosen too big a story for their first article, adding they'd like to become a regular en.wn contributor.


 * Regarding the problem of review: I see the difficulty of reviewing and the difficulty of writing both as challenges, and I have a long-term "master plan" to address both.  I've been working toward it for several years now, and get closer to step-one completion day by day.  I describe the plan broadly at User:Pi zero/essays/vision/sisters; there's supposed to be a second essay about my vision particularly for Wikinews, but I haven't had time to write that yet &mdash; since my time that isn't taken up reviewing is taken up actually building the tools.  --Pi zero (talk) 11:22, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-39
 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 changes
 * There is now an experimental Wikimedia maps service. You can give feedback here.
 * Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong.
 * More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article.
 * The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users.

Problems
 * Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time.
 * Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week.
 * UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
 * The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms.
 * You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it.
 * Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on September 23 at 17:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can register to the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 in San Francisco 4–6 January 2016. Gadget, template, bot, and tool developers are welcome as well. Call for participation and travel sponsorship requests are open until 2 October.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-40
 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 changes
 * In UploadWizard, the dialog to see an image preview has been removed. You already see the images in the thumbnails when you upload them.
 * UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look.
 * You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one.
 * When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well.
 * You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50.
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded.
 * MediaWiki developers spent a day looking at proposed code changes in Gerrit. The goal was to clean up the backlog and give feedback to volunteer developers.

Problems
 * Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 30. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 1 (calendar).
 * There will be a new beta feature that allows editors to use Flow on their user talkpage if they want to. Each wiki can decide if they want to enable it.
 * The Content Translation tool can give translation suggestions. This feature will now be available in more languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, and Catalan.

Meetings
 * You can join the strategy process of the Reading department of Wikimedia Engineering.
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation developers want the community to decide who can use OAuth in the future. You can discuss it on Meta.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)