Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2022/May

Tech News: 2022-18
 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
 * On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years.

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

Future changes
 * The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
 * Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode.
 * If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include,   and 3 others.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

19:33, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

New competition on English Wikipedia and related SiteNotice request
A popular article writing competition CEE Spring (about Central and Eastern Europe; now with special subcategory about Esperanto) is happening on the English Wikipedia until the 31st May 2022. I warmly invite you to participate, write some article and win a valuable prize! If you have question, I will happily answer it on the competition page talk.

Also, for more wide outreach, I have just asked for a CentralNotice, which should appear also in this project. If you have a comment on the request, you are welcome to write it on the request page. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 18:29, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election - Call for Election Volunteers
 The Movement Strategy and Governance team is looking for community members to serve as election volunteers in the upcoming Board of Trustees election.

The idea of the Election Volunteer Program came up during the 2021 Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. This program turned out to be successful. With the help of Election Volunteers we were able to increase outreach and participation in the election by 1,753 voters over 2017. Overall turnout was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more, and 214 wikis were represented in the election.

There were a total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 that produced voters in the 2021 election. Can you help increase the participation even more?

Election volunteers will help in the following areas:
 * Translate short messages and announce the ongoing election process in community channels
 * Optional: Monitor community channels for community comments and questions

Volunteers should:


 * Maintain the friendly space policy during conversations and events
 * Present the guidelines and voting information to the community in a neutral manner

Do you want to be an election volunteer and ensure your community is represented in the vote? Sign up here to receive updates. You can use the talk page for questions about translation. --SOyeyele (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-19
 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 see categories in the Wikipedia app for Android.

Problems
 * Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed.
 * Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * Incompatibility issues with Kartographer and the FlaggedRevs extension will be fixed: Deployment is planned for May 10 on all wikis. Kartographer will then be enabled on the five wikis which have not yet enabled the extension on May 24.
 * The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).

Future meetings
 * The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

15:22, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Vox pops at polling booths
So, I've just had an idea and I'd like to put it here even if it probably is a bit flawed. The is coming up, and I've been trying to think of possible beats and directions to do original reporting on the election for Wikinews. Early voting has just begun, so I'd like to ask -- would an article like this from The Guardian be acceptable to publish here? It's essentially a vox pop of some voters at two Sydney polling booths, otherwise consisting of some photos + commentary from the author. Presuming there was proper evidence (i:e, recordings, etc) would such a thing be acceptable to publish on Wikinews? I don't think there's any formal policy we have on this issue, so I'd like to know what Wikinewsies think on this. Would be an interesting idea, imo, but I can see why there might be issues. --LivelyRatification (talk) 20:36, 9 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I think Vox Pops should be fine. You'd have to get at least five people to talk for an article to be viable I think – obviously getting as many as possible to pass NPOV. I might try to get some where I am. We might be able to get a few articles out of them. --RockerballAustralia contribs 23:23, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that seems about right. Like that Guardian article does, if you're doing prepoll vox pops, you could cover multiple in one article, but you'd want at least five from each in my view, even if not all of them are included. A good rule of thumb might be an hour at one booth, to try and get a sense of it and get a diverse sample? LivelyRatification (talk) 23:56, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
 * An hour or so at the polling sounds about good. RockerballAustralia contribs 03:24, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I did not know what vox pops were until I saw this thread and googled the term. Polling booths is what got my attention -- there is an election coming up in Ontario as well. I am very interested in watching the coverage at Wikinews of the Australian election to see if something similar can be applied to upcoming Canadian and American elections. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:49, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * That would be interesting to see! There are some unique elements to Australian elections, but some coverage would certainly be similar to any Canada/US coverage -- reporting on candidate forums, interviewing candidates, etc. LivelyRatification (talk) 04:28, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Barring any offwiki disruptions or any consensus being reached that it wouldn't be appropriate, I will probably attempt to do this sometime on the coming weekend. LivelyRatification (talk) 23:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I’ll try up here as well. RockerballAustralia contribs 23:10, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements
Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 17 May 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 86217494304. Dial by your location.

Agenda


 * Update on the recent developments
 * Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, Italian, Polish; also, only at the first meeting: Farsi, Vietnamese; only at the second meeting: Portuguese, Spanish, Russian. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-20
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

18:58, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Report on Voter Feedback from Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines Ratification 

 *  m:Special:MyLanguage/Universal Code of Conduct/Enforcement guidelines/Voting/Report/Announcement • 

Hello all,

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) project team has completed the analysis of the feedback accompanying the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines.

Following the completion of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines Draft in 2022, the guidelines were voted on by the Wikimedian community. Voters cast votes from 137 communities, with the top 9 communities being: English, German, French, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian Wikipedias, and Meta-wiki.

Those voting had the opportunity to provide comments on the contents of the Draft document. 658 participants left comments. 77% of the comments are written in English. Voters wrote comments in 24 languages with the largest numbers in English (508), German (34), Japanese (28), French (25), and Russian (12).

A report will be sent to the Revision Drafting Committee who will refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote. A public version of the report is published on Meta-wiki here. The report is available in translated versions on Meta-wiki.

Again, we thank all who participated in the vote and discussions. We invite everyone to contribute during the next community discussions. More information about the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines can be found on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the Universal Code of Conduct project team --SOyeyele (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-21
 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
 * Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages.
 * The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months.

Problems
 * The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all.
 * Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation.

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

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

00:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-22
<section begin="technews-2022-W22"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the AbuseFilter extension, an   function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple   expressions joined by   into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage.
 * The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-sync.svg Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
 * The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the   parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit.
 * A new parser function will be introduced: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2022-W22"/>

20:28, 30 May 2022 (UTC)