Meta:Babel/Archives/2017-05

Toolbox not appearing

Apparently, I don't see the editing toolbox appearing. I wonder why. Also, typing the signature is becoming a pain. --George Ho (talk) 03:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I think it has been a temporary issue, now I can see and use the editing toolbox perfectly.--Syum90 (talk) 10:55, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Not working again. We also have the same problem on n:ca: since several days ago. Syum90 (talk) 11:23, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@Syum90: It's working again on Meta-wiki (and probably most Wikipedia sites). Not the same for Catalan Wikinews. n:ca:Viquinotícies:La cantina is full of automated announcements, so notifying Catalan users isn't easy. Also, at that site, the notification button and subpage are not loading well. Seems to me that Catalan Wikinews may have technical issues at the moment. --George Ho (talk) 12:13, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

All was working perfectly on the Catalan Wikinews until several days ago. Probably a change has been implemented in the MediaWiki software that has made many things stop working; "HotCat" and other gadgets are also not working since then. Syum90 (talk) 13:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Catalan Wikinews is one of my home wikis, along with Meta and Spanish Wikibooks. We are mainly three active local users there, and all of us know what happens. Syum90 (talk) 13:25, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Besides Wikimedia Forum, where else to report the technical problem with those sites? --George Ho (talk) 17:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

We can go to mw:Project:Support desk. I've been waiting because it could be a temporary issue.--Syum90 (talk) 19:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

JavaScript is completely broken for many users on hundreds of wikis, see phabricator:T122755. Nemo 21:45, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Already filed the ticket case. --George Ho (talk) 22:11, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "ticket case", but mediawiki.org is not an issue tracker. As already explained on phabricator:T122755, JavaScript was intentionally broken for many users and wikis by MediaWiki developers. I'm going to leave some notes locally. Nemo 09:09, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both for your help.--Syum90 (talk) 09:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Syum90 (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
• A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [1]
• The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [2]
• You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [3]
• The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [4]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [5] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [6]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [7]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [8]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [9]
• A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [10]
• There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K or Command+K respectively. [11]

Future changes

• The team is working on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [12]
• The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [13]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [14]
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

18:05, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

WMDE policy RSS feed update

At https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165285, Leszek required an update of the RSS URL to https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/wmde-policy/items.rss. Framawiki provided a config change, I deployed it and updated the RSS here.

I assumed this URL change was an upkeep trivial request, and so merged the change, but let me know if in the future you prefer to discuss such config changes and reach consensus before we merge URL updates (as previously done to *add* this URL for example) . --Dereckson (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing and translating the Kreyol Wikipedya

Greetings and sak pase. I am working on translating some of the content that is used on the Haitian wikipedya. Translation requests have been prioritized by others and I would like to translate specific language that readers see before I translate the messages that have been assigned by WM. For example, the very common word User should be "Moun kap itilize li an" instead of the French "itilizatè". It is difficult to translate the thousands of words and phrases when I have a different priority. Can the list of needed translations be prioritized by me instead of WP? Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): Actually, MediaWiki is translated at translatewiki. See https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:SupportedLanguages/ht. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:37, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

This I know - but I can't enter my translation of highly used words on the ht Wikipedya. I suspect that the words and phrases I want to translate are buried deep with in the list authored by WM translators. I want to find the terms to translate according to my priorities rather than what I am assigned. Regards,

Barbara (WVS) (talk) 19:22, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not quite getting it. You want to replace itilizatè, for example, with that whole phrase? StevenJ81 (talk) 21:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Policies and guidelines for user pages on Wikipedia

Hello! I am not sure that this question is being asked in the right forum, but as I don´t know where else to put it I hope that if it is in the wrong place that some kind person can help me place it right. I would like to know if policies and guidelines for user pages differ on different languages on Wikipedia? My user page that looks the same in maybe 10-20 languages keeps being deleted in the Spanish Wikipedia and I can´t understand why. I have asked why on my discussion page there and on one of the editors discussion pages, that deleted it but I have received no answer or help to change what ever they think is wrong with it. I can´t see what could possibly be wrong or break any rules and in no other language have there ever been any complaints during my years here. So if anyone can help me get an explanation and straighten out what rules apply for user pages (and if/why they don´t apply for the Spanish Wikipedia for some reason) I would be thankful. Frökennostalgi (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Just a comment: I think it's deleted because of "Great swedish actors/artists" etc. as they have nothing to do with the fact what are you working on the Wikipedia. They are just personal opinions, and should not be listed on the user page. "Pages that I want to create" and such should be fine (even in English). There is no global policy for user pages, and some projects are stricter than the others. Stryn (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your take on it Stryn! I would never have been able to guess that. You can actually delete an entire user page just because a person writes one opinion on their own page? That seems very harsh, without a warning or anything. On the Swedish Wikipedia's user pages you can write freely about any subjects you wish, expressing your personality and views so this is quite different. Had I written it in actual articles I would understand that the sentence would be deleted, but not the whole page. And the fact that no one seems to bother to answer me puzzles me a bit. Ok, it seems like the Spanish Wikipedia is very strict in this case and maybe it should be made clear whats ok and whats not, it would help if it differs this much on the different projects. I will try to recreate my user page again, without this sentence and see how it goes. I don´t want to be blocked there because they differ so much in rules from the other languages and I keep breaking them, not understanding them. But hopefully this will be ok then. Frökennostalgi (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

The right forum would be the Wikimedia Forum. Typically wikis have less tolerance for the content of user pages if the user is not very active on the wiki. What gets accepted or not is very discretionary and varies a lot across wikis, which is one of the many reasons Terms of use#paid-contrib-disclosure has spectacularly failed to be enforced in practice. Nemo 19:03, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer and information Nemo! I will ask my question in that forum also then, and see if there are any more thoughts on this issue, in the right forum for it. Best regards, Frökennostalgi (talk) 20:07, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Update: they deleted my user page again, even though I asked them to contact me instead so I could correct whatever was wrong (and after changing what we guessed was wrong). I don´t understand this. Is there anyone who can help me with this? They seem very hard to communicate with and indifferent to my tries. Frökennostalgi (talk) 07:47, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

@Frökennostalgi: Here's one other point. I think most projects are more tolerant about user-page content when it's about you and not promotional, and a lot of the "gray area" has to do with what's considered truly promotional and what's simply something about you that you want to share that's at least remotely relevant to your work on the project. Most projects are less tolerant of your making your user page an editorial forum for your opinion on something. And that's all the more true when you say something like "Great Swedish actors"—a statement like that requires a source. If you say something like: "Much of my work on Wikipedia is about Swedish actors and films; here are some that I particularly like", that is a different and more allowable statement than "Here is a list of great Swedish actors". StevenJ81 (talk) 15:50, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Gadget / Gadget definition namespaces - are they operative?

Thanks, —MarcoAurelio 10:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Ping? —MarcoAurelio 12:42, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Ping-ping? —MarcoAurelio 23:02, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I think that you are asking in the wrong place. Read mw:ResourceLoader/Version_2_Design_Specification#Gadget_Manager, then probably hunt out someone like Krinkle for an answer.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:54, 7 June 2017 (UTC)