Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous

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De-Recognition of Wikimedia Hong Kong[edit]

This is an update from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee. Translations are available.

Recognition as a Wikimedia movement affiliate — a chapter, thematic organization, or user group — is a privilege that allows an independent group to officially use the Wikimedia trademarks to further the Wikimedia mission.

The principal Wikimedia movement affiliate in the Hong Kong region is Wikimedia Hong Kong, a Wikimedia chapter recognized in 2008. As a result of Wikimedia Hong Kong’s long-standing non-compliance with reporting requirements, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Affiliations Committee have determined that Wikimedia Hong Kong’s status as a Wikimedia chapter will not be renewed after February 1, 2017.

If you have questions about what this means for the community members in your region or language areas, we have put together a basic FAQ. We also invite you to visit the main Wikimedia movement affiliates page for more information on currently active movement affiliates and more information on the Wikimedia movement affiliates system.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Affiliations Committee, 16:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

For the bot. --George Ho (talk) 15:53, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[edit]

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

For the bot. --George Ho (talk) 15:53, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[edit]

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

For the bot. --George Ho (talk) 15:53, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections[edit]

Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

Wikimedia-logo black.svg

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

  • April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
  • April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
  • April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
  • May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
  • May 15–19 – Board vote checking
  • May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:

  • Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
    • There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
  • Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
    • One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections(at)wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:38, 7 April 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

For the bot. --George Ho (talk) 15:53, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Everyday spammers and vandals[edit]

Seems that we are dealing with spammers and vandals and copyright violators everyday. Maybe it's something to do with "referrer information" that Wikinews is giving out lately. I addressed referrer info at Wikinews:Water cooler/policy, but I've not yet seen one response. If sending out referrer info is not exactly the cause, how else do those folk retrieve word about Wikinews? --George Ho (talk) 05:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Good and bad news about cross-wiki search results in English Wikipedia[edit]

Good news: The cross-wiki search results from other projects are now live in English Wikipedia. Bad news: The search results from English Wikinews are suppressed via RfC discussion in English Wikipedia, meaning users won't see those results there. Feel free to share your thoughts here. --George Ho (talk) 20:26, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how it is a good news, or a bad news considering the way people use "search" on Wikipedia.
acagastya 02:43, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Just wondering: would the search results inserted into English Wikipedia attract Wikipedia users into coming to Wikinews? Would it attract more editors? --George Ho (talk) 15:05, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Do you remember the time when Google displayed the commercials/ads on the right hand side? Remember how quickly we realised it was not something we were looking for? Just like that, this move by Wikipedia, or media would be futile. It is no rocket science to figure out how to look for Wikipedia articles. Most of the readers search for the term on search engines. Those who don't know the naming policy would use a search engine rather than Wikipedia's search. Wikipedia's search shows a drop down list of the articles with the string typed in the bar. Those who edit Wikipedia knows where exactly they need to go, and they can just modify the URL for ithe target page. Wikipedia's search is the best for finding archived discussions, of something that is at the tip of the tongue but still you don't recall what exactly you are looking for. or the other time someone uses the search when the thing you are looking for is not what search engine shows and what you are looking for is trivial. In any case, whatever biaspedia shows, readers who searched, and clicked the sister project links would find some degree of information, but they would hardly choose to write. (If they wanted to, they would not be using the Wikipedia search for what they were looking for). For editors who see sister project links, well, they might choose to write or might ignore the list. Good number of people who thinks of you are on wikiproject, you have to be on Wikipedia.
acagastya 15:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
There used to be a link to Wikinews at the bottom of the ITN section on the Wikipedia main page. A massive campaign of bullshit was used to ram through a vote to remove it. Despite the existence of some great folks at Wikipedia, the Wikipedian community contains a high level of project bigotry, which the aforementioned campaign catered to, and attempting (by direct address) to enlighten the Wikipedian community sufficiently to get them to work with the rest of the sisterhood instead of against it is just a recipe for expensive failure. I do care about Wikipedia, and would help it if I could, but I decline to put any energy into worrying about what they will or won't do for us. --Pi zero (talk) 16:24, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales Reddit AMA on Wikitribune[edit]

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/67vbyo/iama_jimmy_wales_from_wikipedia_and_as_of_this/ A month old but I just saw it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:26, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

nl.wn to re-open[edit]

Per Phab:T168764, the content at incubator:Wn/nl/Hoofdpagina is to be reinstated as a live Wikinews at n:nl:. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:41, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Congrats to our colleagues at nl.wn. --Pi zero (talk) 03:08, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
That good news! Hopefully in this new opportunity thrive the project. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:39, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

It went live this past day: n:nl:Hoofdpagina (I'm happy to say that I have the only non-importing edit there as of now--I actually managed to get there one minute before the import started). Let's say "Hallo" to our compatriots there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:36, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

See also phab:T169808. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:40, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-26[edit]

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 <inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [1]

Changes this week

  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
  • Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [2]

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 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [3]

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

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27[edit]

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 was a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used <mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [4]

Changes this week

  • Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
  • There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
  • Octicons-tools.svg EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [5]

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

15:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Cycle 3 of 2017 Wikimedia movement already started[edit]

News, everyone. The meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 3 is posted at Meta-wiki. Please feel free to comment at meta:Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 3. Somehow, Wikinews is mentioned at meta:Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 3#We should know what we are and own it. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 18:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28[edit]

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 are sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [6]

Changes this week

  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (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 11 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [7]
  • We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.

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

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-29[edit]

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

  • "Wikimedia Labs" is now called "Cloud VPS". "Wikimedia Tool Labs" is now called "Wikimedia Toolforge". This is to help clarify the purpose of these services. [8]

Problems

  • On some pages, the Table of Contents is not being shown. It will normally appear if you edit the page again. Investigation is currently ongoing. [9]

Changes this week

  • Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (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 18 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Octicons-tools.svg You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is: Migrate to HTML5 section ids. [10] The meeting will be on 19 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Page Previews, currently a Beta Feature, will be enabled for logged-out users for all remaining Wikipedias (with the exception of English and German) the week of 24 July. An A/B test will be run on English Wikipedia to collect data before approaching the community for further discussion. [11]

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

22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Journalists on being scooped[edit]

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/scoops-fahrenthold-greg-howard.php —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:45, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

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