Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2017/October

Tech News: 2017-40
 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
 * You can now use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it.

Changes later this week
 * If you have turned on "" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature.
 * Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature.
 * The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

News on Wikipedia
You might be interest in this discussion on how news and current events are handled on Wikipedia. Waggers (talk) 14:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for notifying us (truly). I admit, I gave up years ago, in disillusionment, on involving myself in any Wikipedians discussion of Wikinews; such discussions are predictably dominated by false assumptions about Wikinews, and typically about news generally, that there is no point in trying to correct because those making the assumptions don't want to hear that being Wikipedians doesn't make them authorities on other wikimedian sister projects.  But it is as well for us to be aware of what they're up to over there.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:07, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Collaborative news online
Some of you may be interested in this project: https://medium.com/@dangillmor/a-new-chapter-news-co-lab-a95e0af0a27f —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-41
 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
 * The number of active users listed by  and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too.
 * Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. :File:X.jpg now has to be File:X.jpg . There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter.

Problems
 * You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models.

Changes later this week
 * The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week.
 * If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  14:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-42
 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
 * When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's  configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it.
 * The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.

Problems
 * There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis.
 * Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this.
 * Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-43
 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 Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can use  when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation.
 * When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There is a Structured Commons community focus group for Commons and Wikidata contributors who want to give input on structured data on Wikimedia Commons. You can sign up to join it.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

WikiTribune Beta launched
You can request an account if you're so inclined. Stories are now live at https://beta.wikitribune.com/. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:18, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I certainly wouldn't touch it with a stick. --Pi zero (talk) 23:21, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Not for everyone, of course. But it's of interest for this community. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:50, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * When the fork of Wikinews happened, I gave those involved some benefit-of-doubt for good intentions, though I felt it was making some fundamental mistakes, failing to learn things that Wikinews already knew about what works and what doesn't. While I see Wikitribune making a different set of mistakes that fail to learn things Wikinews already knows, and I'm quite willing to extend a benefit-of-doubt regarding intentions to any volunteers who involve themselves, I see no reason to extend such a benefit to its founder.  I see a member of the WMF board of trustees making a badly-planned attempt to turn a profit by competing with a WMF sister project.  --Pi zero (talk) 00:04, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Article request format
Someone came to my talk page the other day and asked me what the correct way to request an article is. I suggested 1) just start the article and post a note asking the community to finish it--this is how I interpreted the "write a brief" instructions on the Newsroom page; 2) you're allowed to post requests on specific Wikinewsies' talk pages and 3) there is a "requested articles" page but I don't know how much foot traffic it gets. During the course of this conversation, Acagastya pointed out that we don't write briefs any more.

In a separate incident, just the opposite happened: There was a case in which another Wikinewsie hit "create" but added no content, and it looked to me like he was requesting an article, but he was really planning to come back later and write it himself. He was not happy when he came back twelve hours later to find I'd already done it.


 * 1) Is it time to establish an official system for requesting articles? (Has this been attempted in the past with poor results?)
 * 2) Is it time to establish an official system for calling dibs on an article topic?
 * 3) If the "write a brief" instructions are out of date, they should be removed.

Thoughts? Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:17, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Um, there are two different things; briefs and shorts. While do don't write them anymore, I remember one newbie got a shorts published earlier this year. acagastya PING ME! 16:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Btw, we actually do have a page for requesting articles. I don't recall that in all the time I've been here it has ever proven itself useful; it just hasn't worked.  One might suspect Wikinews writers are more likely to put in the effort to write something they care about themselves than something someone [else] cares about.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:05, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * But if the someone else provides a link to a good source or two... I've done a few.  As for interest, the guy who asked about requesting articles did mention that, asked if the topic was boring everyone or something.  Turned out it wasn't as boring as it looked; he'd just kind of buried the lead.  Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:06, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

It can be requested off-wiki, to. That article about Rooney's retirement, was requested on telegram, and Zerabat wrote it in Spanish and later translated it. acagastya PING ME! 09:59, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-44
 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 block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)