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VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know?
You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.
Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).
Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. We thank the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page is now using Flow instead of LiquidThreads.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mediawiki.org if you can help.
- If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
- Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite 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!
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
- Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [1] [2] [3]
- Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [4]
Problems
- Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [5] [6]
- On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [7]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
- You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [8]
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 August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
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
- Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [9]
Problems
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (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 August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
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
- VisualEditor will now automatically create a link when you type in or paste an ISBN, PMID, or RFC. [11][12]
- The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [13]
- VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module
ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Useext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.initinstead. [14] - Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [15]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 3 (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 1 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikidata API will be updated with breaking changes. This will probably happen on September 9. [16]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:36, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
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. [17]
- A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [18]
- You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [19]
Problems
- There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [20]
- The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [21][22]
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. [23]
- 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. [24][25]
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. [26]
- Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [27][28]
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)
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. [29]
- 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. [30]
- Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [31][32]
Problems
- There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed. [33]
- The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [34]
Changes this week
- 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. [35]
- The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [36]
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)
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. [37][38]
- 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. [39][40][41][42]
- 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. [43]
- The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users. [44]
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. [45]
- 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. [46][47]
- UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed. [48]
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. [49]
- 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. [50]
- Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata. [51]
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)
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. [52]
- UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look. [53]
- You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one. [54]
- When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well. [55]
- You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50. [56]
- The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded. [57]
- 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. [58]
Problems
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. [61]
- 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. [62]
Meetings
- You can join the strategy process of the Reading department of Wikimedia Engineering. [63]
- 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)
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 link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile. [64]
- The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [65]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
- UploadWizard will remind users to add a category. [66]
- UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [67]
- A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [68]
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 6 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata requests your input on how to improve the editing of Wikidata's data in other locations, such as Wikipedias.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
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 database size lists have been updated. These control special page update frequency and which wikis use global abuse filters. [69]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 15 (calendar).
- You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons using the visual editor. When the image is uploaded it will be added to the article you're editing. [70]
- Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [71]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:28, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
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
- Tech News is trying to make reading the newsletter easier. The
icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The 
icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change. - Timestamps in the protection log will now be in the user's timezone. Previously they would show Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [72]
Problems
- A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [73]
- Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [74]
- The deployment of the new MediaWiki version was stopped on October 14. No new code was deployed for the rest of week. This meant planned changes did not happen. [75]
Changes this week
- Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [76]
- Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [77][78][79][80]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).- The first time you use the visual editor, pop-ups will explain why and when you should use the citation and link tools. [81]
- You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons from inside the wikitext editor by clicking "Upload" in the "Insert file" dialog. You will also be able to drag and drop them into an article when using the visual editor. [82][83]
- When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [84][85]
- Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in
$wgContentNamespaces. [86]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:04, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #5—2015
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know?
Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
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 fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time ever you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use it on all devices regardless of size if they wish. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227, T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
- Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
- The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite 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!