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Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages

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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk pages project

The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor

The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

• On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
• There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
• Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

• In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
  • One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
  • New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
  • Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
• Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

• Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
• Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
• Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

11:13, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In will soon take place again! Mentor tasks to help new contributors!

Hi everybody! Google Code-in (GCI) will soon take place again - a seven week long contest for 13-17 year old students to contribute to free software projects. Tasks should take an experienced contributor about two or three hours and can be of the categories Code, Documentation/Training, Outreach/Research, Quality Assurance, and User Interface/Design. Do you have any Lua, template, gadget/script or similar task that would benefit your wiki? Or maybe some of your tools need better documentation? If so, and you can imagine enjoying mentoring such a task to help a new contributor, please check out mw:Google Code-in/2019 and become a mentor. If you have any questions, feel free to ask at our talk page. Many thanks in advance! --Martin Urbanec 07:28, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Developer environment for this wiki

I have raised a question here about creating developer-friendly images of each wiki, which people can use to create scripts and mediawiki extensions on their own PC without needing to request an account on Wikimedia Tools or their sister services. I hope an image can be available for install in one click. If you are experienced in how to make this happen, or know how it would be useful for this wiki, please respond either here or there. Thanks. --Gryllida/ (talk) 23:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Development environment for this wiki (take 2)

If I make a (Vagrant or Docker or VirtualBox) development for this wiki, would you be interested in including

• 1. all gadgets or only some (if so then which)
• 2. all extensions or only some (if so then which)
• 3. all content or only some (if so then what part)
• 4. all settings or only some (if so then which ones)

Also what extensions, or improvements to existing extensions, would you like to see developed if someone volunteers to do it. I know there is the 'Dialog' tools that could be installed for example - this needs lots of work and I think uses Scribunto and FlaggedRevs - is there anything else? Is there a wish list...

Thanks, --Gryllida (talk) 05:10, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

In the "obvious" column (but sometimes the obvious is easy to overlook), besides dialog, Scribunto, and FlaggedRevs, there's also DPLs. --Pi zero (talk) 12:39, 12 November 2019 (UTC)