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Contents
- 1 HGould notability
- 2 Pending changes
- 3 Sockpuppet notice
- 4 TFD
- 5 Senate write-ins
- 6 User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and User:Tkguy/Asian fetish
- 7 Carl Brandon Society
- 8 Barnstar
- 9 Death of Osama bin Laden
- 10 Coverbind
- 11 About the edit
- 12 Regarding your edit summary about {{Web}}
- 13 Nescafe
- 14 Virginia Seismic Zone
- 15 Biggest Edit
- 16 Re: File Names
- 17 Apology
- 18 Rank Opinion
- 19 Dead link in article 'Padmanabhaswamy Temple'
- 20 Executive Order 13603
- 21 Talkback
- 22 Orphaned non-free media (File:Zante currants.jpg)
- 23 Richard Nixon talk page notice
- 24 Sandy Hook
- 25 Edit for Page: MS SuperStar Gemini
- 26 Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms, Requesting your assistance...
- 27 The Inferior
- 28 VE
- 29 VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
- 30 VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013
- 31 Dewey decimal
- 32 VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013
- 33 VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014
- 34 VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014
- 35 VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
- 36 VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014
- 37 VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014
- 38 Vote about MH370's state on template
- 39 VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
- 40 VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014
- 41 September 2014
- 42 book conditions
- 43 VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
- 44 VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014
- 45 VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014
- 46 Lack of Emergency Transmitter Message-AA-8501
- 47 VisualEditor News 2015—#1
- 48 VisualEditor News #2—2015
- 49 Heart and Glomerulus (kidney)
- 50 VisualEditor News #3—2015
- 51 VisualEditor News #4—2015
- 52 VisualEditor update
- 53 VisualEditor News #5—2015
- 54 Reference errors on 2 November
- 55 Ping
- 56 Disambiguation link notification for December 9
- 57 VisualEditor News #6—2015
- 58 Glossary of chess
- 59 Barnstar
- 60 VisualEditor News #1—2016
- 61 Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
- 62 Editing News #2—2016
- 63 Editing News #3—2016
- 64 General of the Armies
- 65 ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
- 66 Editing News #1—2017
- 67 I noticed you program in JavaScript...
- 68 Nomination for deletion of Template:Notable Women Generals in the U.S. Military
- 69 ArbCom 2017 election voter message
- 70 Editing News #1—2018
- 71 Syria 'bombing'
- 72 Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG listed at Redirects for discussion
- 73 Technical FYI/request
- 74 Question
- 75 Editing News #2—2018
- 76 ArbCom 2018 election voter message
HGould notability
It seems funny to me how you people reach consensus based on rumors. Neither Spuyten Duyvil nor Copper Beech Press are vanity presses. It shows up the amateurishness of this project, where living people can be cited on Wikipedia, then have you so-called editors "delete" their previous entries based on supposed non-notability... then the web contains this hanger-on site basically saying "this living person is not notable". The process is offensive & laughable.
Hhgould (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC).
- Getting published has nothing to do with notability. Please see WP:N, WP:PEOPLE, and WP:AUTHOR. The first has the general notability that applies to all articles. The second expands/contracts WP:N a little when articles are about people, the third is part of WP:PEOPLE but it adds additional ways an author can be notable. All of them are based on recognition or "notice" by others and not on what the subject does.
- I truly wish this was better understood. Many articles are created every day in good faith only to be deleted. Part of the problem is that it's a Wikipedia philosophy that there be no "gatekeepers." If each person had to run their article proposal a crew of experienced sets of eyes I believe there would be far fewer heartbreaks. Those people would be "gatekeepers" and so it's not done. However, any editor can request a review or feedback from experienced Wikipedians. We *want* more articles but also want them to be about notable subjects.
- In the welcome message at the top of your talk page there's a link on creating your first article. Step 5 is where someone can ask for an initial feedback and step six allows you to create an article where you can then run it across more eyes. Also in the welcome under getting started is "Getting mentored." Finally, the article creation wizard in the getting started section is excellent.
- If you look in my userspace at User:Marc Kupper/Park Foundation I was putting an article together. I thought a scholarship fund with nearly $400 million available would be notable. As I hunted for references and evidence of notability (step 4 in "creating your first article") I came to realize the fund is not notable. The article is parked in my userspace for now though at some point I'll move my findings to Talk:Park Foundation and hopefully someone will find the notability evidence we need for Wikipedia. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:16, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
- well isn't that nice. As far as I'm concerned my criticism still stands. The process is amateurish & offensive to persons. If you so-called editors & gatekeepers cannot come to firm decisions BEFORE you publish articles, the whole system is out of whack. In fact it is more than offensive. It is positively harmful to my professional standing as a writer. [User:Hhgould|Hhgould]] (talk) 15:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
- Henry, you are a Wikipedia editor exactly like I am. All of us, including editors with administrator status, and IP users that don't create an account, have equal standing and say when it comes to editing and comments on talk pages. Other than the IP user accounts, all editors can also create a new Wikipedia article and start working on them. Any person, including IP editors, can nominate an article for deletion and any person can participate in the discussion on if nominator's position is valid. All of us, and that includes IP users, also have equal say in developing consensus on what the various rules and guidelines should be and/or changing them. There simply are no "gatekeepers."
- In this case, an editor created an article for Henry Gould but either did not understand, or chose to ignore, Wikipedia's notability guidelines. At some point an editor noticed the article and that the subject did not appear to be notable. They can't delete the article but rather nominate it for deletion where still more editors look it over, and also try to locate evidence that the subject is notable. Many times the effort succeeds and the article is not deleted. Or, people agree that while the evidence is weak, that the article should be retained. If there is no agreement on if an article should be deleted then the default is that it is retained. Thus, the only articles that end up deleted are those where there is community agreement that the subject is not notable.
- If you have evidence that Henry Gould is notable per WP:N, WP:PEOPLE, or WP:AUTHOR then please document the evidence and the article will instantly be restored by one of the administrators. You then add the evidence to the article and at that point the article would never be deleted other than by someone challenging the evidence and showing that it's not valid. If you don't have evidence, but feel that WP:N ... WP:AUTHOR are unfair then you can try to develop consensus to have them changed.
- Please be aware of WP:COI. While you can create and/or edit an article about yourself doing so is discouraged. It's best to run proposals past a neutral third party. The welcome message on your talk page lists resources for locating these. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Pending changes
Notes to myself about the pending changes trial
- Help:Pending changes, Wikipedia:Pending changes (Terminology, Trial, sub-pages), and Wikipedia:Reviewing.
- Pages with pending changes (tagged), pages using pending changes, statitistics, log.
- Also see Special:ListGroupRights which lists the current rights assigned to groups of users and Wikipedia:User access levels which explains them.
- Wikipedia Signpost coverage includes:
- 31 Aug 2009 Flagged protection and patrolled revisions.
- 06 Jun 2010 "Pending changes" trial to start on June 14.
- 16 Jun 2010 Pending changes goes live.
- Pending Changes wiki is the development/test site. --Marc Kupper|talk 08:15, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Sockpuppet notice
I have created two sockpuppet accounts for testing the pending changes functions. User:Marc Kupper (sockpuppet1) is a confirmed user account and User:Marc Kupper (sockpuppet2) is an unconfirmed user. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
TFD
Hello, see this. sent by userbox maker —I-20the highway 02:25, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you - I removed the userbox from my page. It turned out I was the only one using it. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Senate write-ins
I reverted your edit to Lisa Murkowski, but ended up adding a clarification to your change. She and Thurmond would be the only successful candidates to win as write-ins against a candidate whose name appeared on the ballot. Knowland's election apparently involved all write-in candidates. The difference is that being listed on the ballot is a significant advantage, so Knowland's feat is a bit less significant, since he wasn't running against someone who was listed. JTRH (talk) 13:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- That makes sense to me. I saw what you did and think it would be better if we take the line you added out as it's entirely about Strom Thurmond which does not fit well in the lead for an article about Lisa Murkowski. We'd ignore Knowland in the Murkowski article and instead add the details that you brought up to the Write-in candidate article on why the Knowland write-in was atypical. Thus now we are nearly back to the original wording before my first edit about the write-ins. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and User:Tkguy/Asian fetish
Because you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asian fetish, you may be interested in subsequent discussion about these userspace drafts. I have nominated User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and User:Tkguy/Asian fetish for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asiaphile (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asian fetish (2nd nomination), respectively. Cunard (talk) 06:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you for the heads up. I added comments to both AFDs. --Marc Kupper|talk 11:33, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Carl Brandon Society
Hi Marc. Please provide referenced proof for the listed awards if you can, otherwise they may be deleted under WP:BLP. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 06:40, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
- I replied at Talk:Carl Brandon Society#referenced proof for the listed awards and credits. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Barnstar
The Original Barnstar | ||
This barnstar is awarded for the removal of irrelevant content on the article Nescafè, which many users would keep on the webpage for its (weak) link to the product. Happy editing! --Delta1989 (talk/contributions) 23:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC) |
Death of Osama bin Laden
Hi, there is a disagreement about how bin Laden was shot, whether it was by one person or by two, but there are enough sources saying it was by one person that it has to be included as a possibility. Special ops are well known to use the "double tap" technique so this seems plausible, but I know the CBS version says he was shot by two people. This requires more editing. Brmull (talk) 22:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry - I had not realized there was a dispute about the number of shooters. I'd seen news articles that did not mention the number at all. A couple of weeks ago a more detailed description of the raid was released that appeared to be reliable and had three shots (the first missed) with the SEALs then moving into the room where OBL was with the second and third SEALs shooting (the first pushed the daughter out of the way). Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to hunt down the articles to re-inspect them nor to find the dispute on the # of shooters. Though I removed the double-tap mention I was thinking at the time that SEALs likely train in a two person double-tap with one doing a center of mass shot to disable and freeze the target long enough for the second to make the kill. That's my own theory - no sources at all. :-) I'd personally lean towards three or four SEALs inserting themselves into the room with two shooting as these guys train for teaamwork and coordinated assaults. There's reliable-sources on how they train but unfortunately, that does not help at all in deciding if OBL was double-tapped.
- I see you undid my edit on Death of Osama bin Laden. I undid a similar edit I'd done to the Double tap article. I simply don't have time at the moment to put the care needed into sorting out the references and seeing if any seem reliable enough on the "double tap" point. Unfortunately, the media's run wild with theories from anonymous sources. Hopefully you have more time - I may check into this next weekend. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Marc, in the Double tap article I'm the IP-editor who brought up the subject of removing this, then called 'Famous Double Taps', section. I'm also the one who reverted your last revert. I did so, not because I don't believe OBL wasn't killed by a double tap, but because I thought this section, as it is right now, is irrelevant. Maybe if we (well someone) could elaborate on the fact of special units using the double tap, i.e. "Navy Seals have been trained to use..., in the case of OBLs assassination..." or something like that, it would contribute more to the article. I'm totally not qualified to do that and I'm not gonna revert this now, but that's just my two cents. I wrote this on the Double tap talk page as well. Regards 217.93.174.98 (talk) 01:19, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Coverbind
Thank you and I understand about the external link. I did not realize until after I edited it that the others were links to other Wikipedia articles. I am still learning and starting to create a new article for Coverbind that educates readers and is relevant to those topics.
You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Stacylstein (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
- Good luck with Coverbind. I took a look at Unibind plus VeloBind and got the impression those articles should not exist on Wikipedia as the subjects do not seem to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
About the edit
Hi,
I would like to point out that the valuation of temple assets is ongoing and not officially done. The reports in media are therefore speculative. The Supreme Court of India has asked an authority on valuation -Central Valuation Institute of Lucknow- to carry out the valuations as mentioned in the article. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 07:56, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
- I understand - My comments were not about official or unofficial valuations but rather that people had added two sentences to the article were not supported by the sources given.
- The first sentence I removed had was far above any of the valuations reported in the media, and did not provide a source at all. Most sources say the upper possible valuation is about 1 lakh crore or about USD$ 22 billion. Someone had added a sentence to the wikipedia article "Zee news reported that the value of the Ancient offerings made to the lord Padmanabhaswamy may be in excess of 500000 crore ( USD$ 100 Billion)." That was an extraordinary claim and needs excellent sources. There were no sources and so I deleted the sentence.
- The second item I removed gave a range of valuations of 60,000 crore to 1 lakh crore. It had two sources. However, the first source states "500 billion rupees" which would be 50,000 crore, not 60,000 crore where the was no support at all for the 1 lakh crore claim. The second source did not mention values. There was a second issue with this sentence in that it did not fit in with the overall flow of that section which is chronological (earliest to newest). A couple of paragraphs down from the sentence was a paragraph about the values that's well sourced and the Wikipedia content reflects what's in the sources. A third issue was this sentence was redundant. We already had a paragraph that discussed 50,000 crore to 1 lakh crore valuations and so there was no need for a sentence that repeated what was in the paragraph. It was because of all three things that I deleted the sentence.
- Just took a look at the sources for the section that's well sourced and saw that one of that has "Rs 1.2 lakh crore." I've updated that section to have ₹1.2 trillion (US$17 billion). --Marc Kupper|talk 08:47, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
- As it is, there are people who say that valuation in media is speculative.1, by former Justice S. Rajan who is an observer appointed by the Supreme Court. Anyways, the valuations are going on and one can not be sure of the wealth, even as the speculations do not consider antique value(though it is not a museum/auction house, it is a temple and I am not sure how the offerings to the deity will be 'valued').
- According to me, it should be mentioned that the valuations in media are speculative and in any case not reported by valuation authority to the Supreme Court as directed. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 09:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
- This news article says "The committee had not been asked to appraise the value the contents of the different vaults opened so far, and instead only make an inventory of the treasures in the temple." The article then says "But having got an estimate of the kind of valuables in the temple's cellars ... rough valuations put the wealth of the temple ..." Unfortunately, that news article did not say who is making these rough valuations, if the people making the valuations have access to the inventory, photographs, etc., and what their qualifications are as appraisers of value. It's possible the entire valuation saga is uninformed rumor. Much of it is speculative.
- Per this page gold is about Rs 2.2 million per kilogram. Assuming the value is somewhere between 300 billion and 1.2 trillion rupees we have between 137,221 kilograms to 548,885 kilograms (151 to 605 tons) of gold. I doubt that seven elderly men can lift and weigh 151 to 605 tons of material in the four days it took this story to go from zero to multiple billions of rupees. Thus the odds are high that all of the valuations are uninformed speculation. It'll be funny if the "official" valuation is 50 lakh rupees. Imagine all the press and breast beating about vanished wealth. :-)
- I don't have much available time today for Wikipedia editing. My main hope is that the Wikipedia article accurately reflect what the sources are reporting. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:43, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
- Exactly, the speculations are wild and there are many interested parties, like the state Govt., making a show of security measures trying to make a point that the wealth will be safe there, though the museum value of it over time is much more and legal(more legal than loot) perhaps.
- The court has asked a valuation institute for inventory valuation, not the committee - I agree with that. The committee is just making an inventory I think with proper proofs.
- As far as value of gold in weight is considered, it does not take into account its antique worth. Some of it is thousands of years old, others hundreds and so on. As also I mentioned, it is not auction-home/museum but as offerings of temple. So I don't know who will value what and how much. As I mentioned, such weight-based speculations are just speculations. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 05:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Regarding your edit summary about {{Web}}
Hi Marc. It does not matter much at all since your removal was proper but yes it did redirect to db-web, from 2006 to 2009.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:16, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Nescafe
Marc,
Last week, I tried to correct some er. vandalism on the Nescafe article which you promptly reverted. I sent you an e-mail about this (which you can now ignore because as you can see I now have a proper account). I think that I know what I did wrong to cause you to revert the change (i.e. did not explain why the change was made). I have also corrected a citation (which was a dead link), I am not totally sure what the retrieved date is. I guessed that it means the day that I found the correct citation i.e. today. Since this is the first time I have tried to contributte, I would appreciate it if you would let me know that everything is ok or if it is not, can we have a discussion?
Op47 (talk) 11:12, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, I did not see the e-mail and I also now realized I screwed up in reverting you. I read the "diff" backwards and though you were trying to add the name "Vernon Chapman" to the article without a citation. Had I spotted that you were removing it I likely would have checked the Nestle web sites. I just checked and sure enough, there's zero mention of Chapman.
- I did do a cleanup to your edit. Wikipedia allows multiple references to the same source using <ref name="some%20name">the usual ref stuff here</ref> and elsewhere in the article to use the same source you would use <ref name="some%20name"/> without needing to have a closing "</ref>." The ref you added was a duplicate of one already in the article and so I merged them. Note that the other "ref" has a sneaky little "/" at the end of it. The one that defines that named ref does not use the "/" and refs to the same source would use the "<ref .../>." version.
- I had some questions about the retrieved date myself. See Template talk:Cite web#What is the accessdate used for? for my question. While I'm still fuzzy on the value of the date it looks like you did the right thing in changing it to today's date as you also changed the URL.
- The entire Nescafé article is in really sad shape. I started to clean up the legal section but it's going to take hours that I don't have this weekend. I did discover when re-checking the name of who created the coffee that Nescafé themselves offer conflicting histories. The "Nescafé History" part of http://nescafe.com/coffee_history_en_com.axcms (identical page on nescafe.co.uk) says "Seven years later, they found the answer." However, the "The Origins of Nescafé" section of http://nescafe.com/coffee_origins_en_com.axcms (also on nescafe.co.uk) say "Eight years later, they found the answer." I updated the article to use "seven or eight years" and cited both Nescafé pages. It does not seem matter if we use nescafe.com or nescafe.co.uk for this one as both go to the same web server at 195.177.34.126. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Virginia Seismic Zone
So i noticed this chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Seismic_Zone#List_of_earthquakes and saw that the magnitudes were in no particular order so i decided that it would make more sense for them to be in order. Is there a tool to order thinhs like in MS Word or is that something that I would have to do myself? Dan653 (talk) 02:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- It looks like someone converted the list into a table, probably by hand, and made the table sortable. Is that what you wanted? I'd need to look at the edit history to see who did that. The table was not there yesterday. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- It was this edit where someone converted the list into a table. I'll do one cleanup to the table to make the date's sortable. As for a "tool" - I suspect it had to have been done by hand. The problem was the old format was free format. There was some consistency in that the date was first and separated from the text with a colon. If the magnitude was known it was last and prefaced with "Magnitude ". There was no clean separator between the location and description. The editor could have used a tool such as sed to convert the old list formatting into a table but for a list this small I suspect it was done manually. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:40, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- It's possible you may not know about how to sort the table. Click on the arrows to the right of the header names. The thing has two small arrows at first and it turns out you can select top/down or bottom/up by clicking one side or the other. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:57, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
No I didnt know that though, thnks. Though I don't get what sed is... Dan653 (talk) 01:29, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Did you see the "sed" article on Wikipedia? For example, if look look at the edit that converted the table. You will see that the old list had:
- An asterisk "*"
- The date formatted as "month day, year" or "month day-day, year"
- A colon followed by a space ": "
- The location and sometimes a description
- Some entries have a period or semicolon, space, "Magnitude ", space, digit, dot, digit.
- Some entries have a <ref>... after the Magnitude stuff
- The entry for May 16, 2009 has the ref split over multiple lines.
- Here's three sed lines that deals with that list and converts it into the core of a wikitable
s/^\* *\([A-Z][a-z]\+ [0-9-]\+, [0-9]\{4\}\): \(.*\)/|-\n| \1|| ~magnitude~|| \2/
s/\(.*|| \)~magnitude~\(||.*\)[\.;] Magnitude \([0-9]\.[0-9]\)\(.*\)/\1\3\2\4/
s/~magnitude~/unknown/
- There's still some manual cleanup needed but 90% of the work was done including the moving of the magnitude from the middle or end of the line into column 2 of the table. The first sed line recognizes the basic layout and converts it into a wikitext table format. It puts the string "~magnitude~" in the second column. The second line parses the buffer and for those that have a period or semicolon followed by " Magnitude " followed by a digit, dot, digit, it drops the digit, dot, digit in the place of the "~magnitude~" we left earlier and deletes the old " Magnitude ..." stuff so that we have the location/description text followed by our references. The third line only matters if the second line was unable to find a magnitude and changes the "~magnitude~" to "unknown". Conveniently enough, I did not need to do anything special about that entry for May 16, 2009. Sed ends up just copy/pasting the extra lines into the result and it ends up working fine in the resulting wikitable.
- Did you see the "sed" article on Wikipedia? For example, if look look at the edit that converted the table. You will see that the old list had:
- The only thing I need to do by hand now is to scan the text and for those items where we have both a location and comments/description and to stick a "||" between the two. I doubt that task could be automated but at least the task is as simple for the human as reading the text and deciding if and where to insert a "||" in it. I then add the wikitable header and footer and am done. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:01, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Biggest Edit
This is my biggest edit so far, I think everything looks good just wanted ur opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2011_Battle_of_Tripoli&action=historysubmit&diff=446591448&oldid=446578676.
- That looks pretty good. One comment is that per WP:REPEATLINK we generally only wikilink the first instance of a word. Thus in that table we'd only link surface-to-air missile once, tank once, etc. If it's a large article then sometimes you will see a second wikilink for the same word, particularly if it's one that was not used often in the article. I went ahead with that cleanup to the table plus got rid of the word "tank" and "radar" after every instance of those in the table as they were in dedicated columns. It may be better to have "tank" once on the first line rather than linking it in the header the way I did. The General points on linking style section says "Section headings should not themselves contain links" though is silent on table headings. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:35, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- I added the between the day and month to prevent them from wrapping onto two lines and added a
between the month and <ref> to force a wrap at that spot. It was looking ugly to see "22" over "August[124]" and so now it's "22" over "22 August" over "[124]". --Marc Kupper|talk 04:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
K thnks for the tip on style and the wiki markup language. Dan653 (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Re: File Names
Message added 07:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC). You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Apology
I feel as though I owe you an apology; Let me explain why.
I just read through Talk:Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden/Archive_4#Take_2 and spotted your comments about referencing problems in the article and how the edit notice seemed to support a certain style. I created the edit notice, and to be honest I had no idea we had different styles when I added it to the death of bin laden article. It was for me an attempt to make sure that our editors would not be stuck gong through an infinitely vast number of 404 error pages attempting to track down sources for the information then being added at a rather frantic rate to the article. If I had known it would create trouble for you or others on the page I would have refrained from adding the notice and simply accepted the fact that later editors would have to do more work to find and ensure the citations were accurate. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:56, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you TomStar81. That was a moderately sticky situation as we had a number of editors (maybe just a couple) insisting that a particular citation form be used. I did not have a opinion for which form should be used but was concerned that they wanted to leave warning notices on the talk pages of people who used list-style references. Many of the editors at the time were newbies and I saw no reason to bite them for struggling with references as they attempted to copy the list-style that a third of the article was using. Your role was apparently accidental. --Marc Kupper|talk 10:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Rank Opinion
Could use your opinion at Talk:General of the Armies. -OberRanks (talk) 18:07, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
- I just administratively sectioned one of your comments because, on my browser, the page break created a very large gap of white space on the screen. If this distorts what you were trying to say, please change it back and I offer my apologies. -OberRanks (talk) 00:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
- That's fine - I was surprised you, or anyone, got a white gap so large as to be disconcerting. It was supposed to be a one blank line gap. I knew that gap would be 1.5 times larger than the standard inter-paragraph gap but did not realize it would appear so huge to someone that they would be compelled to edit my comment. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution.
- I was trying to keep the second paragraph of my response at the same indent level as the first so that someone could see that it was the same person much like how this second paragraph is visually connected to the previous paragraph.
This is a third paragraph spaced from the previous paragraph using the extra blank line gap I'd used on the GoAUS talk page. There's an extra gap between this paragraph and the previous. This fourth paragraph is properly spaced but someone doing a view-source will have a "WFT" moment should they try to reply to the first part. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
- I was trying to keep the second paragraph of my response at the same indent level as the first so that someone could see that it was the same person much like how this second paragraph is visually connected to the previous paragraph.
Dead link in article 'Padmanabhaswamy Temple'
Hi. The article 'Padmanabhaswamy Temple' has a dead link that could not be repaired automatically. Can you help fix it?
- You added this in July 2011.
- The bot tested this link on 27 March, 29 March, 31 March, 7 April and today, but it never worked.
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This link is marked with {{Dead link}} in the article. Please take a look at that article and fix what you can. Thank you!
PS- you can opt-out of these notifications by adding {{Bots |deny=BlevintronBot}} to your user page or user talk page.
BlevintronBot (talk) 11:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Executive Order 13603
Hello. You recently removed most of the content from the article on Executive Order 13603, noting that there was no ref. I looked at the first link that you removed. It was to an op-ed article in Forbes. A quick scan revealed that much or all the the removed content was in that Forbes article. Forbes is a well-known magazine. So, I think the material should be put back, but with some of the "attitude" removed. Kdammers (talk) 07:30, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
- I've replied to this at Talk:Executive Order 13603#Comment on additions by 66.191.70.10. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:14, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Talkback
Message added 00:06, 11 November 2012 (UTC). You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Toddst1 (talk) 00:06, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free media (File:Zante currants.jpg)
Thanks for uploading File:Zante currants.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 06:01, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
- Deletion is fine - I've added comments at Talk:Zante currant#Sun-Maid image and File talk:Zante currants.jpg about this. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Richard Nixon talk page notice
I have added a section on the talk page for the article Richard Nixon titled "Section deleted on 13 December 2012." Please share your thoughts on the talk page. Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 16:41, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Sandy Hook
I noticed you supported having an international reactions page/section on Sandy Hook previously. I noticed you supported a small section, but maybe you've changed your mind? A page has been made and it's been tagged for deletion. It's going to be a very close consensus. Could you lend your support again here?--199.231.184.178 (talk) 09:37, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Edit for Page: MS SuperStar Gemini
Hi
Thanks for taking the effort to verify the edits. I have received verbal information from a tour agency personnel on the 'try-out' cruises. I apologise for one mistake where I included Dec 30 2012 to the list of 'try-out' cruises. I have a scanned copy of the price plans for SuperStar Gemini for December 28, 29 and 31 2012. Do let me know how to pass the scanned copy to you so you could give me a hand in placing the source for the new edit.
Thanks!
Gibchua (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)Gibchua
Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms, Requesting your assistance...
Hey Marc, I'm oping to recruit you to help cleanup many of the gun, firearm, and related articles along with any others that should fall under the auspices of the Firearm Project.
As you may already be aware, many of the gun and related articles are a mess. POV pushing, inconsistency, factual inaccuracy, lousy or no references, et. al. I've corresponded with the Coordinator of the Firearm Project to use the page to organize the overall efforts to clean up these articles and I'm hoping you'll be interested in joining in.
How this started was with a comparison of the Gun and Firearm articles and some of their derivatives like Gun#History, Firearm#History, History of the firearm, History of gunpowder, Gun powder, etc. There is no consistency in the use of definitions, references, or even entire History sections from article to article.
I'm going to ask others for their assistance, some of the usual suspects from the Sandy Hook, NRA, Wayne LaPierre articles and such. For the time being, we have the run of the Firearm Project page. Any effort you can contribute, however big or small, will be appreciated.
Please feel free to spread the word to others. Best regards, --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 06:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you - my usual model is to research something "deep" to line up the sources. At present the only gun/firearm related project on my personal plate is Magazine (firearms) vs. Clip (ammunition) and to see if I can find sufficient ammunition to have the word "controversially" deleted from a sentence such as "The detachable magazine is often controversially referred to as a clip." The articles used to say that using "clip" was in error but these days the wording has been softened to "controversially." At present the research direction is to see if I can find WP:RS for when a "magazine" started being called a "clip" in popular culture.
- As for a generalized cleanup - good luck! I've seen examples of controversy in the "letters" columns for gun and hunting magazines from the early to mid 1900s. Wikipedia is the current forum for expressing opinion (backed by WP:RS). In some cases I suspect the best we can do is to document that there is disagreement while also working to spot and filter out fringe disagreement. There's a large body of gun lore that was developed anecdotically, one person at a time, in the field. You will always find someone who disagrees with a point. As much of it is anecdotal a person who disagrees on Wikipedia can declare the original report "not a reliable source."
- An area that seems easier to work on in Wikipedia is descriptions of historical development. For example, I like M16 rifle#History and to a lesser extent AR-15#History. I noticed that the histories do not use a recently developed term, "battle rifle" though I suspect it would be useful if people understood the difference between "battle" and "assault" rifles. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Hey Marc, thank you, I appreciate you being straightforward about the situation. Yes, I'd have to agree that's its somewhat of a daunting one, but I think its worthwhile. In my own personal "library arsenal" I have a nearly complete collection of the NRA Heritage library. It consists of many of the long thought, truly authoritative books on various subjects involving all types of firearms, shooting, reloading, and other related topics. I'm happy to do searches for legit info in these books to back up our statements. I know it won't be easy, but I'd like to see how much of the "clutter" we can eliminate or organize. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 01:54, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
The Inferior
You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
--Bejnar (talk) 18:57, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
VE
It took me a while to understand what I was supposed to be looking at :) I suggest you use the new notification system instead, which directly pings @people: just link to their username (i.e. User:Marc Kupper), and they'll notice! I am looking at your reply now. Regards, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
- User:Elitre (WMF), I'll have to get used to using WP:MENTION. Part of the issue is that normally I focus 100% on article content in talk page messages. The new system seems too much like social networking which runs into WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK.
- Thank you for relaying the VE bug reports into Bugzilla. --Marc Kupper|talk 16:40, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
- You're welcome. I am sure you can appreciate that the new system allows you not to waste your time pasting Talkback templates into other people's talk - especially if the answer you are pointing to is merely a Yes/No or similar. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
- I use WP:Twinkle - to add a talkback notice on your page I selected TW / TB from the toolbar. Twinkle takes care of opening the page in edit mode, adding the new section with the talkback template, etc. The work on my part is about the same. With the new notification system I need to copy/paste "Elitre (WMF)" from your message to me into this message and also structure the message in such a way that you get mentioned. With Talkback the message content can stay on topic. Afterwards, if I think someone needs to be notified of the message I usually control-click on the word "Talk" for that person (which opens it in a new browser tab), TW / TB, and normally copy/paste in the section title so the person gets a direct link.
- You're welcome. I am sure you can appreciate that the new system allows you not to waste your time pasting Talkback templates into other people's talk - especially if the answer you are pointing to is merely a Yes/No or similar. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
- So far I have not figured out how to manage the WP:MENTION notifications. For example, the section above this on my talk page is a talkback that someone left me in April. I left it there as a reminder to myself. If I wanted, I could add a note on my talk page explaining why I left that talkback on the page plus other notes explaining my progress on a project that resulted from it. I have not figured out how to file, add notes/comments to, and/or delete items from Special:Notifications. Special:Notifications also does not offer "View source" meaning if I wanted to copy/paste one of the notification messages onto one of my user pages I'll need to convert HTML back into wikicode. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:17, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
Did you know?
You can create and edit multi-level lists in VisualEditor. The first two icons let you set or remove list formatting. The last two are used to increase or decrease the indentation level. This can also be done from the keyboard, by using Tab ↹ to indent the list and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ to outdent it. For more information, read Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide. |
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "Enable the visual editor. It will be available in the following namespaces: $1
".
The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).
There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).
Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.
For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013
Did you know?
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new feature (currently working only in some browsers), "Switch to source editing". By choosing this item, you can move directly into the wikitext source editor without saving. This is particularly useful if you need to make significant changes to tables, image galleries, or other elements that are not currently supported. For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide. |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.
A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
- Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
- Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
- Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
- File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
- Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
- Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
- Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
- Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through
/wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit
and/w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit
both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915). - Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
- Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
- Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
- Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
- Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
- Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
- Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
- Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid (
$wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies
set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)
Looking ahead:
- VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
- Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
- In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Dewey decimal
Thanks for the notification. I have made edits. These were however merely Stiki vandalism reversions. What is the copyvio? Could you help me understand the issue? Capitalismojo (talk) 04:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
- User:Capitalismojo, I tried to answer your question at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Dewey Decimal_classes#What is the copyvio?. Did that address the question? --Marc Kupper|talk 05:01, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013
Did you know?
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new drop-down menu that contains all character formatting: bold, italics, subscript, superscript, strikethrough, computer code, underline, and the ability to remove all formatting from text. For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read the user guide. |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
- Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
- Auto-numbered external links like [1] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
- Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
- There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
- Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
- It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally. To do so, append
?veaction=edit
to the end of the page name. For example, changehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
tohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit
to open a random page in VisualEditor. This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.
Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014
Did you know?
To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter). |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
- meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
- You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog –
__NOTOC__
and__FORCETOC__
as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and__NOEDITSECTION__
as a checkbox (bug 57166). - The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
- Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide was updated recently to show some new and upcoming features.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
Subscriptions to this newsletter are managed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Please add or remove your name to change your subscription settings. If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:07, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014
Did you know?
You can easily re-use references by going to the Insert menu, choosing "Reference", and clicking on "Use an existing reference" in the lower left corner. A list of all references, their numbers, and their ref names (if any) will be shown. You can search the list for any author, title, date, or other keyword. Read the user guide for more information. |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.
The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.
- The main priority is redesigning the reference dialog, with the goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs and URLs and streamlining the process. Current concept drawings are available at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
- A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog. When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name. If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g.
==section headings==
in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML. - You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext. It will see significant improvements at a later date.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu is being redesigned. Your feedback on the special character inserter is still wanted, especially if you depend on Wikipedia's character inserters for your normal editing rather than using the ones built into your computer.
- You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu (three bars next to the Cancel button) (bug 52844 ).
- If you edit categories, your changes will now display correctly after saving the page (bug 48560 ).
- Saving the page should be faster now (bug 59660 ).
- Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at bug 51734 .
Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting (dir="rtl"
).
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:21, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
Did you know?
The template dialog has been simplified to make it faster and easier to add parameter data. Read the user guide for more information. |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
- The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (bug 54361 ).
- Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
- The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has been slightly redesigned, to introduce larger buttons. Your suggestions for more significant changes to the special character inserter are still wanted.
- The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like
__STATICREDIRECT__
,__[NO]INDEX__
and__
[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__
, and more. New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. - It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
- VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
- You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+S shortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
- After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
- Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.
The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright
size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.
Looking ahead: Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl"
) may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on 19 April 2014 at 2000 UTC. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014
Did you know?
You can use VisualEditor to make redirects. First, remove any unwanted content from the page. Then go to the "Page options" menu (next to "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽") and choose the "Page settings" item. Click the box to "Redirect this page to". In the box, type in the name of the page that you want to redirect this page to. You can also set or remove categories for the redirect in the "Page options" menu. Read the user guide for more information. |
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.
- In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
- You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing Return. This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
- VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
- When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
- The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
- The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
- If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "Move" item is currently housed). On the English Wikipedia, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "Edit source" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "Edit source" and "View history" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
- After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.
Looking ahead: A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting (dir="rtl"
) will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Monday, 19 May 2014 at 18:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this on your own page, subscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.
Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.
- There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:
<span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>
. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis. - The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
- The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
- TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
- Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
- Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
- Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
- In the "Media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
- There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
- There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "Save page" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
- The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
- At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.
Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Vote about MH370's state on template
Hello, Marc Kupper! I have noticed how you have been supporting the idea of not keeping MH370 as the deadliest accident in the Template:Aviation accidents and incidents in 2014. Well, there is now a vote going on in the most recent section of the template's talk page. We are going to decide exactly what to do. I urge you to go there as soon as possible and vote. The more, the better! Thank you! -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 18:24, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you Sim(ã)o(n). You may want to take a look at WP:CANVAS. I've been pretty busy with a project lately and will be working tonight until midnight.
- One of the things I'd been wanting to do is to read the entire argument carefully. Please be aware that we can agree to anything. If we agree that it was an alien abduction then that's what goes on the template. Something more likely is an agreement that MH370 is likely the deadliest incident (so far) for 2014 and the deadliest by far for the Boeing 777. We could agree do that while also agreeing there is no direct evidence there were any fatalities at all. I need to re-review the Inmarsat data to see if there's a path through it that allows for the aircraft to be put down on land. The Inmarsat assumption is the aircraft maintained a constant speed, altitude, and heading. The goal is if we throw all that out is it possible to come up with the same ping response times that Inmarsat observed.
- Thus, I wanted to read the entire thread. The last time I looked it was getting rather long and contentious... --Marc Kupper|talk 01:46, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- OK. I am amazed, however, that you voted for MH370 to be placed as the deadliest. I mean, if there is no evidence of their deaths, why assuming everyone onboard is in fact dead? I think it's contradictory that you would mark it as the deadliest, and yet also say those deaths are not confirmed. Imagine you're in a hospital to visit a relative of yours, and the doctor comes in and says: "I haven't seen your relative yet, but he's dead. I'm absolutely sure of that." Would you find that credible? Wouldn't you demand evidence that he is dead? What if everyone began preparing a funeral, with no-one ever having seen his body? It doesn't make sense, does it? Well, that's what's being done here.
- If you would like to read the entire argument, I recommend that you start with the coloured resume I published on the third section of the template's talk page. Just to begin with.
- I took a look at WP:CANVAS. I don't think that's what I'm doing... I actually tried to stay neutral in my announcement. Of course that, based on your comments, I could guess where you would vote, but it was still your decision. Do you think I have influenced it in any way? I could be more careful the next time I do this, but I don't think my announcement was biased. Well, thanks for the warning, anyway! -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 15:38, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- Sim(ã)o(n), you asked "Do you think I have influenced it in any way?" Yes, you mentioned WP:NPOV in your argument. I looked at that policy and was thinking about if the relatives of the MH370 passengers/crew are a "significant view" that needed to be included when deciding on the wording. I flip/flopped a few times. I then considered that it's common that relatives/friends will be in disbelief that someone is dead or a criminal. In this case the relatives are pinning their hopes on a lack of hard evidence. However, the lack evidence of a crash with multiple fatalities is not evidence there were or are survivors. The searchers are looking for where the aircraft crashed. They are looking for its final resting place. I realized when thinking about the template debate that it's drifting into WP:OR or WP:SYNTH territory for us to parse those statements and to say "there have been crashes with survivors" or "the final resting place may a hanger next to an airstrip." Those ideas are not being brought up by the people directly connected with the search. If something showed up that gave a hint that there were or are survivors then the searcher's focus will change and we can update the template and article.
- On the flip side - is there anything that would influence you? --Marc Kupper|talk 18:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- OK, wait! There's something I don't understand. I asked if I may have influenced your opinion with my announcement, and you said: "Yes, you mentioned WP:NPOV in your argument." Do you mean my announcement rather than my argument? I still don't understand how I may have done that. Anyways, though, I'm sorry if I did it. Let me apologise.
- Sim(ã)o(n), I had been putting off looking at the arguments to better understand them. Your announcement prompted me to put some time into the matter. I saw that the announcement was slanted which prompted the WP:CANVAS mention but did not influence things one way or another on my end.
- One comment about your writing style is to try avoiding WP:WALLOFTEXT and WP:MWOT. Often when looking over a debate thread people will skim the walls rather than reading/parsing the entire message. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- OK, wait! There's something I don't understand. I asked if I may have influenced your opinion with my announcement, and you said: "Yes, you mentioned WP:NPOV in your argument." Do you mean my announcement rather than my argument? I still don't understand how I may have done that. Anyways, though, I'm sorry if I did it. Let me apologise.
- I still don't quite see how my announcement could have been biased, but OK. Again, I'm sorry, and I will be more careful in the future.
- I have thought about that maybe I write comments that are too long... I always try to shorten them as I find reasonable. Normally, I try not to post any comment that occupies more than the editing window. I take that as a reference, but maybe that's not good enough. I keep trying to do my best about it. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- Now, there is a lack of hard evidence, isn't there? They're not necessarily pinning their hopes in it, but perhaps just thinking rationally, like: "Wait... If the plane did crash, why can't they show me it did?" Pretty obvious, right? Like: "Hey, your relative, who was onboard MH370, is dead. The plane crashed with no survivors." "Um... OK... Can I see his body?" "Uh... no." "Can I see the plane wreckage?" "No." "Can I see the bodies of anyone else who was in the crashed plane?" "No." "Can you tell me where it crashed?" "No." "Can you show me any photo or video of the crash?" "No." "So... How can you guys be so sure that it crashed and that my relative is dead?" Isn't this line of thought quite obvious?
- The best available evidence puts the aircraft in the middle of the ocean with no possible landing sites at the time it ran out of fuel. Had it glided to a landing on the water that would trigger the ELT and within seconds Cospas-Sarsat would have reported its location to within 1 or 2km radius. That glide and water landing would have needed a skilled human pilot. If a pilot was available then he/she should have triggered the manually operated ELT units long before they ran out of fuel. A pilot could also have dialed 7700 or 7500 on their transponder. Either action can be done by a pilot or crew member in a couple of seconds and would have resulted in instant attention.
- If an aircraft runs out of fuel then the engines stop generating electrical and hydraulic power. You loose power to the instrument panel, the autopilot, etc. The pilot is supposed to reconfigure things to route power from emergency sources to essential control systems. Without this the aircraft is configured wrong for gliding. It stalls and starts falling. If an aircraft does a vertical dive into land or water it's destroyed so quickly that the impact triggered ELT never has a chance to send a signal. A typhoon then went through the area. We did not start looking in the southern Indian ocean until six days after the aircraft was lost. That combination of events apparently resulted in no confirmed debris from the aircraft being located and recovered. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- Now, there is a lack of hard evidence, isn't there? They're not necessarily pinning their hopes in it, but perhaps just thinking rationally, like: "Wait... If the plane did crash, why can't they show me it did?" Pretty obvious, right? Like: "Hey, your relative, who was onboard MH370, is dead. The plane crashed with no survivors." "Um... OK... Can I see his body?" "Uh... no." "Can I see the plane wreckage?" "No." "Can I see the bodies of anyone else who was in the crashed plane?" "No." "Can you tell me where it crashed?" "No." "Can you show me any photo or video of the crash?" "No." "So... How can you guys be so sure that it crashed and that my relative is dead?" Isn't this line of thought quite obvious?
- I'm not an expert on this subject, but I'll comment with what I know. How do you guys know the plane is probably in the Indian Ocean? I know, it's the pings received by Inmarsat. But what kind of pings are those? I have never heard about that! I have watched several episodes of Mayday, and I have never heard of any kind of satellite being used to track down planes! How reliable is that system? What kind of thing is that?
- Sim(ã)o(n), the word "ping" is a generic term. If the satellite link has been idle for an hour the satellite's ground control station sends a "hello, are you still there?" message. The message goes from the ground control station up to the satellite and is relayed back down to the Inmarsat terminal on board the aircraft. When the terminal receives a "hello, are you still there?" it responds back with "yes" which is sent up to the satellite and then relayed back to the ground station. The shorthand name for this is "ping."
- The ground station measures the time interval between sending "hello, are you still there?" and receiving "yes." This interval gets translated into the distance from the satellite to the terminal. The distance will be between 26,191 to 26,496 miles and the measurement is accurate to within 500 feet. They use the distance to draw an imaginary circle on the globe that's exactly that distance from the satellite. Inmarsat does not know where on the circle the terminal is but as MH370 could only fly so fast and has a limited range they could rule out parts of the circle. The arc that's been shown in media reports is the portion of the circle that could possibly have been reached by MH370 in 7.5 hours before it ran out of fuel.
- There ended up being seven pings resulting in seven arcs. The next part of the project was to see if it was possible to draw straight line from the last known position of MH370 that intersected the seven arcs at the correct times. It turned out there were several possible lines that are nearly side by side. The lines run roughly north/south. The westernmost and westernmost lines form the left and right sides of the search box. The possible fuel duration, and the arcs cutting through the area form the upper and lower sides of the box. Fortunately, there happened to be a ping 8.5 minutes before the aircraft ran out of fuel and the aircraft's attempt to send a "something is badly wrong here" message also resulted in enough traffic that they were able to draw another arc very near the one from the last ping.
- Initially the box was still fairly large and too large to be scanned in a pinger locator before the pinger battery failed. Experts who understood the fuel range at various speeds and altitudes very well got involved and using that they were able to create a new search box that's in the upper/right (northeast) part of the original box. The pinger locator focused on that area.
- There are no islands in the search area. The nearest land is 1000 miles away and is Australia which would have seen MH370 on radar had it turned in that direction.
- Some time ago, I think I watched part of an interview on TV with a Portuguese expert on the subject, and, if I'm not wrong, he said these kinds of pings aren't too reliable: they are just signals that are received by satellites, and the satellite can determine, more or less, with a rather limited degree of accuracy, from where and from which plane it came. If that's true, and you might confirm that for me, the investigators may be searching in the completely wrong location.
- The pings are fairly reliable. I could do a longer explanation but it's very technical. I don't think they are looking in the completely wrong location but they will need to re-review the available data and see if they can refine the box. Much of the data that went into defining the search box has been made public. So far no one has said "here's a way to interpret the data that constructs a new box over here."
- Some time ago, I think I watched part of an interview on TV with a Portuguese expert on the subject, and, if I'm not wrong, he said these kinds of pings aren't too reliable: they are just signals that are received by satellites, and the satellite can determine, more or less, with a rather limited degree of accuracy, from where and from which plane it came. If that's true, and you might confirm that for me, the investigators may be searching in the completely wrong location.
- In fact, the maps show the most likely routes as arcs of a circumference.
- Not really - the arc shape comes from the map projection. The maps that the media shows are flat. The aircraft is assumed to be traveling in a straight line on the globe but when they project that onto a flat map the track looks curved.
- In fact, the maps show the most likely routes as arcs of a circumference.
- What is the ELT? What is that Corpas-Sarsat? To within 2 km? What if there was no-one within 2 km to receive that message?
- The ELT are Emergency locator transmitters. MH370 had at least five. One of them is attached to the airframe and activates on impact. The antenna for it is on the roof just before the tail. Usually an aircraft's destruction is slow or incomplete enough that this unit has time to send a message. If an aircraft does a high speed dive into the ground or water the ELT is destroyed before it can transmit. Two ELT are hand operated. They look like large flashlights and are stored on the wall next to the main exits. If you toss one out the aircraft onto the ground or water then it starts sending a signal. The remaining ELT are attached to the emergency exit slides. The slides also do double duty as life rafts. If you land on water you activate the slides and can more or less walk (short jump) from the aircraft to the raft. The ELT start transmitting when the rafts hit the water. These are the same style as the manually activated units meaning you can turn them on and also remove it from the raft if needed. If MH370 had done a glide/landing onto water then all five ELT will be going off once the doors are opened, slides activated, and the crew tosses the manual ELT out onto the water.
- What is the ELT? What is that Corpas-Sarsat? To within 2 km? What if there was no-one within 2 km to receive that message?
- Cospas-Sarsat is a worldwide network of satellites that continuously listens for ELTs. The instant an ELT goes off Corpas-Sarsat is able to triangulate its location within 1 to 2 km. All it takes is a single fraction of a second signal from the ELT. In practice, the ELT keeps transmitting until the battery runs out. Modern ELT also contain a GPS meaning Corpas-Sarsat knows the location with in a couple of feet.
- How would changing the transponder code make anything different? The plane didn't even appear on radar! This being, how could changing the transponder code change the situation? What if there was a terrorist onboard who caused the plane to land on an island?
- Had this been a normal emergency the flight crew would have immediately dialed 7500 (hijacking), 7600 (radio failure), or 7700 (emergency). They were still within range of Malaysian radar at the time and would have resulted in instant scrambling of resources. My point is, the transponder was instead turned off. That could be a flight crew action, a hijacker that was able to quickly gain control, or an event such as major power outage or fire. All of these lower the probability that the aircraft was then landed safely somewhere.
- How would changing the transponder code make anything different? The plane didn't even appear on radar! This being, how could changing the transponder code change the situation? What if there was a terrorist onboard who caused the plane to land on an island?
- The plane travelled for hours, and no-one can be sure exactly where.
- The "where" is known reasonably well. It is either in the southern Indian ocean or central Asia. Asia is much much less likely.
- The plane travelled for hours, and no-one can be sure exactly where.
- My father finds it impossible for nobody to know where the plane is in 2014, and he has a point:
- It is possible as MH370 is missing! :-)
- he says today there are smartphones that can be located by a GPS system. Why hasn't anyone tried to locate the smartphones of the passengers? He says there is today all kinds of technology necessary to find planes.
- Cell phones rely on cell phone towers. Their range is one to five miles. Also, the coverage of a tower is out to the side of the tower and not up into the air though some signal leaks up into the air. It's likely that the search aircraft include a cell tower which will report on phones found in the area. As the aircraft is up in the air their range will be further, possibly out to 45 miles meaning a search aircraft can monitor an up to 90 mile wide swath for phones. Unfortunately, searchers did not realize they needed to look in the southern Indian Ocean until nearly a week after MH370 disappeared. A cell phone that's attempting to find a tower drains its battery in less than a day.
- My father finds it impossible for nobody to know where the plane is in 2014, and he has a point:
- He even says that in the 1990s, the president of the United States acknowledged that the US had heat-seeking missiles that could search for any missiles the Soviet Union would launch, and destroy them in mid-air, destroying all of the USSR's efforts to launch missiles at the US; and he rhetorically asks if it is really possible that, more than 20 years later, no-one is able to tell where a plane is.
- An ICBM or spacecraft requires so much energy that you can easily see its flight from 200 to 300 miles away. An aircraft practically invisible compared to an ICBM.
- He even says that in the 1990s, the president of the United States acknowledged that the US had heat-seeking missiles that could search for any missiles the Soviet Union would launch, and destroy them in mid-air, destroying all of the USSR's efforts to launch missiles at the US; and he rhetorically asks if it is really possible that, more than 20 years later, no-one is able to tell where a plane is.
- He says this is completely ridicule, and everyone is making us look like fools; and that it is very likely that someone is hiding something from us by turning our attention away from what really happened. What do you think?
- I have seen no evidence that would point to anything other than that MH370 turned west and then went south until it ran out of fuel. People can say whatever they believe. I ignore all that and look to see if there's any evidence that backs up the claims. If there is none I just file the claim away as an interesting theory. One of the things I've spent a career doing is extracting signals from noise. I'm not surprised that a 777 can disappear.
- He says this is completely ridicule, and everyone is making us look like fools; and that it is very likely that someone is hiding something from us by turning our attention away from what really happened. What do you think?
- I don't think there is any evidence for the crash. Don't give me technical explanations, because I'm not an expert to understand it. I just use common sense. No evidence is no evidence. Period. Circumstantial evidence merely indicates something is likely, but not certain. What if there was someone in the plane who caused the plane to land somewhere? What if that Inmarsat signal is misinterpreted? Is there any certainty that it can't be? Is a fatal crash in the ocean really the only possibility? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- There is direct evidence that MH370 crashed in the middle of the southern Indian ocean with all lives being lost. Failure to locate the crash scene does not mean the aircraft did not crash.
- The aircraft failed to respond to human and machine queries. This is the first clue that something is very wrong.
- The copilot's cell phone is pinged by a tower on the western coast of the Malaysian peninsula. This is far off the planned course and also not an area the aircraft would have flown to had they lost the ability to communicate.
- That cell phone ping allowed investigators to accurately place the aircraft and to confirm that an unidentified aircraft seen on radar was MH370. Radar tracks the aircraft out to northwest of Indonesia. I'll need to find the map but I believe they saw it turning south on radar.
- Shortly after it turned south someone attempted to call the aircraft. There's evidence the phone rang in the cockpit but it was not answered.
- One hour after the attempted call, and every hour after that, Inmarsat checked to see if the link to the aircraft was still up. It was and these were used to estimate the aircraft's location within the southern Indian ocean.
- Shortly after the missed scheduled arrival at PEK (Beijing) someone attempts to call the aircraft again. They let the phone ring for one minute. It was not answered.
- Seven hours and 37 minutes after takeoff the aircraft attempts to signal that there's a major issue. This was the time it was expected to run out of fuel meaning it was likely signalling that electrical power had been lost and that critical systems were on standby power. While it's possible a pilot activated emergency power and reconfigured the aircraft for an unpowered glide there's evidence the aircraft instead stalled and went into an uncontrolled dive. (see the next item)
- The impact with the water was apparently hard enough that there were no large pieces of debris. It was also a fast enough destruction that the emergency transmitters that fire on impact never had a chance to send a message to Cospas-Sarsat. The impact was also such that that the water triggered emergency transmitters failed to pop to the surface and signal Cospas-Sarsat.
- Inmarsat's attempts to check the communication link fail from this point on out.
- A typhoon then swept through the area.
- There are no islands in this part of ocean. It's rarely used by cargo ships with none in the region at the time of the crash.
- People looked at the evidence and concluded the aircraft likely crashed with all lives lost. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:11, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
- There is direct evidence that MH370 crashed in the middle of the southern Indian ocean with all lives being lost. Failure to locate the crash scene does not mean the aircraft did not crash.
- I don't think there is any evidence for the crash. Don't give me technical explanations, because I'm not an expert to understand it. I just use common sense. No evidence is no evidence. Period. Circumstantial evidence merely indicates something is likely, but not certain. What if there was someone in the plane who caused the plane to land somewhere? What if that Inmarsat signal is misinterpreted? Is there any certainty that it can't be? Is a fatal crash in the ocean really the only possibility? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think the investigators are sure it crashed. When they say they're looking for the place where the aircraft crashed, that means that, for the purposes of the search, they are assuming the plane crashed, but only for that purpose! They can't really assume the plane crashed for other purposes, don't you think? If they come across an island and find everyone is alive there, they'll be like: "Wow! Looks like it didn't crash at all!" Whilst there is no hard evidence of the crash, and the evidence is merely circumstancial, you can't really be sure of the crash. That's why investigators aren't happy with circumstantial evidence. It doesn't prove anything. They need absolute, irrefutable, hard evidence. Of either possibility. That's what the investigators are looking for.
- That's correct. The evidence points to that it crashed but not with 100% certainty. If an island (there are none in that area) should appear with the passengers alive then yes, "Wow! Looks like it didn't crash at all!" Many times decisions are made with incomplete information. This is one of them. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think the investigators are sure it crashed. When they say they're looking for the place where the aircraft crashed, that means that, for the purposes of the search, they are assuming the plane crashed, but only for that purpose! They can't really assume the plane crashed for other purposes, don't you think? If they come across an island and find everyone is alive there, they'll be like: "Wow! Looks like it didn't crash at all!" Whilst there is no hard evidence of the crash, and the evidence is merely circumstancial, you can't really be sure of the crash. That's why investigators aren't happy with circumstantial evidence. It doesn't prove anything. They need absolute, irrefutable, hard evidence. Of either possibility. That's what the investigators are looking for.
- But you can't make decisions when lacking important information. Isn't is just safer to say: "Well, we can't be fully sure whether the plane crashed or not, much less how many people died, so we'd better just say we can't yet tell which one is the deadliest crash this year"? What's so hard with that? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- And you finished saying: "Is there anything that would influence you?" Well, do you mean about this subject? I hardly think so. Only when hard evidence arrive will I be able to conclude what it tells me. I prefer to wait, and not jump to conclusions right now. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 19:18, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- A couple of comments. 1) It's been nearly three full months and so we are not exactly "jumping" to a conclusion. It seems any survivors would have been spotted/or and notified the outside world by now. 2) We can always change our mind. For example, we can conclude that every one is dead based on available evidence. Tomorrow we could revisit that evidence, or discover new evidence, and change the conclusion the based on the new data.
- I agree with you that at present there's no hard proof there was a crash, much less a fatal one. However, the available evidence points to that the aircraft crashed into the Indian ocean and there were no survivors. This also seems to be the official consensus. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- And you finished saying: "Is there anything that would influence you?" Well, do you mean about this subject? I hardly think so. Only when hard evidence arrive will I be able to conclude what it tells me. I prefer to wait, and not jump to conclusions right now. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 19:18, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
- I disagree with your first comment. It's possible that any survivors would be on a lonely island, and have their mobile phones damaged. It such circumstances it is not impossible to be disconnected from the outside world for more than three months. Since there is no hard proof of a fatal crash, I think we should "play safe" and not dare to say anything more than "The plane went missing". That's what the article says. They have actually requested editors not to change its status to "crashed", nor to add a casualty number. Such claims might be revealed not to be true. Why not playing safe? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- Changing the text font to mark people as "dead" on a Wikipedia template will not change their actual status at all. If they are alive they will remain alive. If they are dead then they will remain so. Thus, it seems to be a pretty safe thing to do. :-) --Marc Kupper|talk 09:11, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
- I disagree with your first comment. It's possible that any survivors would be on a lonely island, and have their mobile phones damaged. It such circumstances it is not impossible to be disconnected from the outside world for more than three months. Since there is no hard proof of a fatal crash, I think we should "play safe" and not dare to say anything more than "The plane went missing". That's what the article says. They have actually requested editors not to change its status to "crashed", nor to add a casualty number. Such claims might be revealed not to be true. Why not playing safe? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 16:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
- Wow! You know what? I have to thank you for explaining all this to me with such detail! No-one has ever done that. I really appreciate it, and I must confess that I can't be so confident of my position now. About a week ago, I could easily debunk their arguments, because all they said was meaningless stuff like "The governments have said the plane has crashed" or straw-man arguments like "The plane can't be airborne now". They had no point. But that is a very good list of evidence right now.
- All I can say is this: that is only circumstantial evidence. Two documentary series I like to watch are Mayday and Seconds From Disaster. Those series investigate disasters—aircraft-related ones in the former, and ones of different natures in the latter. They usually follow the official investigations. But it is common that, when an investigator poses an interesting and compelling possibility, and he presents evidence and arguments to support it, at some point, the narrator says something like: "But, so far, all he has are just circumstantial evidence. He needs hard evidence to prove his case." Investigators cannot state in their reports that they are sure about something without irrefutable evidence. That's why they need to find better evidence. And even then, it is common that they present in their reports the "probable cause" of the disaster, not the "certain cause" or the "absolute cause". The same thing happens here. Everything you've presented is nothing but circumstantial evidence. Such evidence cannot be used to prove absolutely that the plane has crashed.
- It looks like we are in agreement in it, though. It seems that our only difference in opinion is if that justifies that we claim in the template that everyone is dead or not. In my view of things, putting the accident in bold smallcaps is saying it is the deadliest of the year, which implies that, at least, a number of people greater than the number of fatalities of the Algeria Lockheed crash must have died in the plane. And we can't tell how many people died there. If it is found that they are, somehow, alive (perhaps the data were misinterpreted or something—I don't know, and there's no need to speculate), we will basically have lied. I think that there is no rush in going to the template straight away to say everyone is dead. Let's wait for confirmation. Until then, let's take the benefit of the doubt, and say we can't claim which crash is the deadliest.
- And now, if you don't mind, I'd just like to give some reason to my father's conspiracy theories... :) He usually questions anything he is told, which is good, since it leads to a critical thought, but this means he usually agrees with conspiracy theories. Unlike him, though, I've never agreed with conspiracy theories. In fact, right now, I'm engaging with him in a debate about 9/11. But in this case, he does have a point, and I have to agree with him in some things. He says that, nowadays, there is all kinds of technology necessary to find planes and whatever you want. There are satellites that photograph and film the earth; there are radars; there are infrared detectors that can find anything that's hot, like the two engines of a plane (even in the time of the Cold War, as I've told you, the US were capable of detecting missiles and destroying them in mid-air); there are satellites that can detect groups of fish; it is possible to measure the depth of the ocean floor, and all of it is charted; and there are smartphones that are detectable through GPS (I've mentioned this earlier, but you replied mentioning the mobile phones and the antennas that detect them—I was not referring to that, but rather to smartphones that have a GPS system, and can be detected by satellites). That's why he finds it impossible for nobody to know where a plane is in 2014. He thinks somebody knows it, but is hiding information from us, and instead is making us fools by tricking us into believing everything is being attempted to find the plane. And he goes on to say this is all a way of getting us distracted from the big deal. The news about the flight are becoming less relevant and less frequent. Within a few months, the media will hardly ever talk about it. Within a few years, everyone will have forgotten it, and the subject will only be treated occasionally in documentaries or special reports, which will say nothing new about it. And thus shall be completed one of the greatest disappearances ever in the history of aviation—the greatest magic trick ever conducted. For whatever reason. And whoever got anything out of it—whoever it was—got away with it.
- If my father is right, then the plane may not have crashed at all. But this was just an extra. And I have to agree that there is some stuff in this story that don't make sense. How does a plane just disappear without anyone knowing? Perhaps you could shed some light on this, if you will... But I still don't feel we should say right now that the plane has crashed, killing all on board. Additionally, the article about the flight still lists it as missing, with no casualty number. Why contradicting them, saying the flight has crashed? I'd rather talk about what I know, and what I've said before: the plane is missing with 239 people onboard. Period. That's all we know. All the rest is speculation. OK, it could be speculation based on something, but it's speculation. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 12:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
(unindent) Sim(ã)o(n), I agree, the theory is based entirely on circumstantial evidence. However, you may be interested in Circumstantial evidence#Validity of circumstantial evidence. So far I have not said that the plane absolutely has crashed. There's a collection of circumstantial evidence that makes it likely the aircraft crashed and it's likely all lives were lost.
I believe the largest weakness with the MH370 theory is the assumption that the aircraft flew in a straight line, at a constant speed, and at a constant altitude for the last six hours of its flight. The response time data for the final ping and then that last incomplete message bolster that the aircraft was in flight for the final 8.5 minutes and not stationary on the ground. They also bolster that the straight line/speed/altitude assumption was correct but I want to check to see if it's possible to get the same response times using something other than a straight line, at a constant speed, and at a constant altitude.
Note that we as Wikipedia editors are not supposed to decide one way or another on something like if this was a fatal accident. We go by what's reported in reliable sources. In this case the Malaysian government very unambiguously said "All lives are lost" and "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond a reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived."[2] While that statement turns out to be based entirely on circumstantial evidence the statement itself passes WP:VER. So far, no one has been able to show that there's a path through the evidence that could result in survivors.
You wrote "we will basically have lied." No, we go by what reliable sources reported. In this case we also tested to see if the government's claim is plausible. We discovered it's based on circumstantial evidence but are unable to show that it's wrong. It A secondary source for Wikipedia is the www.aviation-safety.net web site which is cited by over 10,000 Wikipedia articles.[3] I'll assume that means aviation-safety.net is regarded as a WP:RS. That web site is reporting 239 fatalities.[4] Aviation-safety.net included a little bit of wiggle room with "Airplane fate: Presumed damaged beyond repair".
Regarding your father you wrote "He usually questions anything he is told, which is good, since it leads to a critical thought, but this means he usually agrees with conspiracy theories." An interesting article to read is confirmation bias. Your father looks for the conspiracy and sees confirming evidence of them everywhere! You have the opposite problem in that you seek confirmation of that a proposed conspiracy is not true. :-) An argument between the two of you about 9/11 will likely result in attitude polarization.
Regarding your father's statement about finding things. Have you ever dropped a small screw, nut, or related object? You clearly heard it hit the floor and the rattle of it skittering away. You know it must be within a few feet of you but can't see it. Usually the best way of spotting it is to get a flashlight and to shine it horizontally along the floor while looking across the floor. After searching fruitlessly for a while you will hopefully find it and discover that it was in plain sight all along. Water adds an extra challenge. A submarine running along the surface of calm water is fairly easy to see. Most likely you would first spot the wake and then see the submarine at the point of the V formed by the wake. Add a little bit of wind. The wake becomes harder to spot, particularly from the air though if you happen to see the submarine itself it's clearly visible. At a lot of wind. The wake is impossible to see. If you look at where the submarine is you likely will recognize it as a submarine. Let's go back to calm water and drop the submarine 10 meters under the surface. Let's assume it's daytime with the sun overhead. There's no wake but if you look at the right spot you'll see something that's nearly unambiguously a submarine. The submarine descends to 20 meters. Now if you look at the spot where it is you will know there is "something" there but likely are not sure if it's a submarine, whale, or a shadow. If you can observe the subject for a while you can likely determine it's a submarine. If the submarine descends to 50 meters then it becomes invisible unless it's traveling in clear shallow water with a white sand bottom. That's for a moving submarine. If it's still then it becomes much harder to detect.
The underlying technical theory of why the the dropped object, or submarine, becomes hard to find is covered by signal-to-noise ratio and also "resolution." I don't see an article about the general concept of "resolution" but angular resolution and optical resolution are close (and should be merged). Those articles are oriented toward explaining things in terms of visible light but the same concepts apply to infrared, ultraviolet, magnetic, radiation, gravity, and radio wave detection.
The general area where they have been searching for MH370 is under at least 4,000 meters of water. If it's there then it has also been broken up into small pieces and scattered over a wide area. It's the proverbial needle in a haystack problem but likely closer to several fields each with many haystacks. It's a remote region meaning an aircraft can only be over it for a couple of hours before it needs to go back to Australia for fuel. It takes a ship 2.5 days to get there from the nearest port meaning careful planning before you send the ship out.
You asked "How does a plane just disappear without anyone knowing?" We still don't know why it went off course and but once it was outside of radar coverage it became as invisible as the submarine example above. Whatever happened also disabled the normal methods of communicating with and tracking the aircraft. Had the Inmarsat terminal also been turned off we would not even known how much longer it continued to fly much less had a general idea of where it went.
You wrote "But I still don't feel we should say right now that the plane has crashed, killing all on board." We don't need to say that. The Malaysian government said exactly that. "Additionally, the article about the flight still lists it as missing, with no casualty number. Why contradicting them, saying the flight has crashed?" My discussion with you is a test case for a discussion on Talk:Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One of the things I learned is it's better to not get into technical details. FWIW, we are free to develop a different consensus on the template though it would be cleaner if template and main article were in agreement. --Marc Kupper|talk 03:49, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
- I think this discussion, at this point, is kind of approaching an end. Circumstantial evidence may be valid, but they aren't as certain as hard evidence. In my opinion, we shouldn't list the plane as the deadliest this year. In fact, if you want to do that, you should first go the article about the flight, change the infobox summary to "crashed" and change the fatality number to 239. However, in the talk page, it is specifically requested that you don't do it, according to previous discussions. Why contradicting that article? At least, for the sake of uniformisation, let's not mark any fatalities in that template for this flight!
- My discussion with him about 9/11 might indeed result in attitude polarisation, but I am quite convinced there is no reason to suspect it was an inside job. I find the official story absolutely OK.
- But my father maintains that it is impossible for a plane to disappear in 2014. In fact, just yesterday he told me something interesting: two German tourists have recently been found dead after their left their hotel in the Portuguese island of Madeira for a walk. They were found thanks to the GPS locator of their mobile phones. How is it that nobody can find this plane, with 239 people onboard, certainly several of them with smartphones that can be detected by GPS? He says that if he owned a hundred-million-dollar plane, the minute he found it had disappeared with 239 people onboard, he would try to find it—with any possible means—and try to recover it. A hundred-million-dollar plane, as well as the lives of 239 people, would be at stake. And I have to agree, though I don't usually follow his conspiracy theories, that he does have a point here.
- Well, I've given my opinion at the template's talk page. I hope something will be done. I think I'm going to take a Wikibreak, so I'll be out of here for a few days. If you want to see why, take a look at my user page or talk page. I'm going to write it there. I'll be back soon, to see how things are going. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 09:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
- Good luck Sim(ã)o(n) with the break. Maybe that girl would like you if you supported the idea of that everyone on MH370 was dead? :-) The German tourists were found as they were within cell phone range. Had they been out of range, or the phone turned off, then the GPS locator would be of zero value. MH370's "phone" got turned off early in the flight. GPS is a receive-only thing. If you want to get the location data from a GPS receiver you use something other than GPS to do it. With MH370 the GPS receiver was attached to ADS-B and ACARS boxes with the latter two systems being the devices that relay the GPS position to the ground via radio and satellite links. Whatever happened on MH370 disabled both ADS-B and ACARS, disabled the radar transponder, and disabled voice communications for both standard radio and via the the satellite link. All of the normal ways of getting the aircraft's position were not working. That's how your hundred-million-dollar plane aircraft disappeared. Two devices were still operational, the Inmarsat terminal and the satellite phone though with the phone no one ever answered calls made to the aircraft. The fact that these were still responding is direct evidence they were powered on. They were physically attached to and inside the aircraft. That's pretty good circumstantial evidence that the aircraft itself was operating well enough that it could provide power. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:33, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
- I'm back! Earlier than I planned, but I'm back! And I'm glad to see that the deadliest accident markup has been removed on that template! Yay!
- Now, my father is still pretty sceptical. He says there are satellites that can pretty much control all four corners of the world. Satellites constantly photograph the earth's surface. The Americans control all that, and everyone knows it. The CIA can monitor us if they want to. We are easily "spiable". They have the greatest technology you can fathom. They can see us every minute if they want to. How does a commercial jet, with 239 people onboard, just fade out of nowhere? It's 2014! It's not the 1950s, when radar technology was still somewhat poor, and was still being perfected. Decades have passed! The CIA have the means to monitor us, as everyone knows! And there are people with mobile phones that have a GPS system. They can be monitored all the time, since they are in connection with satellites! It is possible to track all of those! You can tell where people passed based on their GPS record! Those things are registered. There are all kinds of technology needed to track down a plane! It's the 21st century! It is unacceptable that a plane could just disappear like that.
- So how can a commercial jet with 239 people onboard just disappear? Well, my father says it's impossible, and that there's someone who knows it. Someone is hiding that information, letting the investigators play hide-and-seek, and keep moving from location to location every couple of weeks. He adds that the plane will probably never be found, and this event will eventually fall into people's forgetfulness. Within a few years, no-one will care about it, and the greatest magic trick of all time will have been completed. I, however, am not so strong with that position. I understand why investigators think the plane fell there, but I do find it very strange that a plane could have just disappeared and flown for hours undetected. I can't see how that is possible in the 21st century. I think it can be possible, but quite unlikely, really. Every system has flaws. If, by chance, an event manages to happen and go around all the reaches of every layer of systems, going right through the flaws, it may happen. That's how disasters usually happen: it's a series of events that go wrong, and that, combined together, cause the catastrophe. Fortunately, there are many things that have to fail at the same time for a disaster to occur, and that's what makes them so rare. So I understand this may be possible. But it's very strange that nobody can really tell where the plane is. There is probably some misinformation here, as my father says.
- So, I guess this is it. You can believe the official story, but I am still longing for an explanation for how this plane could have disappeared. Otherwise, the story makes no sense. I'm looking forward to the final result of the investigation. We'll see it then.
- Well, I think this discussion is ending. You believe the official story, and I have some doubts about it. Let's agree to disagree! It's been very nice to talk with you! Again, you've explained this in a way I hadn't seen before. Again, thank you! :) And, you know, that girl... She is special. She is very strong in her faith, and a very good Christian; we have several interests in common, like Science, Apologetics, and others; and she's very beautiful. Definitely the best girl I've ever met. But she says she's not interested in a relationship for now. So, I guess I'll just have to wait until she wants a relationship; or look for another one. We'll see that too. Thank you for your concern! :) By the way, do you know of any userbox for "This user has a girlfriend", or something like it? That could be useful, within some time... -- Sim(ã)o(n) * Talk to me! See my efforts! 22:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
- Good luck Sim(ã)o(n) with the break. Maybe that girl would like you if you supported the idea of that everyone on MH370 was dead? :-) The German tourists were found as they were within cell phone range. Had they been out of range, or the phone turned off, then the GPS locator would be of zero value. MH370's "phone" got turned off early in the flight. GPS is a receive-only thing. If you want to get the location data from a GPS receiver you use something other than GPS to do it. With MH370 the GPS receiver was attached to ADS-B and ACARS boxes with the latter two systems being the devices that relay the GPS position to the ground via radio and satellite links. Whatever happened on MH370 disabled both ADS-B and ACARS, disabled the radar transponder, and disabled voice communications for both standard radio and via the the satellite link. All of the normal ways of getting the aircraft's position were not working. That's how your hundred-million-dollar plane aircraft disappeared. Two devices were still operational, the Inmarsat terminal and the satellite phone though with the phone no one ever answered calls made to the aircraft. The fact that these were still responding is direct evidence they were powered on. They were physically attached to and inside the aircraft. That's pretty good circumstantial evidence that the aircraft itself was operating well enough that it could provide power. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:33, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
- They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
- You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
- The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "
date"
for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and "boolean"
for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like{{citeweb}}
→{{cite web}}
) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc. - Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
- They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
- It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
- You can now add and edit
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and__DISAMBIG__
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Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.
The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.
Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.
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VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014
The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
- Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
- You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
- All references and footnotes (
<ref>
tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu. - When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
- All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
- The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
- The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
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. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
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September 2014
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- transliterated as Ryō Hammura. While he wrote books as Ryō Hanmura is real name was Heitarō Kinō (清野 平太郎(きよの へいたろう).{{fact|date=September 2014}} Hanmura was a [[Japan]]ese [[science fiction]], [[
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book conditions
Thanks for your interest in book collecting. This page is not subject to editorization. The list as seen on the Hollowell page is pretty close. You can't deviate from this. There are about 7000 serious book dealers out there who agree these were and are the definitions. -GroveGuy (talk) 06:25, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
- GroveGuy, this is Wikipedia and not a site that sets collecting standards. The main book selling systems today (Amazon, Abebooks, and Albris, etc.) are not using a system developed in 1949.
- You also can't set a rule on Wikipedia editors such as "You can't deviate from this" unless you can develop consensus for this on the article talk page.
- My edits were to bring the list in line with current usage. I also was added citations documenting this usage and removing the editorization that had existed.
- Also, using the AB Bookman list word-for word would be a WP:COPYVIO and grounds for sactions against editors that want to use their wording. We can quote someone but that quote would be a small part of a larger article and also would been to be accompanied by commentary about that quote to qualify it for fair-use under the copyright act. I could see including the AB Bookman list as part of a section documenting the history of grading standards.
- The reason I visited the article in the first place was I was not sure of the definition for "reader copy". I believed it meant a worn beat up copy but wanted to confirm this. I was rather surprised at the state of the article and worked on improving it. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:33, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
Marc - We're not trying to set collecting standards; we're trying to say what the community of people buying and selling understand what language is used to describe books. This was not developed in 1949. It came from the previous century and was codified in 1949. And yes, Amazon, AbeBooks, Alibris and the others still use these terms. There certainly aren't going to be any copyright problems. AB Bookman, if they still existed, would be delighted that we are still trying to bring order to the book world.
In your change you changed one definition to say "Poor, also known as Reading Copy". This is not true. You are placing undue emphasis on "reading copy". Also you separated the last three items from the first six. They are not "also" things; they are integral. Being a book club trumps any condition. -GroveGuy (talk) 07:30, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
- GroveGuy, do you mind if I copy/paste this thread to Talk:List of used book conditions? The discussion will be about improving that article. I had to deal with some non-WP projects this weekend and will have little time this coming week. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:43, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
It would be a good idea to copy this thread to the article's talk page. Go right ahead. -GroveGuy (talk) 08:34, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
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 "Manage TemplateData" 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!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.
Recent improvements
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.
The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.
VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.
The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)
Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [5] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. 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 "Manage TemplateData" 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.
You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.
Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.
The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.
You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).
Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan
and colspan
elements, instead of trying to repair them.
You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.
You can now create and edit simple <blockquote>
paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".
Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1. " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.
If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.
You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.
Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.
Help
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
- Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.
Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Lack of Emergency Transmitter Message-AA-8501
Thanks for the detailed info you posted about the various transmitters; much appreciated. You might want to fix one typo I found, while reading that post: "On the 767 (MH370)" EditorASC (talk) 12:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News 2015—#1
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.
Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.
Recent improvements
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:
- starts a new task, like opening the Save page dialog: blue ,
- takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
- might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
- is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray.
The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.
Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).
Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
Looking ahead
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.
We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
- Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
- Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.
Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #2—2015
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.
Recent improvements
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.
The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.
Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.
Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.
The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.
You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.
The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.
Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.
Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).
Looking ahead
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.
The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Heart and Glomerulus (kidney)
Thanks for your edits to Middle ear, Marc. I'm trying to improve the readability of some of the anatomy articles and I would really value the opinions of other Wikipedians on them as to which bits need improving and how -- if you have time would you mind commenting on these two pages at the peer reviews? In addition to helping out a fellow editor hopefully you'll find the subjects somewhat interesting! Cheers, --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #3—2015
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.
The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).
The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).
Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "Add more information" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).
The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.
The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
- If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
- If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #4—2015
Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.
Wikimania
The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.
Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.
For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).
For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).
We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.
Recent improvements
Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.
Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top.
In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.
Future changes
The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.
On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
- If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
- Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
- The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor update
- This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.
The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.
This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.
We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #5—2015
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Let's work together
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
- Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
- The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
If you can't read this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Reference errors on 2 November
Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:
- On the 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) page, your edit caused a URL error (help). ( | )
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can . Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:28, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Ping
Hello, I have replied to you here. I'm telling you on your talk page because I was informed that my ping didn't work (even after correcting it). LjL (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for December 9
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Faerie Tale, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dutch. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #6—2015
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.
The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.
In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)
Testing opportunities
- Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
- Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Whatamidoing (WMF), 00:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Glossary of chess
Curious to understand: what was gained by hardcoding deault parm values at Glossary of chess? IHTS (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Ihardlythinkso, I landed on the Glossary of chess article via an #anchor link. While the word was in the glossary it did not have an {{anchor}} meaning I was left at the top of the article and not on the definition I wanted to look at. Of the 528 terms defined in the glossary 284 of them had anchors. Rather than adding the anchor for just the word I was interested in I reformatted all of the lines for the terms to match the regexp
^\{\{term\|term= ([a-z][a-z0-9éïó '()–-]*)\|content = [a-z0-9éïó '()[\]–-]+.* \{\{anchor\|\1(\|[a-z0-9éïó '()–./|-]+)?\}\} \}\}$
which was the pattern used by the 284 records with anchors. That regexp now matches 526 of the terms. The other two terms used wikilinks in the term but otherwise follow the same pattern.
- The reason for using content= that's the same as term= even though it seems redundant is because you can only do the {{anchor}} within the content= section. I considered doing it using:
{{term|term=name|content=content only if it's not exactly the same as ''term''}}{{anchor|''term''|alternate-terms...}}
but that would result in two styles of term definitions. As people often copy/paste from an existing record to create a new one it seemed better to use a single consistent format. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:24, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Yes I discovered the same (i.e. that anchor requires content=). But I guess I was thinking that many term entries don't really need anchors. (I suppose tho that cap'd/uncap'd can always be anchors, in fact I see you did that for some entries; but an anchor that is exactly redundant of the term form is the default and provides no function so is confusing why it's there, prompting my Q here.) Ok, IHTS (talk) 12:21, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Ihardlythinkso, I decided to shift the thread over to Talk:Glossary of chess#Letter case for entries and the anchors and responded with some ideas over there. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:13, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
There were many aspects of the Glossary where consistency & usability improvements were needed when I started editing there. (For example little or no intra-Glossary wlinking or uniformity [Bubba73 helped make that decision, I implemented it]; lots of duplication/inconsistent use of acronyms vs full names; so on.) There are still several aspects re consistency needing improvement. (Like alphanumeric order of terms re blanks/special chars/caps [but there is no WP standard re that], deciding/implementing how British vs American English is represented [if both are used], so on.) It is a big, task/Glossary w/ many heads only improvable thru evolution - nothing binary about it! OK, IHTS (talk) 12:48, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Barnstar
The Chess Barnstar | ||
Thanks for cleaning up the Glossary of chess article, it's been a mess for some time. MaxBrowne (talk) 10:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC) |
VisualEditor News #1—2016
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.
Let's work together
- Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
- Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.
There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2016
Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.
Recent changes
The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.
The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.
Future changes
The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.
The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
- Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Editing News #3—2016
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.
Recent changes
- You can now set text as small or big.[6]
- Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[7] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[8]
- Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[9]
- At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[10]
- The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[11] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
- Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[12]
Future changes
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
General of the Armies
You may wish to voice your opinion at Talk:General of the Armies since you were involved with this article before. Like clockwork, another relatively new user is blanking sections of the article. You're opinion would be welcome here. Thank you! -O.R.Comms 21:03, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for the heads up. I'm not sure how I can best contribute given the lack of available time but added a note to the talk thread. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for agreeing to look at the situation. On a side note, the account that brought this up I am now wondering if its a reincarnation of someone who has been on here before. No way to know for certain, just interesting that the account is created and it's very first edit is to offer a barnstar [13], something users don't usually learn about until a few weeks or months in. I am not accusing anyone of anything, only that this article has had some blocked and banned users in its galleries, especially during the "7 star general" wave that you and I both saw about four or five years ago. I could be wrong, just something to keep in mind in case we saw edit warring or problematic edits. -O.R.Comms 20:45, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Editing News #1—2017
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the New wikitext mode.
A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [14]
The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references />
block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [15]
Other changes:
- You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [16]
- The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [17]
- The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the icon) for quicker access. [18] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [19]
- You can now create
<chem>
tags (sometimes used as<ce>
) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [20] - Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [21]
- The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [22]
- A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [23]
- There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:
Control
+Shift
+K
on a PC, orCommand
+Shift
+K
on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which isControl
+K
on a PC orCommand
+K
on a Mac. [24]
Future changes
- The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of
<ref>
tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [25] - The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding
&ooui=1
to the end of the URL, like this: The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [26] - The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [27]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
I noticed you program in JavaScript...
The JavaScript WikiProject is now up and running. We organize and develop JavaScript articles, navigation aids, and user scripts.
The WikiProject also organizes every resource it can find about JavaScript out there, such as articles, books, tutorials, etc. See our growing Reference library.
If you would like to join the JavaScript WikiProject, feel free to add your name to the participants list.
Hope to see you there! The Transhumanist 14:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Template:Notable Women Generals in the U.S. Military
Template:Notable Women Generals in the U.S. Military has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Editing News #1—2018
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Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
- The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
- The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [28]
- Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [29]
- The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.
Let's work together
- The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
- Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
- The
<references />
block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either<references />
or the plain (no parameters){{reflist}}
template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [30] - If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
—User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Syria 'bombing'
Marc Kupper, I can't find this message at Talk:2018 bombing of Damascus and Homs:
- Sca I looked over the history at all of the page versions for April 13, 14, and 15. The Errors in In the news was always empty those days and also the word "Syria" never appears anywhere on the talk page on any of those days. The discussion you mention was either subject to WP:REVDEL or you have the wrong link. --Marc Kupper|talk 17:23, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
- — I think the link you're referring to piped to an ITN entry on the WP:errors page April 14, which later was deleted after I persuaded someone to change "bomb" to "strike" as the verb in the ITN blurb. Sca (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you Sca - I found the discussion and added a link to it on Talk:2018 bombing of Damascus and Homs. I was looking to see what the background was on various ideas for the names and so had wanted to read the discussion you had mentioned. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:39, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 21:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Technical FYI/request
The <strike>
element hasn't existed in HTML for over a decade. It's <s>
now. Please don't use the former (or <tt>
, <font>
, <center>
, <blink>
, or other deprecated elements), as it just adds to the HTML "lint" cleanup logs and impedes our conversion to HTML5, and could impact smooth migration to new parser, syntax highlighter, and editing software versions, etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:33, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Question
At List of female United States military generals and flag officers, is there really that much disparity between the Navy and the rest of the military branches? Or is it just because you added the Navy entries and there are similar entries to be found for the others that haven't been added? It looks pretty lopsided right now, if there are more entries that can be added to the other branches, do you plan on adding them? Just curious. Thanks - theWOLFchild 00:25, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Thewolfchild: The original entries I added had been found by other Wikipedians. There was a person who had a great interest in female naval officers and as a result the Navy is over-represented. A year or so ago when when I looked into finding and adding other people I discovered that the Navy had a very easy to use system that allowed a senior officer to add or update their own biography on the public web site. That likely also tilted things in favor of the Navy. I took another look and see that the Air Force now has a biography system similar to the Navy.Air Force biographies and Navy biographies The Air Force currently has 238 pages of biographies with 20 people per page (roughly 4760 biographies). Unfortunately, while the Navy list seems to be restricted to admirals meaning they are automatically notable the Air Force allows a wider group of people to be added to their site. For example, while she seems to be a senior member of the Air Force management, I don't think this person would automatically be notable. She's also not a general officer and so would not be on List of female United States military generals and flag officers. Thus it's going to be a case-by-case evaluation project though in thinking about it, I could write script that downloads all 4760 biographies and scans them for keywords such as "General."
- I am wondering if Heather Wilson qualifies. While she's not a general officer she's the United States Secretary of the Air Force. Her Air Force bio is here. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:03, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
- I discovered that the Air Force includes the title in the URL. There were 217 biographies that included /general- in the URL with three of them having what looked like women's names.
- General Ellen M. Pawlikowski and Ellen M. Pawlikowski on Wikipedia.
- General Janet C. Wolfenbarger and Janet C. Wolfenbarger on Wikipedia
- General Lori J. Robinson and Lori Robinson on Wikipedia.
- All three women were already listed on List of female United States military generals and flag officers.
- Something else I recalled when looking into this before is that the Navy forces admirals to retire within a year or two. This creates a lot of turnover at that rank. I don't know if the other services have a similar practice.
- As there's a chance I missed a woman's name when perusing the list of names here's the list of 214 Air Force generals for you to take a look to see if I missed any women.
- Here is a similar list of all 662 people that did not have /general in their URLs. It's possible people who are both generals and women are in this list.
- --Marc Kupper|talk 07:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for replies and all the info. It seems it will take some research to learn if there are differences in branch promotional policies that result in differences in rates of turnover. It will also take quite a bit of digging to find any female general/flag/admiral officers in branches other than the Navy with the available resources. Perhaps a post on the article talk page, as well as WT:MILHIST and maybe even as pages like WT:Women, WT:Women in history, WT:Women in Red, etc. will get some people interested in helping out. If enough people join in, the research and digging needed to update this page could be done quicker and with more results. I've never really posted such proposals before... have you? Also, any more thoughts on all this? Cheers - theWOLFchild 09:25, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Thewolfchild: I have posted on project pages at times. I'm ambivalent about researching the promotion policies for the various services as it's more of a slide into WP:SYNTH. Our work on Wikipedia is supposed to summarize research by others which is then published in WP:RS sources. I believe scanning the biographies of military officers looking for ones that fit into a particular category is on WP:SYNTH's slippery slope. Ideally, we would not do the research ourselves and then publish the findings on Wikipedia. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:05, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Well, we already have the article, I was just suggesting adding to it. It is a list and likely an incomplete one at this point. Nothing wrong with searching out info to complete the list the best we can. If there's already a published list of female general/flag officers, how would we "summarize" that? (That could lead to a copyvio, unless it's a gov't site). Also, per WP:MILPERSON, basically anyone that has reached general/flag rank is notable. As long as we're just adding their name to an established article list, with either a linked BLP or a cite, there is no SYNTH vio. The point is, the list looks incredibly lopsided as is, and I was just hoping there a way to address that. Either the Navy actually does have way more flag officers than the other branches, in which case it would be helpful to provide info explaining why that is. Or, all the other branches are missing a lot of names and it would good to start adding them. I just asked you about it because of your prior involvement and thought you could help. Anyway, thanks again - theWOLFchild 21:52, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [31]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)