Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2019

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [1]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [2]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [3]
• On several wikis, an account named "Abuse filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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18:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Coming soon: Improved version of the FileExporter

Coming soon: an improved version of the beta feature FileExporter

Hi! For a few months now, the FileExporter has been a beta feature on this wiki (and a few others). It makes it possible to move a file from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons, while keeping its history intact.

A new version of the feature will be deployed on January 16, including some bug fixes and added features. With this new version, the FileExporter will also become a beta feature on all other wikis.

As always, you’re very invited to test it and let us know what you think. This helps us further improve the feature before it becomes a default functionality. A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far! -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:58, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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 Google Translate in the content translation tool. [5][6]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [7][8]
• Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [9]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [11]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15 17:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

No editing for 30 minutes on 17 January

You will not be able to edit the wikis for up to 30 minutes on 17 January 07:00 UTC. This is because of a database problem that has to be fixed immediately. You can still read the wikis. Some wikis are not affected. They don't get this message. You can see which wikis are not affected on this page. Most wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)

18:55, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [12]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [13]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [14][15]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [16]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [17]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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20:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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 Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

• When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [18]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Bible in Otjiherero

Hi all, a student of mine is looking for a place to make the Bible available in Otjiherero (language code: hz). From your experience, will such a language be created here, even if it is only one source text for now? Thanks, Pgallert (talk) 06:17, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pgallert: The more, the merrier but we host some languages that only have one work or which may not even be languages (Main Page/Chono). Please upload. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Thanks for the quick answer. So I go to meta, request Wikisource/hz, and then upload? Thanks again, with best regards, Pgallert (talk) 08:48, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pgallert: The Bible is a pretty substantial work. If you succeed in bringing it online, the wiki will already have lots of contents. More important is to focus on getting enough contributors (at least three), for longer periods of time (longer than three months), and make sure interface localization is updated. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 10:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pgallert: Actually, if you want to start a new language edition of most projects, you would go to incubator: and then set up a test run there to establish a community, make basic infrastructure, ensure that the interface is properly translated and is working, etc. For Wikisource, that is actually not the case: you just come here to the multi-lingual site and start adding content. We have a few ways of tracking our languages (create Main Page/languagename, add it to {{AllLanguages}} and Wikisource:Languages, etc.) and then you are ready to go. If a certain language has a sufficient amount of works, it can graduate from here but it doesn't have to: Napulitano is by far the biggest language on here now and has recently been approved for its own domain but some languages (e.g. Volapük) have bodies of literature so small and a non-existent community who use them that they will never leave this site. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:02, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Ooswesthoesbes and Koavf, what I wanted to ask up here is if Wikisource would host the Otjiherero Bible even if there is no viable editing community just yet. Otjiherero incubator exists (here) but my efforts to get it moving have not been successful so far. Now I have a student who would, for now as once-off activity, put something online that would be of interest to the native speakers. In my opinion, a Wikimedia project should host this, rather than a public or private web site elsewhere. I might be preaching to the choir, but without readers in that language we won't get editors. If you're interested in the longer story, this is a longer discussion about new languages in general and Otjiherero in particular. --Pgallert (talk) 10:09, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

PS: I read too quickly, assuming you want to offload me to the Incubator ;) If the student is ready I'll go ahead and create Main Page/Otjiherero as suggested. Thanks for the info. --Pgallert (talk) 10:13, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pgallert: As I pointed out with Chono, even if the body of literature is only the Bible, that's fine to accept here: this would be an archive of all of the writing in that language. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:33, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Pgallert: What is the copyright status of this translation? Is this own translation made by the student or by somebody else? Was it published? Please note, that texts uploaded here should be PS in US or licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. Ankry (talk) 10:30, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Ankry: I haven't seen it yet; there are very likely a few translations, not just one. I'm hopeful we will find one from before 1924. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 07:35, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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 later this week

• It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [19]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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 use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-08

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

• When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [20]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [21]

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23:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

1. First, sign up your group here.
2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
   1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
   2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
   3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
   4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
   5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:01, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-09

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 a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [22]

Changes later this week

• When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [23]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

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 later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
• The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [24][25]

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16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

• Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements Lua function or the #statements parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
• There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems

• Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
• Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [26]
• Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [27][28]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

New gadget: Serif fonts

Hi all, I just created a new gadget called "Serif fonts". It changes the font in the page namespace and the main namespace (well, everything inside <div class="text"> tags) to Serif fonts, including the font in the editing window in the page namespace. It uses the same fonts as the default in the headlines used in Vector. I have been using this setup privately for a long time, and think it both looks better for this project – after all, practically all books use serif fonts – and makes it easier to edit. Go try it out! Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:36, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

There are data on the preference (not just personal but readability/legibility) of serif and sans serif fonts for print and Web. We should probably change the site CSS to generate serif fonts for print. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:31, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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 later this week

• When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [29][30]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [31]
• Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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19:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13

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 new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [32]

Problems

• There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [33]
• The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [34]
• Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [35]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-14

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 later this week

• Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [36]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Lao laws

A user has been dumping the full text of Laotian laws into the Lao Wikipedia, where such things do not belong. I'm not sure if they can legally be placed in any Wikimedia wiki. Does anyone here know (or would like to research) the legal status of Laotian laws (laws of Laos) and whether they can be hosted on a Wikimedia wiki? Note that we do not have a Lao Wikisource, either as a standalone "lo.wikisource.org" or as a subwiki here at the Multilingual Wikisource — although this wiki would seem to be the logical place for such texts if they can be properly licensed. Can anyone help with this? I have told the user to stop creating the pages, but there's no guarantee they will understand and/or take my advice. - dcljr (talk) 01:43, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dcljr: Lao laws are not protected by copyright. If this user is interested in putting them here, he is more than welcome. Do you need help? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

In that case, you should try to contact the user directly. If they can put them on the wrong wiki, they should be able to put them on the right one. [grin] - dcljr (talk) 03:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Have you tried contacting the user? I posted again on their talk page saying that the pages could be created here, but they have not replied (nor edited any Wikimedia wikis in the meantime). I think this may be a one-off account that has been abandoned. Do you want to try to get these pages transwiki'd to here or would you (or someone else) like to find their original source and create new pages here based on the originals? (I have no idea how many pages we could be talking about, but the user in question only created 153 pages on the laowiki. Clearly there are more Laotian laws than that. [grin]) Or should we just delete the pages from lowiki and give up on this? - dcljr (talk) 23:41, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@dcljr: I just emailed him. I would be happy to transwiki--I don't like losing things that are valid if we can avoid it. I'll make a reminder to do this in two weeks if I haven't heard back from him. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:11, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: unfortunately, import from lowikisource here is not enabled. So importer rights are needed for that. Did you ever use XML import between wikis and do you wish to apply for this right? Or I can ask for it. Ankry (talk) 09:27, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Heh, forgotten that this is Wikipedia, so only XML import remains possible. We generally do not allow configuration changes to import from Wikipedias here. Ankry (talk) 09:56, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite. I guess I'll have to export them. Or copy/past with attribution in the edit summary. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:17, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: export/fix namespace list/import. For import importer rights are needed. This requires community support + request on m:SRP one week after notification here. Doing C&P is not nice as loosing the uploader info. No copyright issue, but maybe they return... Ankry (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ankry: Not nice? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:40, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Import is better as we rather tend to preserve uploader contribution info. Ankry (talk) 18:54, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

If the pages are going to be moved to here, however that happens, I figured it would be a good idea to try to verify the texts before that happens. A quick Google search turned up a collection of PDFs from the Vientiane Times (a Laotian newspaper) purporting (based on the filename in the URL) to be Lao laws in English — although some of the PDFs are actually in Lao. I found that their English text of the "Law on Public Roads" appears to match (within the margin of computer translation) to the Google Translate version of w:lo:ກົດໝາຍວ່າດ້ວຍທາງຫຼວງ 03-04-1999, and the dates on the two documents (April 3, 1999) match exactly. Same with "Law on National Defence obligations" and w:lo:ກົດໝາຍວ່າດ້ວຍພັນທະປ້ອງກັນຊາດ 08-03-1995. So I'd say these look legit. If someone here reads Lao, they can consider, for example, "Law on Forestry" vs. w:lo:ກົດໝາຍວ່າດ້ວຍປ່າໄມ້ 24-12-2007 (both in Lao), which seem to be the same law. - dcljr (talk) 02:59, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Additionally, w:lo:ໝວດ:User en has several users who may be able to help. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:24, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Note that the user being discussed here, User:Allbooks, started editing the Lao Wikipedia again two days ago. They still have not responded my posts on their talk page about the Lao laws. In fact, they have created (at least) four new pages of Lao laws on the wiki since returning. They've also created several articles on other topics, a small sampling of which appeared to be appropriate subjects for a Wikipedia (although, of course, I cannot vouch for the quality of the articles themselves). I'm not sure what to do at this point, so I have tried (just now) leaving a Lao version of my last talk-page post for Allbooks (translated by Google Translate). I have also asked two other users on that wiki who claim to be knowledgeable in both English and Lao to visit that talk page (and this discussion here) in the hopes that they can provide some kind of assistance. - dcljr (talk) 00:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@dcljr: I've just added a message in Lao, telling him/her to stop uploading these texts. I hope the message will be read. --Alifshinobi (talk) 00:56, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Allbooks has now decided to throw a hissy fit on their talk page, apparently based on a misunderstanding of the Wikimedia landscape (i.e., that not all Lao text belongs in the Lao Wikipedia). I have just posted another message on their talk page explaining the situation as clearly (but perhaps not as nicely) as I could. Alifshinobi: could you please translate that message (or at least the main points of it) into Lao, just in case they need that? - dcljr (talk) 05:33, 18 April 2019 (UTC) [edit: struck out request to Alifshinobi since that's clearly not necessary anymore]

OK, well, I tried, but Allbooks has decided to be a petulant child. I'm washing my hands of the matter. - dcljr (talk) 08:04, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I have reported this problem in SRM. Ankry (talk) 10:05, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

The legal texts have been imported and are listed here. @Alifshinobi: Could you, please, help us to make this page more informative (eg. by adding a header displaying the purpose of our project and maybe a section title for text list; like here - or in a way similar to another page in this category)? It is intended to be in Lao. Ankry (talk) 05:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ankry:, I tried adding a description and the purpose of Wikisource to Main Page/ລາວ, but I received this message: "Error: This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: Antispam." Who should I talk to? --Alifshinobi (talk) 06:00, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, it works now. I had to remove some of the text. --Alifshinobi (talk) 06:02, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi: Thanks a lot for this. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:14, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi: Thanks also. Our antispam filter seemed to be too restrictive; I fixed this. Also, it applies only to users with less than 2 edits, so you should no longer be affected by this filter. I noticed that you added some red links to a pages with namespace name that does exist neither here nor in lowiki. Was it intentional? Ankry (talk) 07:55, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ankry:, Those links were created because I translated the text from the main page of the Thai Wikisource which had those links and pages. I was hoping that someone (or I) would add those pages later. If you don't think this is appropriate, I will delete the links as well as the last sentence which says something like "please look at the Wikisource:What is Wikisource?, Help:Contents, and Wikisource:Community portal before writing an article." --Alifshinobi (talk) 15:01, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi: I just think that we should place the pages in appropriate namespaces (Wikisource, Help), possibly creating links from Lao-prefixed names in the main namespace. But while the links are red, it does not really matter. Ankry (talk) 07:17, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal

To help kick start a solution, I propose that loWP (w:lo:) be added to mulWS transwiki import functionality. A community consensus will allow a phabricator ticket to be added

Technically speaking [37] we are requesting a modification within the section wgImportSources to 'sourceswiki' to add 'w:lo'.

billinghurst sDrewth 04:19, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@billinghurst: I considered this alternative but comparing to XML import using import rights:

1. the procedure isn't faster (actually it is even slower: one week discussion and waiting for a configuration change to be applied: sometimes even more than a week)
2. it is not convenient for massive imports
3. the only advantage is that import can be done by any admin

So potentially useful for future, not for mass-import. I  Support it in this context. Ankry (talk) 06:06, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I mind not which way it happens, though you have better control if you are doing individually. XML has its own limitations in file size so it depends on how you wish to handle it. For example, if you wish to rename as you import, transwiki works better. Whatever best suits. billinghurst sDrewth 07:32, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I think it is easier to control one multipage import than 100 separate operations (when a chance of making a mistake goes up). And lack of multipage transwiki import interface (or API) is the main problem for me. XML imports stops on first error and can be continued later from that place. There is no multi-revision large page to import that could be a problem here. Ankry (talk) 10:22, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

•  Support Import from all Wikipedias, Wikibooks, and Wikiversity. Why not? The nice thing about this is that they are public domain, so attribution to a specific editor really does not matter. It's nice, I guess but it shouldn't take up any real bandwidth--just copy and paste. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Read-only mode for up to 30 minutes on 11 April

You will not be able to edit most Wikimedia wikis for up to 30 minutes on 11 April 05:00 UTC. This is because of a hardware problem. You can still read the wikis. You can see which wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)

10:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-15

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

• More wikis are now testing visual editor section editing for mobile users. You can read more.
• Admins on French and Polish Wikipedia can block someone from editing a page or a namespace. If your wiki wants to get these blocks before they are available to all wikis, you can tell the developers. [38][39]

Problems

• You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [40]
• A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [41]
• Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [42]

Changes later this week

• When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [43]
• The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [44]
• The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [45]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [46][47]
• The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.

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

18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource:News (en): April 2019 edition

English Wikisource's monthly newsletter; Wikisource:News, which seeks to inform all about Wikimedia's multilingual Wikisource.

• From the Editors: Volume 3 confirmed
• Xover nominated to be admin
• Administrator confirmations for April 2019
• Wikisource — A Wikipedia project
• WikiProject Spotlight: WikiProject Validate

Read this issue of Wikisource:News · Discussion · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 23:43, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation has published a Medium-Term Plan proposal covering the next 3–5 years. We want your feedback! Please leave all comments and questions, in any language, on the talk page, by April 20. Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

import wikis

When a new Wikisource is created, there is no automatic creation of importing possibility from this wiki. I suggest adding all Wikisources to list of wikis that any admin can import pages from. This is a configuration change, so requires community approval. Missing wikis that would be added includes now:

• as:, be:, br:, eo:, eu:, gu:, li:, mr:, or:, pa:, pms:, sah:, vec:, zh-min-nan:
• and also for two wikis that do not exist yet, bud should soon be created: hi.ws, nap.ws (after they are created, of course).

After the wikis are added, the import from the above wikis here can be done by any admin. Now it can be by importers only. The need to import from various wikis appears occasionally, and it is hard to predict where it may become urgent because of local copyright problems on another wiki. At the moment, there is a discussion about possible interwiki transfer from Esperanto Wikisources. Ankry (talk) 10:24, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-16

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

• All wikis now have the TemplateWizard for the wikitext editor.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will get a new constraint status called suggestion. This will change how the WikibaseQualityConstraints constraint checking API works. [48][49]
• You can test the depicts property for structured data on Commons.

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

23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Notification about request for rights

I intend to request for importer rights here due to some work needed:

1. import from lo.wp discussed above
2. possibly import of EU-copyrighted works from eo.ws (discussion)
3. possibly import of FR-copyrighted works deleted from fr.ws (discussion)
4. possibly import of works with unclear PL copyright status from pl.ws (discussion)

As this work needs some time, I intend to request for the rights for longer period, at least for few months, if granting permanent right is not possible. Or, maybe, somebody else wishes to do the job (@Koavf, Ooswesthoesbes, Jusjih:)? Your opinions are welcome. Sometimes decissions concerning transfer here need to be urgent as works might be speedy deleted in other wikis as copyvio there (but still PD-US). Ankry (talk) 10:21, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

While I have import access myself, I think it would be best for me not to intermingle too much with this, as my knowledge of international copyright is - well, I'll admit it - practically non-existant. So, a support from me :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

I have got this right for 6 months. Ankry (talk) 05:32, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to modify the Wikimedia Language Proposal Policy

There is a proposal on Meta to modify the language proposal policy. The proposed changes can be found here, with discussion on that page's talk page. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:54, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-17

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 advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [50][51][52]
• The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [53]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikipedia articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [54][55]

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

19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

broken language list

Something is broken with language list on the main page; please fix it. 94.78.176.72 12:01, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-18

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 Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [56][57]

Problems

• Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [58]

Changes later this week

• You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [59]
• When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [60]
• You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [61]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikidata wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
• Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [62]

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

22:28, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource:News (en): May 2019 Edition

English Wikisource's monthly newsletter; Wikisource:News, which seeks to inform all about Wikimedia's multilingual Wikisource.

• Administrator confirmations for May 2019
• 2019 Wikimedia Summit to discuss movement strategy
• A lot of Newsletters
• Playing with m:Special:UrlShortener
• 2019 affiliate-selected Board seats process

Read this issue of Wikisource:News · Discussion · Unsubscribe · MJL (talk) 19:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-19

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

Problems

• Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [63]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-20

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 later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:49, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-21

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 report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.

Problems

• File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [64][65]
• Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [66][67]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [68]
• The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [69]

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

13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-22

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 later this week

• Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [70][71]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:34, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

A proposal for WikiJournals to become a new sister project

Over the last few years, the WikiJournal User Group has been building and testing a set of peer reviewed academic journals on a mediawiki platform. The main types of articles are:

• Existing Wikipedia articles submitted for external review and feedback (example)
• From-scratch articles that, after review, are imported to Wikipedia (example)
• Original research articles that are not imported to Wikipedia (example)

Proposal: WikiJournals as a new sister project

From a Wikipedian point of view, this is a complementary system to Featured article review, but bridging the gap with external experts, implementing established scholarly practices, and generating citable, doi-linked publications.

Please take a look and support/oppose/comment! Evolution and evolvability (talk) 04:25, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

@Evolution and evolvability: How is it related to Wikisource? Ankry (talk) 10:25, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

@Ankry: In general, I wanted to avoid any of the sister projects being omitted from discussion if people have opinions or insight on the proposal. For the wikisource community, there is often an overlap in librarianship interests between archiving and publishing. Evolution and evolvability (talk) 12:44, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-23

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 write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [72]
• There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [73]
• Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [74][75]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [76]

Changes later this week

• Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [77]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Update on Wiki Creation

I am sure that the communities working on Neapolitan and Hindi Wikisources are anxious about when their already-approved projects will be moved to their own wikis. Unfortunately, there still seems to be a problem with wiki creation; see phab:T212881. If and when I get an update on this, I'll let you know. In the meantime, please continue to work here. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:56, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

And what's the actual status of lzh wikisource test? Will this be eligible? Or rejected? Or on hold for another one or two years judge? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:19, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Please read m:Requests for new languages/Wikisource Literary Chinese#Proposed rules for LZH in Multilingual Wikisource that makes this portal to host classical or literary Chinese.--Jusjih (talk) 03:33, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-24

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

• When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [78][79]
• The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [80]
• Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [81]

Problems

• Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [82]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:07, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-25

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [83]

Changes later this week

• MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [84]
• A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [85]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [86]

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

20:38, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-26

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

Problems

• The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [87]
• Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [88]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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17:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

झाँसी की रानी

Can a Hindi speaking user check the content and history of this page? I suspect some vandalizm or inappropriate content, but unsure. (@अविनाश कुमार सिंह, अम्बिका साव, अनिरुद्ध!, अजीत कुमार तिवारी, सीमा1:@रोहित साव27, नीलम: pinging few active users who, I suspect, may speak Hindi; unfortunately none of you declared so, and no active admin speaks Hindi...) Ankry (talk) 18:57, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Ankry:, thanks for letting us know about this vandalism. I have edited that. You may semi-protect that page also. The guy who vandalized the page should be blocked as he seems to be just a spammer and advertising himself only. All of us (other than सीमा1 pinged here by you) are Native Hindi users and working as a team. Further, if you suspect such vandalism, feel free to reach us. --अजीत कुमार तिवारी (talk) 02:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Done Ankry (talk) 04:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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 development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [89]

Problems

• Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [90]
• Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [91]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [92]
• There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource:News (en): July 2019 Edition

English Wikisource's monthly newsletter; Wikisource:News, which seeks to inform all about Wikimedia's multilingual Wikisource.

• From the Editors: Let's hear from you
• Administrator confirmations for July 2019
• Wikimedia Affiliate Selected Board Seats Election Results
• Special report: Controversy at En.wiki

Read this issue of Wikisource:News · Discussion · Unsubscribe ·

MJL (talk) 04:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-28

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

• For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [93]
• Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [94]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
• The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [95]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [96]
• There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [97]

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

20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-29

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 mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [98]

Changes later this week

• The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Abuse filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [99]

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

15:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

• Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
• The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [100]

Problems

• The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [101]

Changes later this week

• Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [102]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [103][104]
• With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [105][106]
• Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
• The variable user_wpzero will be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.

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

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Problems

• Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [107]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Update Wikisource Logo to use LinuxLibertine font.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T229769

retouned, kerning adjusted to match original File:Wikisource-newberg-de.png

For consistency with Wikipedia logo. Viztor (talk) 02:30, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Viztor: You should post this as a ticket on phab:. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:32, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Community consensus is still required. We have to decide on a svg before they can process the technical change. Viztor (talk) 05:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I like it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:44, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Updated. Viztor (talk) 07:22, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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 later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

• A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [108][109]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [110]
• Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [111]

Changes later this week

• Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [112]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Neapolitan Wikisource created

Hello all! Yesterday, the Neapolitan Wikisource was finally created. Reedy did it partly to test what is still wrong with the script to add new wikis (turns out: many things that took a lot of effort to fix, so it might take a little while for Hindi Wikisource to be created unfortunately). I have spent the day today here at the Wikimania Hackathon to export all the Neapolitan content from here and import it on the new wiki. This should be done now (assuming that all content is in fact in Category:Napulitano). There are still a lot of general templates (such as Ping, rh, center, r, etc) that are still missing. I will see if I can make a list of the missing ones to export those too. In the meantime: Neapolitan editors, you can start editing on your new wiki instead of here at the multilingual Wikisource. Congratulations! Jon Harald Søby (talk) 14:54, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ruthven, Alex brollo: Please ping other editors as well! :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 14:57, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby: Thanks a lot! I'll ping there the other users. Jon, we can see each other here in Stockholm, and figure out together what are the next steps. Thanks again :) Ruthven (talk) 07:59, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby, Ruthven: Thanks! Neapolitan texts teached me so much, I'll contribute for sure to the new project, even if I'm at a level 1 for neapolitan language... :-) --Alex brollo (talk) 09:05, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby, Ruthven: I usually wait to announce the opening of a wiki for public editing at m:Wikimedia News until after it has been marked as "imported" at incubator:Incubator:Site creation log. Given the discussion above, though, I feel like I should go ahead and announce the opening of napwikisource now, even though the importing technically might not be finished (e.g., in the template and module namespaces). Any objections? - dcljr (talk) 02:48, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't object but we may want to wait until nap.ws is added to d:. Otherwise, we should direct everyone there, delete the nap content here, and turn the main page into a link to nap.ws. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:49, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf, Dcljr, Jon Harald Søby: We are organising the newly created community on Wikisource:Porta d' 'a cummunetà, and at least the Italian community has been notified of the creation of the project. Jon and other users are importing/creating pages and templates (this work is still in progress: as you noticed below, there's still stuff that needs to be imported, but mass importing seem to have some difficulties. Thus I would give more time to Jon to perform this task). When we've double checked that everything is in place in all the namespaces, it will be the right moment to remove everything from here and add redirects. I'm temporarily admin on nap.source, but any help is more than welcome! Cheers --Ruthven (talk) 08:47, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ruthven: As you can see, I've done some maintenance things on nap.ws but my Italian is very bad. Grazie for the heads-up and please let me know if you think an English-speaker can be of assistance with the basic maintenance at that community. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:23, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: If you can help us importing the right modules and templates (and everything you consider useful), it would be great! Maybe you can coordinate with @OrbiliusMagister: to see what's missing (he has a lot of experience on it.source, our "brother" project). Actually, there are some extension missing (e.g. poem). We've first to figure out what's missing and then to whom we've to ask to install them. --Ruthven (talk) 18:01, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ruthven: If someone gives me advanced rights (at least importer), then I will be happy to help. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:06, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: It's something you should ask to the stewards for a temporary extended importer rights (I cannot give such rights myself). @OrbiliusMagister: you should do the same. I'll support. --Ruthven (talk) 07:07, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Importing

@Jon Harald Søby: Is there a reason why talk pages such as Talk:’O sole mio were not imported? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: I only imported what was in Category:Napulitano – that would exclude talk pages since they normally aren't categorized there. I can do a new pass in a day or two to include talk pages, as well as the mainspace pages Ruthven mentioned on my napwikisource user talk. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 09:12, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby: Let me know once you feel like you're done and I'll start deleting locally. Grazie! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:23, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: I think I'm done now. There might be a few things still missing, but I posted a quick little jQuery on your user talk that will check for you. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 09:12, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Update on the consultation about office actions

Hello all,

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety team announced a future consultation about partial and/or temporary office actions. We want to let you know that the draft version of this consultation has now been posted on Meta.

This is a draft. It is not intended to be the consultation itself, which will be posted on Meta likely in early September. Please do not treat this draft as a consultation. Instead, we ask your assistance in forming the final language for the consultation.

For that end, we would like your input over the next couple of weeks about what questions the consultation should ask about partial and temporary Foundation office action bans and how it should be formatted. Please post it on the draft talk page. Our goal is to provide space for the community to discuss all the aspects of these office actions that need to be discussed, and we want to ensure with your feedback that the consultation is presented in the best way to encourage frank and constructive conversation.

Please visit the consultation draft on Meta-wiki and leave your comments on the draft’s talk page about what the consultation should look like and what questions it should ask.

Thank you for your input! -- The Trust & Safety team 08:03, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

• There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

• Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
• Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [113]

Changes later this week

• Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [114]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
• Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [115]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

New tools and IP masking

Hey everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation wants to work on two things that affect how we patrol changes and handle vandalism and harassment. We want to make the tools that are used to handle bad edits better. We also want to get better privacy for unregistered users so their IP addresses are no longer shown to everyone in the world. We would not hide IP addresses until we have better tools for patrolling.

We have an idea of what tools could be working better and how a more limited access to IP addresses would change things, but we need to hear from more wikis. You can read more about the project on Meta and post comments and feedback. Now is when we need to hear from you to be able to give you better tools to handle vandalism, spam and harassment.

You can post in your language if you can't write in English.

Johan (WMF)

14:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Importing nap files

It seems like uploaders of Neapolitan files (e.g. File:Storia vecchia - Assassina - Pergolesi - Carlo Netti .djvu) have argued that we shouldn't port them to s:nap:. First off, indexes won't work at our sister project without a local copy of the file or a version on c:. Secondly, we can't get around copyright law with magically changing "mul.wikisource" to "nap.wikisource"--that's not how copyright works and the servers are all in the United States anyway. Is there something I'm missing here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:23, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@C.R., Alex brollo, Ruthven, Jon Harald Søby: You seem to be the users most closely related to the issue Justin is raising here (as the uploaders, importers, and/or potential deleters of that file). (Off-topic bit: Why is the filename linked to above the only one with a page listed in the "File" namespace of napwikisource? @Koavf: Did you use that example because it was the only page in the "File" namespace there? Or is this just a weird coincidence? [Note that the rest of the DjVu pages from that work are in the "Page" namespace.]) - dcljr (talk) 04:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dcljr: Not sure that I understand your question--it was just a rando file. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

OK, but it's the only thing listed at s:nap:Special:PrefixIndex/File:. Quite a coincidence. - dcljr (talk) 04:45, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dcljr: Oh sorry. I imported the file history but didn't upload the actual file itself. I saw what was written there and thought, "That seems like hogwash" so I posted here. Seems like I was right. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I presume that the file has been wrongly uploaded locally - it should be moved to Commons. Alex brollo (talk) 04:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

No, it should not be moved to Commons, as noted in the License section of the file page. Files such as this should be left here (AFAIK). Note, BTW, that only some works are problematic. File:'E campagnuole.djvu, for example, is (was) OK to transfer. Looks like this will require checking every work individually. (So, obviously, do not delete anything here until that has been done.) - dcljr (talk) 05:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like different subdomains handle copyright differently, so this is only a problem if napwikisource is a wiki that "excludes pre-1924 works copyrighted at home" (quoting from License section linked to in my last comment). - dcljr (talk) 05:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Darn it… File:'E campagnuole.djvu says it's OK to transfer to Commons, not napwikisource. OK, I'm just going to stop talking now. - dcljr (talk) 05:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Your instinct is a good one but Commons has a double public domain test where everything has to be public domain in the States (just like all WMF projects) and where it was originally created. It's just a rule that they have there. (With the caveat that works with explicitly free licenses are also allowed.) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dcljr, Koavf: Right: it's difficult to upload File:Storia vecchia - Assassina - Pergolesi - Carlo Netti .djvu on Commons, and nap.source hasn't the hability to host files (nor a copyright policy, that ideally should be the same as oldsource). On the single cases:

• Carlo Netti wrote his first works in the first decate of the 20th century, and disappears after 1928. A victim of the war? In any case, no files on Commons before 2030 (PD-old-assumed).
• Edoardo Pignalosa (not born in 1817 as an online biography says), was active in 1898, still alive in 1959, and died "at a very old age". Files can be uploaded on Commons in 2040 (PD-old-assumed).

Please ping me if you have any doubt: it'll be easier for me to perform searches in Italian. Cheers --Ruthven (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

The take-away here is that nap.ws needs local uploads. Copyright policy and law should be no different on mul.ws than nap.ws--that's just asinine. We should have importers and uploaders at nap.ws who have the ability to take files that Commons won't accept which are public domain in the States but not public domain in their countries of origin (considering Neapolitan, Italy). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:37, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah… I (think I) see that I misunderstood what you were saying in your initial post here. I thought you were acceding to the suggestion of the "uploaders of Neapolitan files" and choosing not to move the files to napwikisource. But now I see that you're saying the complete opposite: that those files belong at napwikisource because they cannot go to Commons (and the fact that they have not gone to napwikisource yet is because it's currently technically not possible to do so). I'm still not entirely sure what you meant by "we can't get around copyright law with magically changing 'mul.wikisource' to 'nap.wikisource'"… but whatever. So you're saying that someone needs to ask at Phabricator to give napwikisource the ability to accept local uploads so those files can be moved there? Doesn't that completely contradict the footnote in the "Pre-1929 works still copyrighted in source country allowed" header cell at Wikisource:Subdomain coordination? ("This column indicates whether such works are allowed on a Wikisource subdomain when considering wmf:Resolution:Licensing_policy with respect to the laws of any countries where any project content is predominantly accessed. If not allowed, ws.org hosts these works until transferring them to the subdomains when appropriate…") Although nap: is not yet in that table, wouldn't it be a "no" when it's added because, as with cs: and de:, for example, the Italian law is life of author + 70 years? I'm confused. - dcljr (talk) 11:17, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

My point is that there is no reason for this distinction (plus it's breaking several works at nap.ws). First off, copyright restrictions somehow don't vanish when you go from one subdomain to another. Secondly, even tho I am certain that almost all Neapolitan works were composed in Italy, not all of them were. Why do we act like everything in Polish was written in Poland? This is a nonsense rule. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:17, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Copyright restrictions aren't necessarily mandated by law. A subdomain can choose to have stricter rules for local uploads (or no local uploads at all) simply to reduce the workload on the community. Nemo 20:22, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

OK, well, FYI: I'm bowing out of this discussion now (since this never really had anything to do with me in the first place). - dcljr (talk) 11:58, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Copyright rules are partially established by a local community, which often takes into account the low of area where most project readers resides. Eg. de.ws works should be PD in Germany, Austria & Switzerland; fr.ws works should be pd in the country of origin (like in Commons) (but this rule is not strict so some PD-US works are uploaded there and sometimes later deleted which (and it is not good IMO to have such a "floating" policy).

However, noting, that a real community is needed to establish the policy. Esperanto Wikisource case shows that this is a problem sometimes. Ankry (talk) 07:29, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, this proves a real problem for things like having scan indexes which is a fundamental feature of Wikisource. If (e.g.) pl.ws exists, there should not be Polish texts here: that's the whole point of graduating to a subdomain. All that should be here is multilingual works, languages that are working to build a community, and languages that have too small a corpus to ever be a subdomain. This is a frustrating scenario and one we really should have comprehended before creating nap.ws. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:08, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource:News (en): September 2019 Edition

English Wikisource's monthly newsletter which seeks to inform all about Wikimedia's multilingual Wikisource.

• From the Editors: New retention standards
• How WikiLaw can support Wikisource
• English administrator confirmations for September 2019
• International administrative discussions
• Wikisource track at Wikimania 2019

Current · Archives · Discussion · Subscribe MJL (talk) 23:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Scanning centre in Bangalore

I'm not sure it has ever been mentioned on Wikisource yet, but the Internet Archive (thanks to Carl Malamud) has donated a Scribe scanner to Bangalore, which is being operated by a group of people who call themselves the "Servants of Knowledge" (several of which are Wikisource users, as I understand): https://archive.org/details/ServantsOfKnowledge

They already managed to scan over 800 books of which some 200 each for Malayalam and Kannada. Nemo 20:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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 use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [116]
• The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
• The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [117]
• The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [118]
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [119]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [120]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [121]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [122]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [123]
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [124]

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

09:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Update on technical issues and other things interfering with getting the project approval and creation process moving again

Please read the update at m:Talk:Language committee#Update on technical issues and other things interfering with getting the process moving again. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Image format for Page:

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T38597

On Page: pages, why does the

Image

tab link to images in the JPEG format? mw:Extension:PdfHandler (which is installed here) can render PDF and DjVu to either JPEG or PNG, where the latter usually has superior quality, and chooses the image format independently of MediaWiki configuration ($wgPdfOutputExtension). That is, only interface change on Wikisource is required for transition from .jpg to .png link; moreover, both links can be shown there.

By the way several months ago I developed a script showing PDF and DjVu in PNG on wiki pages, although major Wikimedia sites such as en.Wikipedia and Commons were not interested. The same thing was requested in phab:T219863 server-side, but no volunteer is willing to edit the extension. The script successfully shows <img> in PNG here on Page:s, although does not change <a href=…> for the Image tab. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:07, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Does the Volapük anthem count as a national one?

I wonder whether Hüm Volapüka should be included into Category:National Anthems? ;) --Shruggy (talk) 21:26, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

No, as the speakers of that language aren't a people. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:47, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Importing to hi.ws

Now that s:hi: is live, I'd like to understand the importing process and who is doing it, so we don't have some of the hiccups that we had with s:nap:. E.g. Who is responsible? What schedule do you have for importing? Will hi.ws have locally-hosted files? etc. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby: Are you doing this? Is @StevenJ81:? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:48, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

We need to wait for phab:T233365 to be solved before we start importing. Once that is done either I or MF-Warburg will do it, depending on who has time then. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 20:55, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby, MF-Warburg: Are you going to be importing files? There is still a huge problem at nap.ws. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:02, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: What's the problem at nap.ws? This is the first I hear about it. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 22:11, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jon Harald Søby: Missing files like s:nap:Fiùra:Storia vecchia - Assassina - Pergolesi - Carlo Netti .djvu. Kind of surprised that this is just popping up now--I've mentioned it above here. Indices were moved to nap.ws but files weren't, so the indices there are broken because the files are here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:58, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Oh, right, I missed that discussion (even though I see now that I was pinged). I'll take a closer look up there. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 10:12, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Coming soon: FileExporter becomes a default feature on this wiki, making imports to Wikimedia Commons easier

The FileExporter and FileImporter extensions make moving files from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier. Together they allow to move files with all their original data intact, while documenting the move in the version history. The feature originates in a top wish from the Technical Wishes survey on German Wikipedia.

The FileExporter has been a beta feature on first wikis, including this one, for a while now, and it’s available on all Wikimedia wikis since January 2019. Currently, 15,000 people on the Wikimedia projects have activated the feature, and more than 12,000 files were imported successfully with this new tool. The first version from June 2018 was improved continuously, based on feedback by its beta testers. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback!

Now, the FileExporter will become a default feature on the first few wikis, including this one. This means that as an auto-confirmed user on these wikis, you'll see a link “Export to Wikimedia Commons” on local file pages. If you click on this link, the FileImporter then checks if the file can in fact be moved to Commons, and whether any replacements need to be made. These checks are performed based on the wiki’s configuration file which is defined by the local community.

The planned date for this deployment is September 24th, 2019. Deployment on more wikis is planned for later this year. As always, feedback on this feature is very welcome on this talk page. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:59, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-40

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

Problems

• Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [125]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
• Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other Special: pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to. [126]

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

16:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

The consultation on partial and temporary Foundation bans just started

Hello,

In a recent statement, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees requested that staff hold a consultation to "re-evaluat[e] or add community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)".

Accordingly, the Foundation's Trust & Safety team invites all Wikimedians to join this consultation and give their feedback from 30 September to 30 October.

How can you help?

• Suggest how partial and temporary Foundation bans should be used, if they should (eg: On all projects, or only on a subset);

• Give ideas about how partial and temporary Foundation bans should ideally implemented, if they should be; and/or

• Propose changes to the existing Office Actions policy on partial and temporary bans.

We offer our thanks in advance for your contributions, and we hope to get as much input as possible from community members during this consultation!

-- Kbrown (WMF) 17:14, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

IP spam

I added an abusefilter that limits IP edits to one per two minutes, giving warning if editing faster. Hoping, this may stop recent IP spammers here. Ankry (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-41

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 abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit. [127]

Problems

• There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [128]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
• The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
• There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
• Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

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

15:34, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-42

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 more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [129]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [130]
• In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

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

23:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Feedback wanted on Desktop Improvements project

Please help translate to your language

Hello. The Readers Web team at the WMF will work on some improvements to the desktop interface over the next couple of years. The goal is to increase usability without removing any functionality. We have been inspired by changes made by volunteers, but that currently only exist as local gadgets and user scripts, prototypes, and volunteer-led skins. We would like to begin the process of bringing some of these changes into the default experience on all Wikimedia projects.

We are currently in the research stage of this project and are looking for ideas for improvements, as well as feedback on our current ideas and mockups. So far, we have performed interviews with community members at Wikimania. We have gathered lists of previous volunteer and WMF work in this area. We are examining possible technical approaches for such changes.

We would like individual feedback on the following:

• Identifying focus areas for the project we have not yet discovered
• Expanding the list of existing gadgets and user scripts that are related to providing a better desktop experience. If you can think of some of these from your wiki, please let us know
• Feedback on the ideas and mockups we have collected so far

We would also like to gather a list of wikis that would be interested in being test wikis for this project - these wikis would be the first to receive the updates once we’re ready to start building.

When giving feedback, please consider the following goals of the project:

• Make it easier for readers to focus on the content
• Provide easier access to everyday actions (e.g. search, language switching, editing)
• Put things in logical and useful places
• Increase consistency in the interface with other platforms - mobile web and the apps
• Eliminate clutter
• Plan for future growth

As well as the following constraints:

• Not touching the content - no work will be done in terms of styling templates or to the structure of page contents themselves
• Not removing any functionality - things might move around, but all navigational items and other functionality currently available by default will remain
• No drastic changes to the layout - we're taking an evolutionary approach to the changes and want the site to continue feeling familiar to readers and editors

Please give all feedback (in any language) at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements

After this round of feedback, we plan on building a prototype of suggested changes based on the feedback we receive. You’ll hear from us again asking for feedback on this prototype.

Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk)

07:15, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-43

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 API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [131]

Problems

• There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [132]
• The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [133]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
• Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.

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

14:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-44

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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
• Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist. [134][135]
• You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
• OOUI now allows using px (pixels) instead of em (em) for some specific cases. [136][137]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January. [138]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg* to mw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.

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

16:09, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-45

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

• At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites. [139]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip to set a different default block length for IP editors. [140]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-46

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

• MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

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

22:02, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

multilingual wikisource

hi, sorry to bother you,

there seem to have been quite a few changes in the last few days in the page editor of the multilingual wikisource

now when i try to transcribe a page, the picture of the page is not anymore side by side with the text box, but it lies below, which is not very convenient

is there any work in progress or is it going to stay that way? would it be possible to make it again the way it was before?

thanks!

G.Musso (talk) 16:41, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@G.Musso: Hi, I see no issues on this side. Can you show us an example? --Ruthven (talk) 12:38, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

PS: If you've turned on the Syntax highlighting (evidenziatore della sintassi) it is a bug of the software. See phabricator:T232918.

The solution is not to use this gadget. --Ruthven (talk) 12:41, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

that's what it was, sorry to waste your time! thanks! G.Musso (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the centralauth database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [141]

Changes later this week

• You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia link from the main page of the Wikisource

Hi to all! Today I noticed a strange appearance on the main page of the Wikisource: on the left pane I see section "In other projects" having one link named "Wikipedia", which links to en-Wikipedia article w:en:Oromo language. Could any experienced users (perhaps admins) investigate — why it is so displayed, and why the Oromo language is considered so distinguished that its article is presented on the main page of the Wikisource which contains also many other languages? --Nigmont (talk) 19:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

That's interesting indeed. For some reason Wikidate sends me to [142] when I edit the interwiki's, but I can't find our main page there... Must be somekind of bug. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I reported it to Wikidata. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:24, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ooswesthoesbes: thank you very much for your assistance, after your reporting to the Wikidata the problem apparently has been fixed, which was also mentioned in the topic that you created there. --Nigmont (talk) 21:28, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, they removed a link, so it is good now :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:17, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-48

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 later this week

• The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [143]
• Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [144]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [145]

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

16:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-49

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

• Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [146]
• The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns "" (empty string). When you read a page it returns "-" (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [147]

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

16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-50

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 projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [148]
• There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [149]

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

16:35, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-51

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

Problems

• The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [150]
• Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [151]

Changes later this week

• You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [152]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [153]

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

00:15, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Request for an interface admin to edit MediaWiki:OCR.js

Hi!

In order to workaround OCR bug which annoys a lot of people, can an interface administrator edit MediaWiki:OCR.js to use the fallback slower OCR, please? The secondary OCR system is already an automatic fallback when hOCR fails, but with the current bug, the script doesn’t see hOCR have failed, so it isn’t used.

The solution I propose is to force slower OCR using until someone fixes hOCR. You only have to comment the if condition in hocr_callback function, the return statement will prevent else block to execute. Turn

function hocr_callback(data) {
	if (data.error) {
		// Fallback to the slow way.
		disable_input(false);
		do_ocr();
		return;
	} else {
		// Checking if tb is disabled is required with chrome as ESC doesn't kill
		// the query.
		var tb = document.getElementById("wpTextbox1");
		if (tb.disabled) {
                        localStorage.ws_hOCR = data.text;

			var text = $(data.text).text();
			// Ugly as hell.
			text = text.replace(/[ ]*\n[ ]*/g, '\n')
				.replace(/\n\n\n\n/g, '@_@_@_@_@_@')
				.replace(/\n\n/g, '\n')
				.replace(/@_@_@_@_@_@/g, '\n\n')
				.replace(/\n\n\n/g, '\n\n');
			tb.value = $.trim(text);
		}
	}

	disable_input(false);
}

into

function hocr_callback(data) {
//	if (data.error) {
		// Fallback to the slow way.
		disable_input(false);
		do_ocr();
		return;
//	} else {
		// Checking if tb is disabled is required with chrome as ESC doesn't kill
		// the query.
		var tb = document.getElementById("wpTextbox1");
		if (tb.disabled) {
                        localStorage.ws_hOCR = data.text;

			var text = $(data.text).text();
			// Ugly as hell.
			text = text.replace(/[ ]*\n[ ]*/g, '\n')
				.replace(/\n\n\n\n/g, '@_@_@_@_@_@')
				.replace(/\n\n/g, '\n')
				.replace(/@_@_@_@_@_@/g, '\n\n')
				.replace(/\n\n\n/g, '\n\n');
			tb.value = $.trim(text);
		}
//	}

	disable_input(false);
}

—Pols12 (talk) 19:41, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

@-jkb-, Ooswesthoesbes, Zyephyrus: If you'll give me the rights, I'll do it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:54, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

• no objections as far, -jkb- (talk) 07:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
• If it works, why not :) @Koavf: you already have admin access, so you should be able to edit that page. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:22, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

  @Ooswesthoesbes: "You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason: Editing of sitewide CSS/JS/JSON files has recently been limited to members of the Interface administrators group. See m:Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS for more information." —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:47, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Done. Let's tool around with it and see how it works. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

@Koavf: Oh, that seems to be somthing new. I see Zyephyrus already fixed that for you :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 19:36, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ooswesthoesbes: Interface administration is fairly new--several months old but yes, it's a new division of user rights. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:43, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Probably missed that I guess. Don't use interface editing that often, so that might be the reason. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 20:24, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I had only copied a short part of the code: the rest should stay. In order to facilitate update, I just have created a sandbox: User:Pols12/OCR.js which can replace full content of MediaWiki:OCR.js. Koavf or other interface admin, can you fix again the message, please?

Sorry for being unclear previously. —Pols12 (talk) 21:53, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

@Pols12: Done You didn't do anything wrong--very helpful. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:11, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

It works now, thank you! —Pols12 (talk) 13:01, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

The "Interface administrators group": in the German WP this group is about one year old, but it wasn't introduced to all projects at the same time, I guess. -jkb- (talk) 23:14, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.

Recent changes

• All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can use setlang in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [154]

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20:03, 23 December 2019 (UTC)