User talk:Ged UK/Archives/2014/October
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The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter, Q3 2014
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 7, No. 3 — 3rd Quarter, 2014
Previous issue | Index | Next issue 
Project At a Glance
As of Q3 2014, the project has:
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Content
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 01 October 2014
- From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
- Dispatches: Let's get serious about plagiarism
- WikiProject report: Animals, farms, forests, USDA? It must be WikiProject Agriculture
- Traffic report: Shanah Tovah
- Featured content: Brothers at War
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.
Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. To help with translations, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre at Meta. Thank you!
Banned user speedy deletes
Ged, just to let you know that I disagree with you on Ethan Bearman. Banned user deletes say no substantial edits by others - I also looked thru the history and saw mostly maintenance taggings and nothing significant from anyone else. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
- Noted. Substantial is a difficult word to put a value on, especially on a short article. I may have erred too cautiously, but the AFD may as well run its course now. --GedUK 11:47, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
Deletion of article Kunwer Azlan
Hey Ged, I wanted to tell there's an admin named GBfan continuously deleting my article which meets all of wiki terms, kindly take a look on it. thankyou — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.110.109.145 (talk) 20:09, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
- Hi there! GBfan (talk · contribs) only deleted it once, the most recent time, of the many deletions it's had. If you want to have the deletion reviewed, you should raise it at Deletion Review. I can't really undo another admin's decision, especially when I might also have deleted it (though it's quite close to passing A7). --GedUK 12:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 08 October 2014
- In the media: Opposition research firm blocked; Australian bushfires
- Featured content: From a wordless novel to a coat of arms via New York City
- Traffic report: Panic and denial
- Technology report: HHVM is the greatest thing since sliced bread
The Signpost: 15 October 2014
- Op-ed: Ships—sexist or sexy?
- Arbitration report: One case closed and two opened
- Featured content: Bells ring out at the Temple of the Dragon at Peace
- Technology report: Attempting to parse wikitext
- Traffic report: Now introducing ... mobile data
- WikiProject report: Signpost reaches the Midwest
Expiring on or before 25 October 2014
Oscar the Grouch and Plagiarism? --George Ho (talk) 05:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've extended both. GedUK 12:22, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 October 2014
- Featured content: Admiral on deck: a modern Ada Lovelace
- Traffic report: Death, War, Pestilence... Movies and TV
- WikiProject report: De-orphanning articles—a huge task but with a huge team of volunteers to help
Weekly Shōnen Jump
Can you comment at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Weekly Shōnen Jump. Thanks. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 04:23, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Halloween cheer!
Hello Ged UK:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
– The Herald 12:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks, though being British, Hallowe'en is not something I celebrate! GedUK 13:05, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Extend PC time? --George Ho (talk) 03:38, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 October 2014
- Featured content: Go West, young man
- In the media: Wikipedia a trusted source on Ebola; Wikipedia study labeled government waste; football biography goes viral
- Maps tagathon: Find 10,000 digitised maps this weekend
- Traffic report: Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles