Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2014/April

Tech News: 2014-15

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
• Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
• CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [1]

Future software changes

• A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [2] [3]
• All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8. [4]
• The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [5] [6]
• You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [7]
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
• You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language. [8]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Memorial fund in Ashley-Nelson and Adrianne Wadewitz's honor?

Would it be possible as a community to see about setting up a paypal or similar account where we can gather donations for any women who participate on any language Wikinews to do original reporting about women in technology? It can be set up as a memorial fund in Cindy Ashley-Nelson and Adrianne Wadewitz's honor and administered by members of the Wikinews community or we can see if we can ask the WMF to administer any funds as a restricted donation. --LauraHale (talk) 14:32, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• This is a great idea. Perhaps making it something offering grants for original reporting/research on any project? Wikiversity does OR as well, and it could apply to getting media for Commons too. Basically something for original content in their honour. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:08, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• • I would be comfortable to making it only available to women doing original reporting on Wikinews because I would like this to come out of our project, be supported by our sister project and support getting more women involved in our project, ideally covering women. I am fine with making it more broard, and not just women in technology if it comes to that. (I think we could get a chapter to handle the gathering of funds on behalf of Wikinews.)--LauraHale (talk) 15:25, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• Having it at just technology is, I think, probably too narrow for the Wikinewses. Sadly. Extending could work, though; the possibilities if we add sport, politics, the arts.... Yes, that would work. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:50, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• I would be fine with it being open to anyone doing original reporting on women (technology, sports, politics, health) or women doing original reporting on any topic. The question becomes who handles the money and how do we get it distributed. --LauraHale (talk) 15:55, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Seeting up a memorial bank account for donations does not look like it would be that hard to do. I'd be happy to see about setting that up if people thought it was worth doing. --LauraHale (talk) 17:35, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• As I understand, donations to any Wikimedia project go to the WMF. Additionally, WMF and individual chapters can distribute grants as they see fit. What I'm concerned about is whether such fund has been run by community before, in any project, any language.

How would the fund be used?

Additionally, such topic choice looks a bit narrow. Gryllida 22:40, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Randomly, it was pointed out to me that we should contact the familes for permission before we do anything. This is just a random note for future thought. --LauraHale (talk) 23:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I believe the WMF has been anguishing over the concept of having an endowment, which I suspect would be on a far-larger scale than this proposal. However, this might-well be a good opportunity to look at such things on a far smaller scale. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:14, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

While we're making random notes: As a matter of prudence, we need to be clear on who controls the purse strings. Reportage financial support controlled by the foundation could create political pressure on the publication process, unhealthily for Wikinews independence and therefore neutrality. En.wn has a robust review process with which to resist political pressure; Wikinewses with less robust review would be less able to resist. And though we could resist, it's unwise to systemically invite confrontations. --Pi zero (talk) 11:28, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
• MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [9] [10] [11]
• Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [12] [13]

VisualEditor news

• You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [14]
• The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
• The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [15] [16]

Future software changes

• The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [17] [18]
• Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [19]
• You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key. [20] [21] [22] [23]
• Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [24]
• You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [25] [26]
• The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [27] [28]
• An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [29]

Problems

• Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution. [30]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News updates

• You can now subscribe to an Atom or RSS feed to read Tech News in your news aggregator. The newsletter will now also show on the English Planet Wikimedia every Monday. [31]
• We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
• CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [32] [33]
• Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [34] [35] [36] [37]
• The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [38]
• You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [39]

VisualEditor news

• If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [40] [41]
• VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [42] [43]
• You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [44] [45] [46]

Future software changes

• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [47]
• Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [48] [49]
• The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [50] [51] [52] [53]
• You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [54] [55]
• You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [56] [57]
• It is now proposed to replace Bugzilla, Gerrit and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org. [58]
• An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [59]

Problems

• For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
• There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [60]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
• You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [61]

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [62]
• VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [63]
• VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [64]
• The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [65]
• CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [66] [67]
• You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [68]

Problems

• For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [69] [70]
• On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [71] [72]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)