User talk:Billinghurst/2016

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2016, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion.

Copyright templates

Thanks for the notes re copyright templates. I can see a few place where I haven't been consistent so I'll work my way through those. But I have a question if I may. The notes you provide:

"There are two predominant author templates for old works

• {{PD-old}} where born 1914 and before (soon to be 1915)
• {{pd/1923|xxxx}} for pre 1923 where xxxx = year of death"

allow for a particular author's works to fall into each of the two template categories, ie born before 1914 and died before 1923. Is there a preference for one template over another? Many thanks for your help. Perry Middlemiss (talk) 22:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@Perry Middlemiss: unfortunately it is not quite that easy, as we have scenarios even outside and within those, and each tag use is scenario-dependent. If printed prior to 1923 and in doubt, use the second, and the template's internal logic will sort it out. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:12, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Perry Middlemiss (talk) 02:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Author:William Frederick Harvey

Hi, the translator for The Kiss and its History has a known DoB of 1853—according to IA. This date has been replicated in various catalogues. However, I can't find a DoD or indeed confirm 1853. I found a Bertha Harvey who is related to a WFH born in 1851. Could you please have a hunt in your resources at some stage? Cheers, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:15, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: Done

Tech News: 2016-02

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia no longer uses visitor statistics from comScore. [1]
• You can make interactive graphs with the Graph extension. There is now a tutorial for how to do this. [2]

Problems

• Some pages do not turn in up in categories where they should be. This is because link tables are sometimes not populated. [3]

Changes this week

• The Nuke extension will work with Flow. This will make it easier to handle spam in Flow. [4]
• New file uploads will now be patrollable. [5]
• Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia if you use Internet Explorer 8, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. [6][7]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. [8]
• The edit tabs for the wikitext editor and the visual editor will be combined to one single edit tab. You will be able to choose which one you prefer. If you are not logged in, your choice will be saved as a cookie in your browser. You can test the single edit tab. [9][10]
• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. This works much like the links to for example Wikipedia articles in other languages. It will go out of beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [11][12]
• The difference between "alerts" and "messages" notifications is unclear to some. The developers want feedback at the Phabricator task or on MediaWiki.org so they can make this better. You can give feedback in your language if you can't write in English.

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

16:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Greatness

A trivial matter... Just noticed you moved "Greatness" to "Greatness (Coates)", and was wondering if you were going to create a disambiguation page as a result (as with "The Difference") or just leave it as a redirect. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I was going to disambiguate the page, then it was wonly hen I got to the author page of Hawthorne that I saw that it was a "Works about ..." not like all the others that I had fixed. <face palm> I was going to move it back, then thought that it was probably not doing any harm as a redirect, and it enables disambig or versions page if they happen, otherwise it sits there as is. If that is a problem, I can revert and return. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:55, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

:) It is no problem... I only thought that perhaps you forgot to create a disambig page along the way. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-03

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

Recent changes

• You will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [13]
• Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [14]

Changes this week

• The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [15]
• MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [16]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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17:55, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

AWB fixes

Hey, I noticed you were using AWB to update https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:The_Army_and_Navy_Hymnal.djvu/22&oldid=6077799 ; I just wanted to inform you that this particular edit broke the link, in case there are others that you may want to investigate. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Did you mean...

"Conscience" for "Conscious" [17] and [18]? Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:51, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Clearly unconscious! Done Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:16, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-04

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

Recent changes

• You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [19][20]
• Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [21]

Changes this week

• You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [22]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [23]
• The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [24]
• Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [25]

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

16:38, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Reverting a move

Sorry to bug you. I have permission from Neo-Jay to revert a move (change in titling) they made (see here). I am not sure how to revert (undo) activity from a certain point in the page's history. Can you instruct me please? Neo-Jay thinks I won't make a mess of things, but I don't have the same faith in myself ;) Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

NVM, sorry... I will leave it as is. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:01, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

LBJ. Revert is just another name for an easy move for admins. You wouldn't be able to do it as it would have required you to delete the target page—an admin function. Such moves would generally be requested at WS:AN or via tame admins. OR we can get you admin rights from the community, and something in which you would excel. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:10, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the confidence. What sort of tools do you think I would find particularly useful? I could probably handle monotonous tasks well enough to give it a shot. I just don't know in what areas my help would be most beneficial. Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:25, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

1) Move without setting a redirect,. 2) Delete, 3) Rollback, are three that immediately spring to mind. (Wikisource:Adminship for details. Full rights set shown at Special:ListGroupRights.) You are one of the rare breed that we need as am admin though are resistant to the task, which is okay. You have years of experience here and nobody questions what you do, in fact we all listen. You will excel as you ask first, act second in areas where you have doubt. You aren't interested in the role as a status symbol, for you it will simply be another tool ... brilliant! I would be delighted to be able to nominate you, if you give me the nod. A win for perseverance over reticence. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:37, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Billinghurst. It is late here, so I will sleep on it. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:39, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: FYI, moving To the Tsar (Coates) back to To the Tsar (1890) does not need administrator's help since To the Tsar (1890) does not have edit history. You may just go to page To the Tsar (Coates), hit the "move" button, type "To the Tsar (1890)" as the new title, and then move it, just like a normal move. It's fine if you decide not to move it. But you can still move it if you like. Thank you for your contributions. --Neo-Jay (talk) 06:29, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I can see the reasoning behind the move (titling-wise) in this case; as it is a versions page, it can afford to be a bit more ambiguous for our purposes. Other cases where there has been a complete title change between versions, I use the most recent version title/heading as the landing page with previous titles redirecting to the most recent version (see "Earth Has Her Blossoms"). Reticence aside, I'll give you the nod regarding nomination. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:55, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

your advice please...

You wrote: "current contributions have not generally been to our expected standard or style, and I believe their edits should be patrolled..." I am going to tell myself that my relative inactivity let me fall out of synch with current standards. I am, of course, prepared to do my best to measure up to standards, no matter what my level of activity.

Do you see value in naming your top concern(s) with my contributions? Geo Swan (talk) 20:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Geo Swan. There is already some commentary on your talk page, and there will be clean up to your previous edits that will be the best guidance. It has been a while however, I remember things like wikilinks as well, you were doing local links that were presumably targeted at enWP, and probably heavier linking than we would do, the guidance is to go light and avoid annotative approach. And yes, it was falling behind the times, we had progressed and developed. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:45, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

OK. Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 09:25, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Index:1947SydneyHailstorm.djvu

This is the Hailstorm that broke the back so to speak.

The file at Commons is Undated, and I am not sure if it's written in an official capacity or a personal one.

So it was blanked, but I'd like a third opinion, and have objections to it's reinstatement if you think it is in fact acceptable.

Perhaps it's time I took a break? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:28, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

And thanks for closing my over-reactions :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 01:35, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Reviewing Non-US editions

I'm sorry, I over-reacted. Now, would a better approach be if I use my Userspace to identify some works which might need to be localised from Commons? I'm accepting your argumennt about PD-1923. Or would you prefer I left? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 01:52, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

If you want to better understand policy, then ask questions to the community about policy, maybe cite examples to compare, but starting conversations like you do just mixes cats and pigeons, and a proportion of our brethren at Commons often find it easier to delete than to research or question or challenge (laziness/business/caring less). — billinghurst sDrewth 02:26, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking of which, I made a list on my talk page of some files I think may need a review by someone competent such as yourself. I've also closed some of the remaining CD as Snowball (to use the Wikpedia expression). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 02:40, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-05

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

Problems

• Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [26]
• Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [27][28]
• Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [29]

Changes this week

• The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [30]
• Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [31][32]
• The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [33]
• The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [34][35][36]
• The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [37][38]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is expiring watch list entries. The meeting will be on 3 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [39]

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

21:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Transfering files from Commons

Hi, I am from bn.wikisource. There is a chance that some of the uploaded Bengali books can be deleted from Commons due to non-US PD compatibility. I noticed, that you uploaded here such English books which were about to get deleted in Commons. I am curious, if there is any tool or are you doing it manually. Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 09:55, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Bodhisattwa: There is script that can be used by a person who is an admin at both the target and sending wiki, though that probably isn't going to help you. Whilst there used to be a tool to allow the transfer from Commons to a wiki, I cannot find one now, nor a bot that does the task. *If* your community granted me or any other Commons admin rights (on a temporary basis) then they could do the xwiki moves when deleting the file at Commons. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I will let you know about the community decision and act accordingly. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 10:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I had a talk with other community members and everyone agreed to support you for a temporary admin right in Bengali Wikisource. Can you please apply here? As it is a small wiki, you need to apply in meta also. Thanks for your kind help. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 10:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I have nominated you in Bengali Wikisource for your temporary adminship. Please visit this page. Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 16:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 21:26, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

We have created the necessary templates and categories, as per your suggestion. We are also making a list of files in this page which have possibility of undergoing deletion from Commons. Regards, -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 07:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, your adminship is already done, so please proceed. List of files is in Bodhisattwa's user subpage as given above. If you have any query or need any clarification or something done by the bnWS people, then please ask me, Jayantanth or Bodhisattwa, and we will coordinate the matter. Thanks. Hrishikes (talk) 17:51, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

We have responded to your query. Thanks, Hrishikes (talk) 08:22, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, is there any issue behind stopping the project? Still some more files. Hrishikes (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Just available time. Didn't realise that there was a timetable to get them over, so was doing it among other work. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:02, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

No timetable, sorry if my wordings sounded like that. Hrishikes (talk) 02:09, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-06

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

Recent changes

• Syntax highlighting support is now available for 53 more computer languages. [40]
• When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [41]
• RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [42]

Changes this week

• Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [43][44]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is per-language URLs for pages of multilingual wikis. The meeting will be on 10 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [45][46]
• Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [47][48][49]

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

18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

bn.ws index field

Hope it'll sufficient to help:

'Style' : 'ধরন',
'Title' : 'শিরোনাম',
'Volume' : 'খণ্ড',
'Writer' : 'লেখক'
'Translator': 'অনুবাদক',
'Editor' : 'সম্পাদক',
'Decoration' : 'অলঙ্করণ' /* what that? */
'School': 'স্কুল',
'Publisher' : 'প্রকাশক',
'Address' : 'ঠিকানা'
স্থান ??? Places, ignore this line
'Year': 'বছর' /* year of publication |প্রকাশের বছর */

\nKey|Sort key
'Source' : 'উৎস',
স্ক্যান  /* scan ignore it */
'Image' : 'চিত্র', /* prolly the image number of the book template */
/* |প্রচ্ছদ */
/* ingore all other */
অগ্রগতি
পাতাসমূহ
15
খণ্ডসমূহ||5
মন্তব্য|সূচী|
প্রস্থ|সম্পাদনা মোডে স্ক্যান রেজুলুশন\nসিএসএস(Css)
হেডার
পাদটীকা

— Phe 12:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Delete/block advice

Assuming this is a candidate for deletion. Not sure if it is "beyond scope" or "no meaningful content &etc." Other edits by same user have been reverted (vandalism). Is a user block called for here? or a warning on talk page? Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:39, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes; generally use whichever you believe closest fits. Sometimes I will move such a page to be a user's subpage if I think that there is well-meaning content, and then drop them a note. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:05, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

hellip

How does one create a sequence of 4 dots using the hellip character? Hunger sometimes has three evenly spaced dots in its ellipses, and sometimes has four. I note that the hellip character uses a different spacing from every other instance in the work. Is that advisable? --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:53, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Does one require to do four periods to represent an ellipsis? If it is seen as stylistically required to produce a facsimile then one would deviate; if it is simply a typographer's/printer's representation of an ellipsis, then we can consider that the ellipsis is a suitable character to use. We are trying to represent the author's work utilising the style guide as possible, and deviating if there is value in doing so. I would agree that we would want some consistency, which is why I posed the question on Mpaa's talk page prior to doing more, or returning to the templated use. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:38, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

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

Recent changes

• You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [50]
• You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [51]

Problems

• A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [52][53]

Changes this week

• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [54][55]
• Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [56]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [57]

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

16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Recent Works on the Diptera of Northern Europe

Greetings Billinghurst I made a start with the author and the start. Several other Haliday works I added need the same.I will look at these soon. Best regards and thanks for the reminder Notafly (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Let me know if I can lend a hand. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-08

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

Recent changes

• Phabricator has been upgraded. [58][59]

Problems

• There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [60][61]

Changes this week

• After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [62]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 23 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is Assign RFCs to ArchCom shepherds. The meeting will be on 24 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

help

I might have asked you this before, but couldn't find it in the archives: how do I add the braces e.g. here? (Maybe you told me it is not important?) And how would you place "Milton" here? Oh, and another thing: I've seen you get rid of the first "Google" page, but I have no idea how to do it... Thanks for your help. ~ DanielTom (talk) 15:35, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

• {{brace2}} is usually what we use, though that is going to need to be floated and hard positioned (ugly) or put into a table in a column with rowspan (also ugly), unless someone else has a better idea.
• typeset Milton
• cover image is the field to use, and it aligns with image page from {{book}}

— billinghurst sDrewth 22:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-09

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

Recent changes

• Thanks to the Graph extension and Pageview API, we now have {{Graph:PageViews}} templates that can show pageviews for any wiki page for any of the wikis. See the examples.
• The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
• The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [63][64]
• The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [65][66]

Changes this week

• On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [67]
• Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [68]
• Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [69]

Meetings

• Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [70]
• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Transclusion check

Double category here: Index:History_of_Fiat_Money_and_Currency_Inflation_in_New_England_from_1620_to_1789.djvu. I am not even sure how to remove it. It is one of the 42 cases you mentioned?

On Indexes where {{index validated date}} is not present, shall I insert {{index transcluded|transcluded=yes}}?— Mpaa (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-10

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

Recent changes

• Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [71]
• Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [72]
• The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [73]
• It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [74]
• Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [75]

Problems

• Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [76]
• The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [77]
• The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [78]
• You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [79]
• Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [80]

Changes this week

• Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [81]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
• Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [82]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [83]
• The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [84]

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

06:36, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

File:Typescript copy of the reminiscences of John Caldwell. PRONI, T3541.5.3.pdf

This has been given over a month, I think it's time to apply deletion as the status isn't clear. Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:13, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Not sure why you are here telling me this. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:50, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [85]
• The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [86]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [87]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [88]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are backlog and thumb API. The meeting will be on 16 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Current POTM not transcluding to Main Page.

DYK the Current POTM is not transcluding to the Main Page. I had to click on 'Proofread of the Month' to see the current proofread 'Wives of the Prime Ministers, 1844-1906', instead of 'Panchatantra' which is showing. My browser is Mozilla Firefox 45 (Mac version).--kathleen wright5 (talk) 12:55, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

P.S. This is also happening with Safari 9.0.3 (OS X Mavericks).--kathleen wright5 (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Thx Kathleen. It is the second work and may not have been updated in all the right places. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:02, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Done Template:Collaboration — billinghurst sDrewth 13:10, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Re: special:diff/6153563/next

Regarding KW5, I have no personal objections to said individual.

Perhaps the following have more to do with my own perversities in choosing to work on "problematic" cases rather than a less biased distribution: deleting templates specifically documented as usage subst: only as unused; deleting pages without research as to whether the requester (an IP address no less) was legitimate; excessive validations where the content was sub-standard. This is all mentorship-needed stuff rather than desysop—indeed I am saddened sysop was granted prematurely in the first place.

If you were truly half the competent individual I expect you truly are (fake "public" face aside) I expect you are really aware of all this already. In other words prove to me you are the idiot you pretend to be because thus far I am not buying the act, good as it is. Figure that out. Despite all the crap that has gone on between us I really am on your side, so live with it. Yep, makes my skin crawl too.

I repeat: probably I am a biased observer but nonetheless this is my overall impression, and I voted accordingly. I am rather disappointed certain individuals (no, not you—I shall be that fair at least) have implied that I should be more loyal to the person, and overlook actual performance. For the record I have also been contacted by other individuals (no, you may not have details) who have expressed opinions my vote is appreciated but they will not express an opinion in public.

So you see this is an issue not without certain tensions. AuFCL (talk) 07:10, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Just in case you are too stupid to correctly interpret this: this is the only olive-branch I am ever going to offer you. The matter is now finally, solely in your hands. There will be no future repetition. AuFCL (talk) 07:57, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Author:Geoffrey Montagu Cookson

It seems Author:Geoffrey Montagu Cookson had translations of four plays of Aeschylus in 1922 [89], but otherwise I know nothing. He's one of the few author links for Greek drama that has been red for a long time (since at least 2012 as G. M. Cookson). --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:08, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 01:41, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-12

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

Problems

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. The Wikimedia Technology department planned to test it this week. This will take place the week of April 18 instead. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• In Firefox, the visual editor would sometimes just jump down to the bottom of the page when you double-clicked on a table cell. This has now been fixed. [90]

Changes this week

• It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [91]
• You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [92]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. This will happen on May 2. [93]

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

16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Not transcluded

Is there a means for marking pages that were deliberately not transclud?

Two examples:

Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/5 was not transcluded because it is almost completely duplicated by another (nice looking) page just after it in the front matter. Putting each set of information, in duplicate, one after the other, on the same display would look like an error and would not benefit the reader.

Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/15 was not transcluded because, as the table of contents, it is missing two of the ten items found in the book, and of the remaining eight it does list, four of those have the wrong page number. My choice therefore, since the page is short, was to use a corrected version in the main namespace, without transclusion.

So, is there a means of distinguishing pages that have been overlooked / not yet transcluded from those that were deliberately not transcluded? --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:22, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Manually categorise with Category:Not transcluded and that becomes the indicator within checker. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:36, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

How often will a work be re-checked once it has failed a check for transclusion? I ask because Index:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu was tagged as "not transcluded", but I believe I have now categorized the one page that was not transcluded (and should not have been). There really isn't an easy means of identifying such pages manually, is there? --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:48, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Use CHECKER tool from the Index page (top right icon) to check the transclusion status. How often? <shrug> I haven't even finished the current lot yet and that is predominantly those that are fully validated. Once fully transcluded, they are done, and would not usually be undone. This is an imperfect science and I am yet to tackle the decision where the advertisements are done or not, later decision for the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I consciously noticed that icon a couple of days ago and wondered what it was for, but hadn't played with it yet. Now I know. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:12, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

This is a long term issue, and that was the solution, in lieu of any technical solution. Once set, it was seen that transclusion is an interesting concept, so we had our methodology to mark pages, and we categorised works manually … slow and tedious, and lent itself to … <ugh> … another day. So my more recent escalation of the issue was due to whole works not being transcluded, rather than little sections, and the occasional page or image, and a more robust checking by bot, and marking the others for review. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

The Badminton Library

Should this go into Portal: ns or stay in main? Moondyne (talk) 06:54, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Umm. It is an actual book series and presumably you are representing what was printed somewhere to show the series, and nothing else is going to take the name, so I think that it is okay. (hedging bet) But if there is more that is going to be added, especially commentary, then it should be a portal, along the lines of static main ns, dynamic portal/author ns, which are constructs. Others may have differing opinions. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:59, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't envisage anything more than a list. It doesn't bother me either way. Moondyne (talk) 07:30, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

The Boscombe Valley Mystery

Thankyou for your message. I'm sorry to have changed '3d' to '3rd', but it seemed like a genuine typo. Is it a common abbreviation at the time of writing? Just that, '3d' would also be '3 pence' - as in pounds, shillings and pence - at that time. Irrelevant really as you wish to reproduce the original text, but vaguely interesting! Regards Richard Nowell (talk) 06:54, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

@Richard Nowell: Mate, it is okay, and it is why we patrol edits, and hopefully leave clueful messages about changes. I know that I have seen it in 19thC written documents that way, eg. wills, though cannot say either way about printed works. With regards to pence, usually in books of that period, they have a space (though not always), and they have a period mark (again not always), often in italics (and you guessed it, not always) which may be an indicator of why the practice changed at some point. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:59, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Not transcluded in footer?

Hi. Any special reason for not inserting the category on the footer? I think that the less we interfere with the text the better it is. And putting it in the footer should minimise it. Bye— Mpaa (talk) 08:16, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

If it is in the footer then you cannot identify when it is later transcluded, which has happened. Categories don't interfere with the text, well no more than when we categorise in main namespace. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:10, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

refs not matching and not making sense

I can't make sense of the references on this page – can you?

The symbols don't match, but maybe what they meant is:

• "For this the"  "Vid. Æneid, Lib VI. v. 890." ["Bella, horrida bella" occurs in Book VI of the Aeneid, line 87]

• "Sprung"  "Æn. III. v. 458."

• [on the next page] "Thus too..."  "See Æneid, Lib. I. v. 531."

But this would still not make sense (for one thing, Patroclus appears in the Iliad, not in the Aeneid). Should I just skip the references in this one page? ~ DanielTom (talk) 03:17, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I would agree that it is a little unusual, though has occurred before. It can be that the typographers forgot to add the reference, or as you see in this case that it is on the next page. You need to remember that the author was working on paper with a pen/quill, and not with the same pagination, so here it looks as though the typographer has handled it in a non-common way, possibly 2 & 3 (on the page) and 1 on following. Either way, we type as it is though I suggest to use {{user annotation}} to append to the odd reference to explain the circumstance, so a reader who may know more can interpret in case the typographer really screwed it. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:02, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. That's a useful template, but I wouldn't know what to write... Maybe a future "validator" will come up with something; for now I'll just leave the refs commented out. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:11, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki now supports the semantic web standards of Microdata and RDFa 1.0. On Wikimedia projects, a configuration change must be requested in order to enable RDFa 1.0. [94] [95]

Problems

• Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [96]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [97]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with part of the Architecture committee, which will discuss a few topics. The meeting will be on 30 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The Architecture committee has sent a summary of new and ongoing RFC discussions.

Future changes

• Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [98]
• Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

• Last week Tech News said the new MediaWiki version would come to wikis from 21 March to 23 March. The right dates were 22 March to 24 March.

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

19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Cron <tools.wikisource-bot@tools-cron-01>

Hi. What is Cron complaining about? Cron <tools.wikisource-bot@tools-cron-01> /usr/bin/jsub -N cron-tools.wikisource-bot- ...— Mpaa (talk) 17:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Bloody paths that it cannot find due to set up on the grid, especially in relation to oauth and python, and I have yet to find the solution. I have turned them off. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:42, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

{| class="valign" v. Download as PDF

I just discovered that the references that were placed on An Analysis of Prophet Muhammad’s Covenants with Christians do not print when using the PDF option. Any advice before I go back and move them into the text body using ref tags? calebjbaker (talk) 11:20, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

@Calebjbaker: Weird that the table is causing a problem, I haven't seen that before. Let me see if I can remove the tabular aspects that it resolves the issue. Moving the endnotes to footnotes is ugly as the difference from the evolution of references styles is butt ugly in wiki, and the way that wikis spawn errors with bits missing. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:34, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Table(s) removed, and hanging indent used with an attempt to create a tab marker with spaces. Imperfect though shouldn't matter much. Hopefully one of our fellow WSians will be able to see why we are having troubles with tables, it will take me a little while to look at that aspect. It isn't just PDF, it is also EPUBs. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:04, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you note

Thank you so much for the welcome note.

MetSoul (talk) 20:05, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

@MetSoul: Very welcome. While we each work on our own thing, we like to be an interconnected, supportive community. Have fun, and you will find people willing to help at WS:S. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-14

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

Recent changes

• You can filter Special:Log in more detail. [99]
• Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [100]

Changes this week

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

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

22:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Grab and convert

Hey, if I may ask, the "Grab and convert" section of your user page, what do you wish to convert the texts into? I ask because I like to play with Python, and could do some text manipulation for you, esp. if you know someone who would be willing to do a nontrivial photoshop task in exchange.. but even if you don't know about the latter, I still might be able to offer some help... TksLingzhi (talk) 14:56, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

• Update: striking through the mention of a request, because (based on a reply from a much more knowledgeable editor) it seems my desired task may be prohibitively impractical. But I still can do text manipulation, if it would help you. Cheers. Lingzhi (talk) 22:43, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for patrolling a 2014 document I provided

Hello. I am usually on other Wikimedia projects but maybe you know, now there are inter-wiki alerts. I posted something to Wikisource in 2014, and I formatted it incorrectly. A month ago you identified and fixed the problem and posted to my talk page. I am just seeing that now.

Thanks for this. I was thinking - if interwiki communication were better then it might be easier for me to jump project to project and share more documents. Thanks for helping me and thanks also for messaging. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Yes, we met in London at WM2014. FWIW I never look at is as being correct or incorrect, more aligned or not aligned with our developed practice. Always happy to assist ... what comes around, goes around.

Re interwiki notifications, they are indeed a benefit, though can be somewhat tardy. A nuisance still that they cannot be set globally as a default, though I have just prodded that bear at phabricator:T132410. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

I think a bot created the 3 volumes of pages, but they must've been imported from somewhere they'd been proofread -- even the special characters are there. Can the not-proofread pages be marked proofread by a bot? Outlier59 (talk) 17:28, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

@Outlier59: For the identified work, the text will have come from elsewhere, often it is Gutenberg, and will have preceded the scan availability. The text would have been split and matched to the scan — an inexact science. The community discussion around that componentry has been different here at enWS that at frWS, where the tool has been used extensively. At enWS we found that the G-texts had levels of inaccuracy in transcription, they were also from non-matching editions, and often not even identified editions, so while we could mark them as proofread by a bot, that would not necessarily be accurate, so we don't. So we tend to use the bot to paste a layer when we are confident that the editions match. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:03, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-15

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

Recent changes

• The visual editor can generate wikicode with image options in your language. Examples of image options are "thumb" or "left". You can ask to change to options in your language in Phabricator. [101][102]
• Wiktionaries and Wikisources can now use the visual editor. It is an opt-in beta feature. It still needs development to work better with these projects. [103][104]
• ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [105]
• The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [106]

Problems

• There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [107]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
• The wikipedia.org portal will get many small bug fixes and improvements. Most will be for the search box and suggested results that were added in March. [108]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are improving transclusion of templates for Parsoid and balanced templates. The meeting will be on 13 April at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [109]

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

20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Epub

Is there a place (here or on meta) where I can read about the generation of epub downloads and other such formats for Wikisource texts? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:26, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Tpt's tool mul:Wikisource:WSexport is what is used for our Epub generation and the other forms, though I haven't looked there for a while, and I will create a local soft redirect. Or are you meaning epubs in general? There has also been some discussions in WS:S which should be findable in archives, especially for tools that are plugins for browsers (for testing). For Firefox I use Epubreader. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm interested primarily in what has to happen at our end to make epubs and other downloadable formats of texts available to our readers. I don't make use epubs myself, though I may have occasion to quality check.

Featured texts regularly have quick links available from the main page, but these don't often appear elsewhere on our site. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Epub/Mobi download links should be available on every main ns page in the "print" section. It is not overt, but most of our links in that space are not. The epub links are more overt in mobile as there is now sidebar. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:42, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

<ugh> "No" sidebar. @George Orwell III: utilised his css skills to have the alternative, and it uses the File:EPUB silk icon.svg — billinghurst sDrewth 23:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

A question about mobile rendering of PSM

Hi. Some time ago, you mentioned to me that PSM on mobile was broken because of the {{PSMLayoutTop}} template. I changed the layout from "div" to a table and was wondering if you can point me to the break you mentioned. — Ineuw talk 17:56, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-16

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

Recent changes

• You can filter Special:Log in more detail. You can filter different imports and new users. [110][111]
• You can use Telnet to read Wikimedia wikis. [112]
• MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [113]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [114]
• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data center test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on April 19 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is shadow namespaces. The meeting will be on 20 April at 21:30 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Archetypes.djvu

Based on the decision for Index:The Collective Unconscious and Its Archetypes.djvu, shouldnt Page:The Collective Unconscious and Its Archetypes.djvu/7 and Page:The Collective Unconscious and Its Archetypes.djvu/9 also be deleted? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 15:03, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Done thx — billinghurst sDrewth 22:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Intelligence_overseas_field_officer_payscale - This person wants someone to kill them. URGENT

@Kathleen.wright5: The above person wants someone to kill them. He says "Please kill me; anyone" and "NO JOKE", he describes himself as a "frail, obselete patriot". Could you please find someone to help him ASAP."

They are at the wrong site. Deleted page. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:13, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-17

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

Problems

• Wikimedia tested a new data center last week. This meant that the wikis could be read but not edited for 45 minutes on April 19 and for 20 minutes on April 21. [115]
• When the data center was tested, new edits were not shown in the recent changes log for 20 minutes. They are in the logs now. You can read more about how to find the edits.
• Unread notifications were sometimes counted incorrectly. This has now been fixed. [116]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia Commons will have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Commons. This will happen on April 26. [117]
• It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [118]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 27. It will be on all wikis from April 28 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on April 26 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The "Save page" button when you edit will be called "Publish" instead. This is to help new editors understand what it does. It already works like this on some wikis. [119]

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

21:02, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Arthur or Alexander?

There seems to be some question as to whether Author:Arthur James Mann (1896-1917) is Arthur James "Hamish" Mann or Alexander James "Hamish" Mann. I am finding it both ways in online searches. Do you have access to better service records? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:07, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Done Alexander, same as the father, which will be why he was called Hamish. Moved, and then put info onto the talk page.— billinghurst sDrewth 15:36, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Ping didn't show up in my alerts, but thank you for the research, and for the link at talk page. Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:58, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

new versions of images

Hi Bill. Sorry to disturb you, but I'm curious about one thing. I uploaded new versions of a few images to Commons that are a bit lighter (less dark) than the first ones, but when I transclude them here, the old versions still show up: Page:Vida's Art of Poetry.djvu/8, 12 and 90 – only when I click on the images (to enlarge them) do I see them change to the new versions. Is that normal? When (if ever) will these images be updated on Wikisource? Thx. ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:11, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

It would seem that the issue is thumbnail generation issue and/or caching, and I am not the expert on it, just recognise the issue. I had a similar issue with phabricator:T106516. Let us see if @Bawolff: is paying attention here. Otherwise I would start by asking at Commons VP with your examples, and see if you can get some response. If nothing happens, and it is a continuing issue, I would suggest creating a phabricator ticket with your examples, and add "@brion" as a positively provocative step to get comment and attention. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Okay, so it's not just me. Thanks for checking and for giving me directions. I copied my question to you and asked it on Commons, and was told that it is normal, and to just wait. (I'll do so, but if they aren't updated in a few weeks, I'll ask again.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2016 (UTC) P.S. Sorry, just a final update: I was pointed to the same phabricator case you mentioned. Strange that it still hasn't been fixed. I'll upload slightly changed images later. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:25, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-18

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

Recent changes

• The visual editor now works when you use Internet Explorer 9. [120]

Problems

• There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [121]

Changes this week

• You can now see which notifications are available on a wiki on Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration. [122]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 4. It will be on all wikis from May 5 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "PSR-6 Cache interface in Mediawiki core". The meeting will be on May 4 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Pages could be added to new users' watchlists by default when they edit them. New users could also by default get email notifications when pages they watch are edited. This is discussed on Meta. [123]

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

20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Busted table across page split

Page:Fancy dresses described, or, What to wear at fancy balls (1887).djvu/11 and Page:Fancy dresses described, or, What to wear at fancy balls (1887).djvu/12

Updated these to add links and the table busted up on the transclusion, The transclusion drops the first row of content from the second transcluded page. Perhaps as you have more experience in resolving obscure glitches you can explain why it broke? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Frederick Henry Hatch

Hey! Thank you for your help with Author:Frederick Henry Hatch. Do you know if we already have the scan of The geology of South Africa? --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:47, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I doubt that we know anything about Hatch or his work. I don't see the work at archive.org. I see it at Google books though for me not as available text. If you can find it there, you can use the BUB tool to transfer it to archive.org. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:31, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

@Tobias1984: Downloadable here. Hrishikes (talk) 02:19, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Use of admin access in a case of difference of editorial views

Hi Billinghurst,

It appears to me that at Template:Larger, you used your access as an administrator to implement a solution in line with your editorial choice. Please unprotect the page and ask another administrator to look into it. Jura1 (talk) 13:45, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

There was mention about your use of the template in a means that was contrary to the function of the template, and there was also discussion about your approach at Template talk:Header. I believe that I returned the template to the community's desired need, not implementing any personal requirement, as your change had already been reverted previously. If you believe that the template should be unprotected them please apply at WS:AN and every admin will be able to see your request. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:40, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Precedents and equal treatment

Dear B.

Well aware you and I rarely see quite eye-to-eye but on this issue I suspect we are pretty much of one mind. I note and applaud this—8th May action. Might you consider similar in regards to this as well? This is either borderline vandalism or at very least defiance.

Good thing Prosody seems to be on the case. AuFCL (talk) 08:34, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

It has been Done by another, and that one would have been even easier. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:25, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Clues and Help is needed

Hello Billinghurst, I’m a sysop in Greek Wikisource. I would like to request some help, if you have the time for this. I have noticed that en.wikisource hosts works free in the US even if they are copyrighted in the country of origin. I would like to do the same for Greek Wikisource, but I am afraid to proceed, fearing that Commons policy that demands a work to be free on both US and country of origin is a general Wikimedia policy. Could you please help me or give me references that will help me understanding when and how exceptions are possible? Thank you in advance. Ah3kal (talk) 09:53, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

@Ah3kal, @John Vandenberg: this policy has been used here longer than I have been around, so its exact development is not one that I have traced. I am presuming that part of the issue is that with English being the main language in a diverse range of countries with significant publishing, and coincidental publishing of English version in the US, that it is somewhat different in nature, especially seeing that the servers are all located within the US, and that is the requisite for copyright law.

For an exact rendition of Wikimedia's approach, you would be better to ping someone like user:Jalexander-WMF or one of the general staff email addresses for guidance on how to review your local policy. I do know that WMF as an organisation has a somewhat differing perspective than the administrators at Commons, so there may be some latitude. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:33, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much billinghurst! Ευχαριστώ! Ah3kal (talk) 09:51, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-19

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

Recent changes

• Wikiversities now have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Wikiversity. This happened on May 3. [124]
• You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [125]
• Users are invited to try Cross-wiki Notifications on all wikis. This is the last test session before the release by default, scheduled for May 12th at 23:00 UTC. [126][127]
• You can use keyboard shortcuts to open the visual editor (meta+V) or the wikitext editor (meta+E) (on certain wikis, even if you have chosen a favorite editor). [128]
• Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [129]
• The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [130]
• Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [131]
• Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [132]

Problems

• MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [133]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 10 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Overhaul Interwiki map, unify with Sites and WikiMap. The meeting will be on May 11 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• 2017 European hackathon will happen on May 19 - 21, in Vienna (Austria).

Future changes

• Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems. [134]

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

23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Gettysburg Address not 1863?

No doubt your reasons for removing | year = 1863 here are good; so would you mind sharing them whilst the edit is still fairly freshly in your mind? I only came across this trying to address Category:Headers missing parameters‎‎ so have no reason to change this (although it superficially looks like it probably is an 1863 draft to me.) AuFCL (talk) 04:37, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Mistake by me. I did a copy of header components while working on others in the category, and obviously misaligned my eyes. Thanks for the prod. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:24, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Aya. Diplomacy failure. AuFCL (talk) 05:50, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Probate and Legacy Duties Act 1808

Thanks, but the transclusion is all over the place in terms of margins, Not sure why given that I wrote some of the cl-act templates SPECFICALLY so that it didn't screw up in transclusion. Time to convert the entire thing back to {{Outside L}} etc which is KNOWN to have issues?ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:47, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Now fixed, some missing paramaters were not seemingly entered during proof-reading.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:01, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I know it is all over the place, but it cannot be fixed until it is in place and issues identified. Getting to it. Template issues do need to be resolved it is heavy with transclusion warnings. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:05, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

TO be fair - {{Cl-act-paragraph}} (and {{Sn-paragraph}}) etc. should probably be re-written as Lua for performance and mantainance reasons. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:51, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-20

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

Recent changes

• Some image thumbnails now load faster on mobile. They also take up less bandwidth. [135]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [136]

Changes this week

• Special:Notifications will have "mark as read" buttons for each day. The non-JavaScript version will get it this week. A JavaScript version will come later. [137]
• Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [138]
• A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [139]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 18. It will be on all wikis from May 19 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are "Requirements for change propagation". The meeting will be on May 18 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Using self-closing tags like <div/> and <span/> to mean <div></div> and <span></span> will not work in the future. Templates and pages that use these tags should be fixed. When Phabricator ticket T134423 is fixed these tags will parse as <div> and <span> instead. This is normal in HTML5. [140]

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

16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Geology of South Africa

Thank you for helping with Index:South African Geology - Schwarz - 1912.djvu. I just noticed that you are adding missing image templates. I am currently adding the missing images and can probably finish all of them today. I could use some help with some of the tables that are just made of brackets, which I don't know how to style correctly. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:46, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-21

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

Recent changes

• You now see a warning message on pages that try to use {{DISPLAYTITLE}} but it doesn't work because it doesn't match the page's actual title. [141]

Problems

• Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [142]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 24 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• All HTTP access to Wikimedia sites and APIs will stop working. Some bots still use HTTP. They will need to use HTTPS instead. This will happen on June 12. [143]

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

18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Gnomish request

Hi, Billinghurst.

Wikidata won't accept a link to Multilingual Wikisource, so that's actually the only Wikisource Main Page you can't get to by a link from this project's Main Page. Would you mind adding a good, old-fashioned, manual iw link there? (They work; I tested it on my user page. The legend under languages reads "More languages".) I happened to request that about a year ago at Talk:Main Page, but the only edits there since have been spam and reversion of same.

Many thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I added it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:42, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:20, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

@StevenJ81: I hadn't even realised that we had removed the interwiki there. :-/ As a reflection, any protected page requested edit is always best accompanied by {{editprotected}}, or a request on Wikisource:Administrators' noticeboard. So many of the administrivia pages are static or managed globally these days. <shrug> Glad that someone was able to assist quickly. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:03, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Noting that with category watching now available additions to Category:Wikisource protected edit requests are more evident. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:06, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll note that. (I wouldn't be surprised if either a bot or an enthusiastic editor just swept up the lot of the manual iw links once Wikidata was established.) StevenJ81 (talk) 22:07, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks like forgetfulness looking at the page history, and similar pages. We used to utilise the template {{Interwiki Wikisource}} for those protected pages, and it is probably worthwhile getting them back into play in a range of places as the main page will not be an isolated situation. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:25, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

File:The Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself.pdf

The "attributed" author of this died in 1945, so I've requested undeletion at Commons (from my alternate account.). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:16, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

No need to tell me ahead of time. Admins would only need to know to delete a work if it is present (transwiki'd or undeleted) at Commons, and a speedy deletion request should suffice with adequate reasoning. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

This is ridiculous

Short_Titles_Act_1896/First_Schedule/6_Ann

I thought I'd resolved the template/page interaction issues here. Seems Mediawiki doesn't want to play nice or consistently. Back to the drawing board completely. It would be nice if there was a CONSISTENT behaviour. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:03, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

The specfic revison that broke - Special:Diff/6250078 , I reverted it back to the KNOWN broken version. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:49, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Resolved elsewhereShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:08, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Two more mystery authors

While working on Aristophanes, I came across four authors with no author pages. For two of these I was able to track down biographical details and create Author pages, but two remain. Both are redlinked at Comedies of Aristophanes, which contains all the information I know about them. Any help would be appreciated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:34, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: According to his VIAF listing Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (you know, the explorer) wrote "The Acharnenses of Aristophanes with notes critical and explanatory, adapted to the use of schools and universities." So there is a link of sorts. AuFCL (talk) 21:47, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I found his entry, but there was no information at Wikipedia or his biographical entry to suggest he translated Aristophanes. So I was skeptical. Your research helps, so I'll add the info. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I subsequently found amongst our own Mitchell, Thomas (1743-1845) (DNB00) the fragment (first paragraph): "…in 1813 he commenced a series of articles in the 'Quarterly Review ' on Aristophanes and Athenian manners (Nos. xvii. xlii. xliii. xlv. xlviii. liv. lviii. lxvi. Ixxxviii.), the success of which subsequently induced him to undertake his spirited and accurate verse translation of Aristophanes's comedies of the 'Acharnians,' 'Knights,' 'Clouds,' and 'Wasps,' (2 vols. 1820-2)." Is that definitive enough? AuFCL (talk) 00:31, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

(continued, for EncycloPetey) from your own research presumably: Page:Comedies of Aristophanes (Hickie 1853) vol1.djvu/16 contains red-link to "Charles Apthorp Wheelwright" (my own addition: died 1858: could not verify as VIAF misbehaving for me. B*** Telstra!) AuFCL (talk) 21:58, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

At this point, I've probably lost track of several bits of research here and there, so thanks for finding that bit. I have faith that Billinghurst can find additional biographical data. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: I think that the Mitchell is this bloke ... Mitchell, Thomas (1743-1845) (DNB00), rather than the explorer. [And to note if it is that Mitchell, I believe he becomes our first centurion author.]

• Thomas Mitchell Alumni Cantabrigiensis

I agree with the Wheelwright assignation, just to note that there were two of that name, and the relevant one will be the later, this one a clergyman in Northamptonshire, which looks to be c.1787-1858, though will need to dig properly in my sources.

• Wheelwright@clergydatabase
• CA Wheelwright Alumni Cantabrigiensis

— billinghurst sDrewth 00:34, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Good call. I allowed myself to be confused by the adjacency of the DNB entry to TLM's entry. AuFCL (talk) 00:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Great to know we may have this sorted. Will you be crafting new Author pages for these fellows, or should I? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:40, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

If they aren't done, I will when I get some time. Don't mind. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:59, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-22

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

Recent changes

• There is now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module. [144]

Problems

• A new way to handle rollback was introduced. It broke some tools and scripts and was reverted. This will be re-planned after review. [145][146]
• CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [147]

Changes this week

• When you edit a file or category page with the visual editor the rest of the page will be shown in its normal place. [148]
• The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [149]
• A change to the <charinsert> feature could break some user scripts. Contact Bawolff if the "click to insert special characters" links in the edit window break on your wiki. [150][151]
• Elasticsearch will be upgraded on Wikimedia wikis this week. This should not affect you, but if you have problems with the search function this is probably the reason. [152]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Centering with left float

Can you tell me why the centered headings on this page seem to be shifting right due to the left-floated bracketed date? I'm baffled. Outlier59 (talk) 01:29, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

CSS isn't my forté. Someone like AuFCL (talk • contribs) are much better at such intricacies. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:58, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I've left a note for AuFCL. Outlier59 (talk) 02:06, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the referral (charge at the usual rates?) However just a small heads-up: the conversation unexpectedly spun out to a critique of {{rh}} which might just land the issue back in the laps of you and yours in any case. Revisit/reintegrate/revise perhaps? (though I'm not particularly a fan of the {{loop}} sub-construct.) AuFCL (talk) 23:21, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Loop looks fugly, surely it needs to be converted to a LUA module, not that sh(one)t. There seems to be w:template:loop and we already have module:string so presumably we just need some conversion. Re RunningHeader, I am just another user for a useful formatting technique (I don't do complex css, I just like its output). — billinghurst sDrewth 01:47, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Upon further examination Eliyak's version is a little "over-cooked." As he makes all text blocks absolute, he needs some way of moving text following {{rh}} down and has settled for a rather awkward extra parameter "lines" (thus the loop.) I still think a slightly less ambitious implementation, or indeed the "hidden filler" approach might be worthwhile but I'll let you make the call whether you think it worth proceeding. It looks like there is already an amazing amount of stalled experimentation already present in {{RunningHeader/sandbox}}.

As an aside I really did think loop already was implemented in LUA and am surprised to find that it is not. I have used String/rep directly several times, not realising that is wikipedia's implementation anyway. Is a one-liner really worthwhile? AuFCL (talk) 09:05, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Land Letter

Would the fact that the letter was received by President George Bush make his copy of the text the property of the Federal Government and thus without copyright? --One Salient Oversight (talk) 09:43, 1 June 2016 (UTC) eg: http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/~/media/GWBL/Files/Finding%20Aids%20FOIA%20pdfs/2014-0072-F%20Finding%20Aid.ashx

Ownership of the medium does not constitute ownership of the intellectual property of published work. So the answer is no, for published work. Receipt of the letter allows the government to legally do things, but taking away an author's intellectual property is general not one of them.— billinghurst sDrewth 11:35, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

But the medium itself is a 'letter'. Can a letter be copyrighted? The letter was received by the office of the president and is likely available from a Freedom of Information request. From the link I have provided I have found many letters from individuals to the president and those letters are now available in the public domain. Moreover the Land letter itself was presented as an open letter for others to read and not private correspondence. Additionally, the letter was not written as a means of making money - it was never sold. --One Salient Oversight (talk) 22:29, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

The fact that it is an "Open Letter" should also give pause for thought [153] --One Salient Oversight (talk) 23:05, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

A person's writing and intellectual property is captured in whatever form it takes place where it meets the criteria of w:copyright law. The owner of the letter was sent the letter for a purpose, and they can do elements within that purpose of the letter, especially as they wrote the laws, that does not necessarily extend the right for us to host another person's work. We cannot host the work here with our licensing restrictions, and our scope. That is not to say that other sites may host it as w:fair use can apply and relates to the importance of the letter, it is just that we cannot host it.

I understand that it is important to you, however, that doesn't get us around the limitations for how this library can host material. For us to host the work it would need to be released to the public domain outright or by creative commons licensing. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:24, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-23

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

Recent changes

• MathML/SVG is now the default <math> rendering mode on Wikimedia projects. [154][155]

Changes this week

• The history page can tell you if a page on your watchlist was updated since you last visited it. This now works the same way in Vector as in other skins. The change broke local designs on some wikis. This will be fixed this week. [156]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).

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

20:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-24

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia wikis now use AuthManager. If you have new problems related to logging in or being logged in, report them. [157]
• Visiting Special:Notifications doesn't automatically mark notifications as read anymore. You can go between read, unread or all notifications on Special:Notifications. Notifications on Special:Notifications are grouped by day. You can mark every daily group as read individually. Notifications are displayed by groups of 50 on Special:Notifications and you can find former notifications by using navigation arrows. [158][159][160][161]

Changes this week

• You can filter user contributions to hide minor edits. [162]
• It will be easier to edit galleries with the visual editor. [163]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).

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

18:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-25

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

Recent changes

• Notifications were not always marked as read when you followed a link from an email notification. This will now happen. [164]

Changes this week

• The list of other languages an article is available in will be shorter on small Wikipedias and non-Wikipedia projects. This is to make it easier to find the most relevant languages for each user. You will still be able to see the other languages. [165][166]
• Alerts (the red badge) will not be automatically marked as read when you open the Notifications popup. [167]
• When you get several thanks you can see them as one notification. This is instead of one notification for each thanks. [168]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is develop Markdown support strategy for MediaWiki. The meeting will be on 22 June at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

{{test}}?

Whilst I agree with your change on a technicality—is it necessarily a good idea to draw a potential miscreant's attention which buttons they were recently pressing? (Perhaps consider this a follow-on to our recent interaction regarding wisdom of subst:. You may recall that your script leaves {{test}} dynamically updating.) AuFCL (talk) 03:14, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

The application of test is an interesting edit, and is its placement of the text aimed at the user, or more indicative to other users who are patrolling edits, or maybe both. Is its use a gentle pointer to proper usage, or a slap without block? How/should we react to a troll? a spammer? For me it is often a reasonable means to see what patterns may be there [169], and a constructed template is easier than most other means. No perfect answer, just tools and tweaks. If I/we see abuse, or maladaptation, there are a range of tools and means with which I/we can react differently. At this stage in my experience, light use of test template for clear people edits in a less accusatory manner than VANDAL! TROLL! ... has not been corrupting a gentle response. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:08, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

All good points. I hope you do not object to the enquiry.

I am currently bothered by the activity (in two separate bursts, so far as I can tell by this. Not sure what they are up to or how best—or even if—to address the activity but it appears always disruptive but not quite outright objectionable. Clearly testing limits. A common factor seems always uses Visual Editor but if you outlaw based on just that… (teasing: you might be lauded as a true hero just before being shown the one-way door?) AuFCL (talk) 04:39, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Progressed from careless to clueless, if they go further, other tools and means will be utilised. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

@AuFCL: to note that they progressed the next step this week, and they are now on local holiday. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:43, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

I have no particular desire to observe this individual as a form of blood-sport. The "local holiday" is nothing compared with enWP's rather more lengthy one. All rather sad really—and by that I am not wasting sympathy on master EU. AuFCL (talk) 06:53, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Douay Rheims Bible

Bible (Douay-Rheims) I'm thinking about doing something with this project. What I'd actually like to do is provide the Orginal Douay Rheims. The Challenor revision is already fully set up at Project Gutenburg. But nowhere on the internet is there a freely available text of the Original version, so I think it'd be important to have and I'm willing to get the job started.

I'm totally new at wikisource and I don't want to go stepping on people's toes, if you're against doing that. Here's an example of the original text new testament https://archive.org/details/1582DouaiRheimsDouayRheimsFirstEdition3Of31582NewTestament

DavidPorter65 (talk) 05:00, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi @DavidPorter65:. thanks for asking. Sounds to me as though you are talking about a different version of the work, which would for us would mean a separate work, as for us different editions, different translations, ... are all significant, and can be reproduced. So if it has the difference that you express then it is welcome here. Is there any specific advice you would like in order to set it up? FWIW the easiest way to get the work to Commons is using toollabs:ia-upload and happy to assist in the initial setup of the work if that is of assistance to you. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:42, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

billinghurst

Hi @Billinghurst: Yes it is a different version to what's already there. What's already there is known as the "Challenor Revision", and as the page's own blurb states, it is a substantially different version. The Challenor is already fully available at PG, and even has web sites dedicated to it e.g. http://drbo.org. I wasn't sure if, in that case, wikisource would still be interested. In any case, a new project does strike me as the way to go. I don't want to spoil what's already there and it would mean doing just that and losing whatever amount of hard work had already been put in. In terms of your offer of help, I am brand new to wikimedia editing and am floundering here with the learning curve. Even your example of ia-upload, I don't know what that means. But if a page can be started, I can get to work. I'd welcome anything you would feel like doing to help me get started. DavidPorter65 (talk) 06:10, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

@DavidPorter65: uploaded to Commons, and the index page here at Index:Bible (Douay Rheims, 1582).djvu — billinghurst sDrewth 06:50, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Thank you. I created a wikisource page for the whole bible. Bible_(Douay-Rheims_Original. So I have that and now we have the djvu file uploaded, and an index file for the upload, but I don't understand what the connection between them should be. I have a further two djvu files (for the OT) which I will put up eventually, not straight away. Also, the actual page title, that goes in the URL and the heading, can that be changed to add "NT" in? DavidPorter65 (talk) 08:22, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

We would not usually use the word "original", much more likely to use date of publication, or sometimes "first edition". Similarly, we are more likely to say "New Testament" rather than abbreviate. Not knowing the structure of the work I had to guess at a titling, and if I need to redo the Index: page title, then let me know before you start proofreading as I will move the pages here and at Commons. There is only a naming direct relationship between File: > Index: > Page:, when it comes to transcluding into the main namespace, we can munge that with the <pages> statement. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:55, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: a couple more hours to look around and… I understand what you've done, and thank you. But it seems that page-by-page method doesn't work so well here, because the book doesn't have its own table of contents. So I'm not sure how anyone could know what page they go to. In a bible it's all about books, chapters and verses, and I see that's how most of the other bible pages are constructed. So I think I just need to start with the new page I made and take it from there. Thanks anyway for what you did. At least that got me started in that it allowed to start thinking my way through the issues.DavidPorter65 (talk) 10:30, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-26

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

Recent changes

• The ORES service has now moved to a new location. This should make it easier to use ORES. The ORES review service is now available as a beta feature on Wikidata and Persian Wikipedia. ORES is an artificial intelligence system for Wikimedia wikis to help editors. [170]
• The order of wikis in collapsed cross-wiki notifications was different than when the list was expanded. This is now fixed. [171]
• A new category for tracking pages with math errors was added: Category:Pages with math errors. [172]

Problems

• The Wikimedia Etherpad crashed on June 23. Some edits done that day have been lost. They can be found at etherpad-restore.wikimedia.org for another few days. [173][174]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
• The way to mark notifications as read or unread will be changed to be more clear. [175]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation will look at developing better tools for edit review. This is because research suggests we scare away newcomers who want to help. [176]
• An e-mail from the Editing Department explains the technical work that is planned and being researched for the future. Items include better wikitext and visual editing, prompts for edits, language improvements, annotations, and meta-data separation. [177]
• The sorting of Notifications into the two fly-out menus is going to change on July 5 to 7. Bundled notifications should be easier to explore and mark as read individually. [178][179][180]
• From 29 June git.wikimedia.org (running Gitblit) will redirect all requests to Phabricator. The vast majority of requests should be correctly redirected. [181]
• Catalan and Polish Wikipedias will have Wikidata descriptions added to articles in the mobile view by default. This is currently a beta option for the mobile versions. This might come to other wikis later. [182]

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

15:42, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Misery?

As you have already tantalised your victim, do you anticipate making the promise official? I enquire as a truly uninvolved observer, as he would not in fact be my choice—that is not to say I would explicitly oppose either. AuFCL (talk) 04:19, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

A bit late perhaps...

...but w.r.t. this, now seems a little less plausible doesn't it, or is that just my cynical precognition at work?

In other words "toljaso." (I do not really expect you to concede the point.) AuFCL (talk) 07:25, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I am well aware of my comments, and my actions with individuals on-site. I will also continue to interact and seek improvement to our common goals. I will not fear that people, whom I have supported, change their approach or take negative actions, then going out of favour, though that will not be through lack of trying to induce improvement by direct means. I will always address issues to an individual when they arise, and if that comes to other actions at a later time, that is a decision for a later time. I will continue to endeavour to be supportive, polite and considerate of my fellow users and admins, and not be sniping, especially for the few for whom I have little or less patience where I just try to keep out of their way, and if I fume, it is silently online, and maybe verbally at the monitor.

I will also reflect that admin tools are for admin actions, and despite, you seeming sneer, these have still been used properly to the evidence presented to me, and that open question still sits open for demonstration whenever you see fit, or the next confirmation. My predominant factors for admin confirmation is judging the need for the tools and their ability to use them to the obligations, and I don't think that statement is unclear or in difference to my commentary over time in confirmations. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:23, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

You earn Brownie points for responding—however you will (perhaps) forgive me for remaining true to my convictions.

P.S. Also congrat.s on finally moving on the B.T. issue. Same comment applies. AuFCL (talk) 10:46, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

My expectations of you are known and I believe my approach to you would follow above model. I try to be true, and to be seen to be true, to my principles

With regards to administrators, any person is able to nominate someone as a candidate, and especially any administrator would/should be seen to be encouraging and bringing along potential candidates. That they don't is interesting, though not going to inhibit me proposing the next generation, and at some point my successors. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I frankly admit I find your remarks annoying both for the grain of truth they contain and for the bushel of unjust mindless incomprehension as well.

Well let me put you on warning that you might just reap commensurately as ye have sown. No; I still do not like you or your cronies but never say I am entirely unreceptive to suggestion.

I am going to assume you are sufficiently intelligent as to understand. Kindly don't prove my faith wrong. If I happen to have misread the intent of your barbs then—well: no sympathy. AuFCL (talk) 05:31, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Index:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu

If you think this is ready for Namespace, feel free to transclude it. It takes me HOURS to do transclusion. I'd rather be proofing!... :) Outlier59 (talk) 23:40, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

note: The preface and book index are not listed in the table of contents. Outlier59 (talk) 23:44, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

@Outlier59: Happy to transclude it as time allows. I haven't overly looked at the structure of the work, and will do so closer to the time. FWIW, adding a plain {{index transcluded}} template puts it into the "watch" queue to transclude, (advanced options into other categories), which will mean it will happen as a maintenance task, if no one gets to it promptly. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:14, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Outlier59 (talk) 10:08, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

SDrewthbot changes breaking page

Hi - I know this happened a while ago but, I thought I'd raise it. Some of the changes made by SDrewthbot on this page: https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:EB1911_-_Volume_04.djvu/492&diff=prev&oldid=5951220 broke the display of the caption. I have since fixed it, but changing:
{{em}}   to
<span style="display:inline-block; width:1em"> 
broke the caption displaying. Has this change been made to other pages and broken them? DivermanAU (talk) 01:53, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

On the off chance you don't know the cause: the substitution introduced an equals character within a template invokation, causing it to be parsed as a named parameter. It can be fixed by prepending with 1=, but I'm not seeing an easy way of preventing it from happening in the first place. Hesperian 03:10, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

@DivermanAU, @Hesperian: Thanks, I will look at the specific scripts when I get the chance in front of that PC; and review (again) those templates that it picks up. I will presumably just write a particular rule to do {{em}} to ⁠, (or maybe skip it), before push whichever substituting rule. I will check back to see what else was running about that time. [/me mumbles about sledgehammers and cracking eggs using a template like that instead of &emsp; is just ugly and serious bloat especially in template intense pages. I can see that it is seriously abused in some places.] — billinghurst sDrewth 04:09, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

@Hesperian: it is sooooooo abused! Some templates had 12 uses. Some Page: ns pages have 20+ uses. I could understand its use if we had ⁠ =   as that may be easier to type, but some of the bloat we have in pages for its (mis|ab)use is phenomenal. I feel that anything but singular use should be replace. The proportional measures can all be replaced with {{gap}} as long as we add units of measure.

Author:Henry IV (1425-1474)

What style is Author:Henry IV (1425-1474) conforming to? Every royal author I've tried looking up uses a form like "Henry IV of Castile", not "Henry IV (1425-1474)". --EncycloPetey (talk) 07:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

If you want. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:09, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-27

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

Recent changes

• A daily email summary of notifications could be sent even when there were no notifications from the wiki. Now no email will be sent if there is no activity. [183]

Changes this week

• The "⧼citoid-citefromidtool-title⧽" button in the visual editor's toolbar will move into the "Insert" menu except for Wikipedias, Wikibookses and Wikiversities. This is to make it less prominent on wikis that don't use it as much. [184]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can take part in the next office hour for Wikidata on IRC on July 8 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:45, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

{{Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature lkpl}}

Thanks. I'm changing the links I'd previously made to use it. Sorry my 'not-static' IP makes me hard to talk to. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 16:36, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Regarding using multicol on this work, my understanding is that all the 'rules' say about it is that it's 'not necessary'... that it's optional. I have no interest in warring about it, but I've done it to well over 100 pages now, as I have been proofing and transcluding them back into the articles, because it makes the text considerably easier to proofread. I don't, to be honest, really care if they are changed back (though the work should be consistent one way or the other) but if you are going to remove the multicol please don't just hit 'undo' and remove other edits (such as the missing spaces and extra line returns that I had also fixed on that page.

If it's 'really' a big deal that the pages not be in multicol, I guess I can stop doing it (though removing it from 100+ pages would be incredibly annoying) but it really does make proofreading the pages a hell of a lot easier, since otherwise I see about a dozen lines of text all on one line in the preview (which is what I'm checking the original text against, so that I also see the text rendered). 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 18:01, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

@2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA: Re lkpl template, feel welcome to leave the old style rather than chase them, as I can bot them easily enough [not many IP addresses editing author pages, so generating a list is easy.] If you wish to do them, is okay too. Re multicol, do not feel that there is any need for you to go back and undo them, it isn't that much of an issue. The issue comes down to screen sizes, and that forcing a couple of columns can be problematic (it is an issue which we pondered long and hard way back when with the DNB). And not to worry, there was never an intention to undo or revert, it was all gently picked apart, and if it hadn't been so late I would have validated, rather than just patrolled the edits. And yes, communication by edit summary is less than ideal versus contact via talk page, and was going to try and catch you when you were actively editing. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:58, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I can easily enough just put it in columns while proofreading them (since I am comparing the page to the rendered text, since it mostly just needs tiddly stuff like spacing, fixing smallcaps, and linking articles) and then remove the markup before I hit save.... I was just (admittedly) a bit neurotic about getting into some war (and I should have known better, I know who you are, lol). 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 00:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

It might, however, be a good idea to word the 'do not include' part of Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading that mentions multiple column text a bit more strongly, if it's actually preferred that text not be transcribed that way... it comes across as 'you don't have to bother', but other places stress making the transcribed work look like the original as much as possible. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 00:45, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Plus I will add DCBL to Wikisource:WikiProject Biographical dictionaries — billinghurst sDrewth 22:59, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

PS. We don't backwards convert {{PD-old}} to {{pd/1923}}. pd/1923 was set up as a convenience and to stop the incorrect attributions that were being made. Once we are 101 years past the year of death, it is better to not have to step through the convolution of templates, and progress straight to PD-old.

Fair enough, I'm used to the Commons practice of preferring to use the auto-calculating templates when the date is actually 'known'.... admittedly, template depth is never really an issue there. I've noticed, BTW, that you have been doing research on the author pages, and I appreciate that. FYI, even though 'this source' does not give a lot of info about identifying the contributors, I am being careful about the id when adding birth/death dates... I'm referring to a scan of "A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines", the multivolume work that this was abstracted from, which gives full names, and using biographical info to check that the stated 'professional title' matches what the person held when this work was published... for some, they have a wikipedia article, and I'm poking the connection into wikidata as well.

Ah yes, wikidifference. <shrug> (Of course they should all follow our process!?!). We do look to populate our author ns. with works and about, and I do love the (old) biographical works which we can attach. As a note, if you have reference material about authors, always feel welcome to drop it to the author's talk page. We have much research and external references there for safe keeping, especially where it is primary reference and cannot be poked on a WP-page. My primary research skills and tools are pretty good for UK/USA/Commonwealth sources, and yes I too am populating through to WD.

It's probably obvious, I'm not a noob... I have an account, with several hundred thousand global edits (and I'm not avoiding a ban). I've just been on 'vacation', and if I logged in people would start pinging me, lol. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 00:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

We judge people on what they do here, not what they have done elsewhere — blocked or otherwise. So you can edit as an IP if you so choose, that is what it is, and we appreciate any improvements and additions that you make. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

(nods) I just want to get this done without getting sidetracked, and that would almost certainly happen if I logged in... I'll go back to being 'me' after this work is sorted. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:542E:18DD:FF5F:EEAA 23:00, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

A couple of 'notes' about how I'm doing this, 'typographically'... I'm specifically using the 'figure dash' unicode character when appropriate (in the raw text, they are inconsistently either hyphens or hbar characters) and adding 'hair spaces' in certain spots (such as where there are italics followed by a parentheses close, an open bracket followed by smallcaps text, or a ' followed by a ") where 'web rendering' gives unreadable text... I don't know how often people on ws worry about such things, but they annoy me. Hopefully, that's 'acceptable' here. If people are using a non-unicode font, both of those should fallback to hyphens and normal spaces.

There is also a particular page (I don't remember which one, offhand) that had a name in Syriac Aramaic script... I marked it as 'image missing', and noted on the talk page that it's actually aramaic... I doubt most people have that font, so actually inserting it would probably not be helpful, lol. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 00:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Another note... the 'titles' of the article pages appear to have been inherited from whatever source this was imported from, they are not the same as the actual articles in the work (which is not necessarily bad, they are ambiguous) but... in the 'next/previous' links, they are alphabetical by the page names, and that order matches neither that in the work itself, or in the 'index' pages (that match the work). I'm changing them so the next/previous order matches both the actual text and the indexes, but it might make sense at some point (and I can't do it as an IP, ofc) to rename the article pages so that they are closer to the work, and don't appear to be 'out of order'. As an example of what I mean, the 'article page' "Barsumas, Syrian archimandrite" precedes the page "Barsumas, Nestorian bp. of Nisibis"... not alphabetical, but in the work they are "Barsumas (the Eutychian)" followed by "Barsumas (the Nestorian)". It might be worth running through them and renaming. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:B019:8FA1:91B8:8FA 01:57, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

We have gone away from hair spaces and the like, as we have found them inconsistent within a work, especially with justification, and difficult for users to proofread and inconsistent across and within works, so have a KISS focus as explained in Wikisource:Style guide. Typically we will use &emdash or like, and not go fancy. That said the most important thing is consistency within a work, though we do ask that consider that while you may be able to do something a

• For languages, we do have {{language characters}} and specific language variants, and we mark the pages as problematic. We do have the extended webfonts/ULS character set here, so don't necessarily need to worry about user fonts. Suggest that you try it, and if the characters are in the set, we can replicate. Have a look at {{ULS}}.
• {{illegible}} for the undecipherable bits
• Move whatever needs moving, and we can leave the redirects, or subst: {{dated soft redirect}} if they should be temporary makes sense. You can mark pages to be moved with {{Move to subpage}}, not perfect but if you use the full page/subpage title, it will be seen and understood. I am now watching the tracking category. I doubt anyone (active) knows why they are as they are. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Where I have added hair spaces, it was not where the text was illegible in the original work, but specific spots where the rendering of the text by web browsers tends to be broken.... for instance, the text ?) (which is not a terrible case, since it's still readable, but illustrates it) is not uncommon in this work, and the characters collide unless you add a hair space, which gives ? ). '" is another example, also in this work quite a bit, where I've been adding hair spaces to give ' " so that it's readable. I'm not trying to use them to 'imitate' the original typography (which used a 'regular' space between ' and "), just to fix spots where typefaces change and browsers break it. As far as using the 'figure dash', whatever ocr was used on this originally seems to not have consistently transcribed them... they are 'visibly' figure dashes, but are various types of dashes (inconsistently) in the transcription.

I will hunt down that page with the aramaic script, and re-tag it with that template, but... the characters involved are not in the ULS fonts... it's pretty esoteric, being the alphabet of a language that's been dead for over a thousand years. I feel pretty confident in stating that nobody is going to have a font that supports it unless they have specifically hunted down and installed one... I know for a fact that Windows and Mac do not by default. If actually transcribed, it would probably be 'missing character' glyphs for nearly any reader.

It's Page:Dictionary_of_Christian_Biography_and_Literature_(1911).djvu/49 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:542E:18DD:FF5F:EEAA 23:06, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the {{move to subpage}}... I had hunted around for any kind of 'requested move' tagging, and had no luck. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:542E:18DD:FF5F:EEAA 23:00, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

May POTM award

Can you please insert it in the user page of Kathleen.wright5? I could not do it because the page is protected. Thanks, Hrishikes (talk) 02:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 06:36, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Can you please do the same for July too? Hrishikes (talk) 07:42, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Done for Index:How to Keep Bees.djvu — billinghurst sDrewth 00:10, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

sent you an email

about an annoying IP block, but I see now that you are no longer a steward (?) so maybe you can't do anything about it. ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:25, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

@DanielTom: I cannot remove a global block, so for that you will need to talk to a steward directly or use m:SRG. I have given you local IPBE so you should not be affected at enWS by IP blocks. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:13, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks very much. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Please don't archive unaddressed items

I protest the archiving of unaddressed outstanding WS:AN issues. If you are going to do this then at least have the decency to close them as inappropriate with some indication actual mindful cognition has taken place.

I have marked the useless modules as {{sdelete}} and will not embarrass you further (unless of course you really want me to—perhaps you are deliberately trying to be provocative?)

You may recall the apocryphal story of the engineer, the auditor and the pig and the unwisdom of indulging in a mud-wrestle with any of them for fear that they will enjoy the experience more than you. AuFCL (talk) 02:23, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Please stop trying to pick a fight. I archived what I thought was archiveable. Please feel welcome to return whatever you believe is not resolved or should not be archived. It is no issue to me at all. It would be useful if administrators, and users did close processes and I encourage you to address that issue to all administrators. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:15, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

From my perspective it is you who is attempting to provoke a response. I am frankly uninterested in competing against anybody who so spontaneously falls over their own feet.

In fact I thought I was doing you an active kindness in not retrieving the archive. You are inconsistent in your demands, which is probably why you are condemned to irrelevance. Just keep on searching for that replacement.

As the issue is now addressed there is nothing left to fight about—at least until your next calculated "mistake." AuFCL (talk) 06:32, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Vida's Art of Poetry

Hello Billinghurst. (Remember the "phabricator:T106516 problem" you told me about? I followed the instructions, and it was indeed easily fixed by simply adding 1 pixel of color to the images.) Okay, quick question: why is the header appearing twice in Vida's Art of Poetry? ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:12, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 12:18, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. May I add it to the "New Texts" list, or should I wait for it to be validated? ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Sure, add away. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:06, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-28

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

Recent changes

• A new image scaler fixed a number of bugs for showing SVG files. Some new problems turned up. [185][186][187]
• Notifications are grouped by types. They are now counted by number of notifications and not by unread groups. That change may increase the number of notifications displayed. The earlier way of counting was often incorrect. Unread notifications will also be displayed first. [188][189][190]
• Special:Notifications now has a maximum width for the notifications list on desktop computers. This allows long titles and descriptions to be cut properly. Notifications are now also better parsed. [191][192][193]

Problems

• On 5 July Wikimedia Commons had problems and could not be edited for 20 minutes. For a short while after that the recent changes log and some gadgets were not working properly. It affected administrative actions on other projects too. [194]
• Users who have multiple unread notifications can mark them as read by visiting Special:Notifications page on their wiki.

Changes this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Clinton on Emails - 'I Opted for Convenience'

Hi,

just to give you a heads up. The video file used as the source has been undeleted at Wikimedia Commons as a result of this discussion. Not sure if this also means that the Wikisource page can be restored to it's former glory. Natuur12 (talk) 11:40, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Natuur12: I previously listed it at Wikisource:Copyright discussions#Clinton on Emails - 'I Opted for Convenience' so please feel free to comment there. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:45, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! Will do. Natuur12 (talk) 11:50, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Validation

Hi Billinghurst. Thank you for your validations at The Rainbow. I noticed these corrections: removing a space from a blank line and removing a single line break. Given that you did these in quick succession this seems very eagle-eyed. Do you use some gadget or display option that could help me to spot these easy-to-miss errors myself when proofreading, or indeed validating other's works? Or do you just have a good method? BethNaught (talk) 12:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi BethNaught. Line breaks are pretty easy to spot from someone else's editing as we all have different page widths set. On that note I do have a number of script that I use to do quick editing and replacements. There is a bit of a history to it though you can see it in User:billinghurst/common.js and it utilises m:TemplateScript — billinghurst sDrewth 03:46, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2016/29|Tech News: 2016-29]]

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

Recent changes

• Due to the rollback, new sorting of Notifications on the Fly-Out Menus has been deployed with a delay. [195]
• Due to the rollback, the daily special patch deployment process has been changed. [196]
• In notifications, "Messages" are now called "Notices". [197]

Problems

• On July 12 all wikis were rolled back to MediaWiki 1.28.0-wmf.8 due to a problem in the log-in system. [198][199]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
• Special:Log now has a help link. [200]
• The RevisionSlider can be tested on the beta cluster. From 22 July, it will be available as a beta feature at: German Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "Devise plan for a cross-wiki watchlist back-end". The meeting will be on 20 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join. [201]

Future changes

• User scripts and bots can no longer use http:// to edit wiki pages. [202][203]
• Gerrit is going to be updated. Developers are invited to test it. [204]

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

12:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Category:Deprecated templates

@Kathleen.wright5: I've found some more templates that are no longer needed. This has also been posted at Wikisource:Proposed_deletions--kathleen wright5 (talk) 00:31, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Reply to "Template:New Texts"

Hi Billinghurst.

Thank you so much for your congrats and your help editing Costumes of the Canary Islands! If you allow me, I'm going to correct one thing tonight before to add it to Template:New texts; you can read what I need to correct here, maybe you can help me giving some advice.

Again, thank you! Regards, Ivanhercaz | Talk 23:08, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-30

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

Recent changes

• Interactive maps have been enabled for Meta wiki and the Catalan, Hebrew, and Macedonian Wikipedias. Learn how to add interactive maps to wiki pages.
• Last week's rollback is now documented. [205]

Problems

• Sometimes, the visual editor required saving twice. That problem is now fixed. [206]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
• It is now possible to mark all Notifications as read on Special:Notifications, by clicking on the cog icon. [207]
• Wikipedia search will now detect the language of your search if 2 or fewer results are found. It will then show results from the matching language Wikipedia, if any relevant article exists. It will start to roll out in 5 languages. [208]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "an extension that implements an authenticated key-value store". The meeting will be on 27 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join. [209]

Future changes

• The current icon for Notifications "Notices" (in English "Notices") will be changed from a bubble-speech icon to a tray icon for consistency. [210]
• Special:Notifications page code will be changed to be more Mobile friendly. [211]

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

19:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Reversion

In case of this, you could have corrected the incoming links instead of declining the delete request, because the page-name in question is nothing but a typo. Hrishikes (talk) 07:05, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely not, that would be editorialising, and I do not know how many other pages in the work may have similar. Either way it is a longstanding page, and one where we should retain the redirect. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:08, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

So, in your view, long-standing mistakes should be retained because of their "longstanding-ness"? I am asking because it is always better to understand the policy properly. Hrishikes (talk) 07:29, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

It is an existing link Special:WhatLinksHere/1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vidyasagar, Ismar Chandra, and so it in itself does not create a mistake, it shows what is there. Redirects are cheap (systemwise) and it is reasonable to retain it, and there is no value in deleting it. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:17, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Delinking of Gitanjali

This is about your delinking of WS pages from WD page of Gitanjali. In such a scenario, you should have locally linked the concerned wikisources with one other, so that the interwiki menu could be displayed in each. But you made an incomplete effort in bnWS and did not put the links in other wikisources. Thereby this work virtually stands delinked from other language versions (fully in Chinese and Telugu; partially in English and French wikisources). This is disruptive editing, is it not? Hrishikes (talk) 13:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Only if it is left that way forever, if you fill them all up you cannot see the alternatives/or the problems when the links are there. Temporary delinks of interwikis is inconsequential when exploring the issue that you raised. Plus please don't pick fights with inflammatory language. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:10, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks

for the recent suggestion of the jewellery work on POTM. May I suggest that we try to identify works on the following topics:

• Fragrance and cosmetics making
• Leather, Textile, Wood, Glass, Ceramic
• Shoemaking
• Gloves, hats, hosiery, and scarves making

This can be grouped together under, say, Portal:Fashion to enhance visibility. Portal:Furniture can be a related portal with q:Eyewear#See also as its contents. Solomon7968 (talk) 13:45, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

If you find works, then do feel welcome to add them as text names on the portals, and then use {{ext scan link}} to point to the available scans. They can also be added to WS:RT though we are not that good at taking works from there. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:50, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-31

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

Recent changes

• A prototype for structured data on Commons is available now. [212]
• The RevisionSlider beta feature can now be tested on mediawiki.org, German Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia.

Problems

• Renamed users on some wikis were not connected to their account on other wikis between 20 July and 21 July. This has been fixed. [213]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The next CREDIT showcase will be on 3 August at 18:00 (UTC). This is to present and comment on new gadgets, small projects and works in progress. See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "notifications in core". The meeting will be on 3 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:48, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikisource:Copyright_discussions#File:Typescript_copy_of_the_reminiscences_of_John_Caldwell._PRONI.2C_T3541.5.3.pdf

This discussion had been stalled since March, I added some additional details, Does Wikisource have checkusers, because based on the additional comments I've added just now, I strongly suspect that one of the IP editors might be a logged out user, or someone that forgot a password. I am still of the view that given the somewhat convoluted history (including the userspace version uncovered, that the effort should go, and that if any future attempt is made it's with a known attributed version of the source document. I've said as much in the comments I've added. Something that doesn't seem right, but can't put my finger on it. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Dissociation of ideas

Hey, you know you are always having a go at me for putting ideas together you don't think fit?

Well you recently posted Wikisource:Scriptorium#WMF_announcement:_Stripping_Question_Marks_From_Wiki_Searches and today I cannot get the page links (i.e. main-to-Page: space) for What is technology? to work today. Coincidence?

For what it is worth links like (page 1): [[Page:What_is_technology%3F_(Wilson).djvu/3]] are being presented to my browser (Firefox) as [[Page%3AWhat_is_technology%253F_(Wilson).djvu/3]]. In other words it appears an unnecessary hex-encoding is taking place: "%253F" is "%3F" which curiously if decoded again would be the missing trailing "?"

Thoughts? AuFCL (talk) 10:05, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@AuFCL: Neither of my PCs' firefox browser is showing the %253F link, internal to the work or from the places that I added links. I am not sure where else to check. Searches with What is technology? and Index:What is technology? (Wilson).djvu both drop me where I expect to be. Aaaah! From the page numbers on the work. Yep broken for me with Firefox and Chrome. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:25, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

One would have to guess that it is coincidence that I mention it. The github link in that notice shows that the change is made to the cirrussearch function. I will hazard a guess that we need to whack away at Mediawiki:PageNumbers.js and do something to delimit the question mark. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:41, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@Tpt, @Phe: are one of you able to look at this issue? From What is technology? the page links are broken with their url encoding of the question mark. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

I am not suggesting the idea of looking at PageNumbers.js is wrong but it might be worthwhile checking interaction with the urlencode operation buried within MediaWiki:Proofreadpage pagenum template as well. PageNumbers.js already has special-case handling for "%26"="&" so perhaps "%3F" needs a bit of similar treatment? AuFCL (talk) 11:13, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

PageNumbers.js seems the place to start, and I was hoping for someone to competently re-code rather than me having to experiment — billinghurst sDrewth 11:26, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Once more I have not made myself clear. Must be over-tired. The hint was aimed at your pingees, Tpt and Phe. Going to sleep. AuFCL (talk) 11:31, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi, on fr.wp we use old wikisource mul:Mediawiki:PageNumbers.js, it seems there is no problem with it fr:Qu’est ce que la propriété ?/Chapitre 1, it's unclear if the problem is in your pagenumber.js or your MediaWiki:Proofreadpage pagenum template — Phe 12:19, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@Hesperian: Looks like you did the urlencode edit. Care to have a look at this problem? — billinghurst sDrewth 12:33, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Very busy for the next little while. If I get a chance I will have a look. FWIW, my edit was a fix for Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2013-05#Seems that quotations in File/Page name screw up page numbering display in main ns. Hesperian 01:28, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed with [214]; hopefully I haven't broken some other use cases elsewhere.... Hesperian 02:34, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

That looks fixed for me too. I will put a notice to the community to look for quirks. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:07, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Hesperian patched the very line I had in mind, not quite the way I was thinking (but to be fair: probably in a better fashion.) I have tried out various page linkages containing each of "&", "-", "(", ")", "'" and Unicode values (and obviously "?") all successful. I would love for somebody to verify one containing a percent sign but (thus far) have not found any "in the wild." AuFCL (talk) 06:15, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@Phe: "Qu’est ce que la propriété ?" is not a good example, as the Page: names contain no embedded "?"s eligible for encoding. However fr:Êtes-vous_fous_?/01 does—and proves the French implementation works correctly. AuFCL (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Deceased Fellows, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1854

Hi, I tried to move Index:Obituary Notices of Deceased Fellows Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1854 vol 7 pages 263–288.djvu to a name that I thought mirrored other articles on Wikisource that were published in other volumes of the same journal. Error messages are now appearing and I couldn't undo the move, so I probably should ask if anyone can help, also perhaps explain what has gone wrong? Drchriswilliams (talk) 15:34, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

• I have the same request... here. Thanks in advance, Wieralee (talk) 16:12, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@Drchriswilliams, @Wieralee: Okay, I have been in and tidied up.
Drchriswilliams: There is no exacting requirement to have the djvu file named into any particular pattern, though it is one that we try to get right on upload, and you have seen why. We can transclude pages wherever to our main namespace irrespective of the file: name.
Wieralee: There is a direct relationship from File: > Index: > Page: and this is why the WSes ask Commons admins to not delete djvu or pdf files that are transcribed (have subsidiary Page: ns) without consultation. If it is really considered necessary to move djvu/pdf files then you please engage local admins in that conversation beforehand. Bigger files with hundreds of pages can be a nightmare, and as an example the renaming of Alumni Oxoniensis files at Commons was stopped due to the difficulties. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:44, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

It appears we had the whole volume, so the pages have subsequently been moved there. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:28, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that out. Drchriswilliams (talk) 07:50, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

No probs. That's why I get paid the big bucks. <eyeroll> — billinghurst sDrewth 07:56, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-32

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

Recent changes

• In notifications, the icon for Notices has been changed from a speech-bubble icon () to a tray icon () for consistency. The Alerts icon has been redesigned too. The colors have been changed for accessibility. [215]

Problems

• If you use the wikEd gadget, changes you made were not kept when you switched from the wikitext editor to the visual editor while you were editing. This has now been fixed. [216]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia search will now ignore question marks at the end of the sentences or words you use when you search. Until now the question mark was just a wildcard. [217]
• On Commons, UploadWizard will now be available on mobile, rather than just the old upload form. This should reduce the workload for the community in reviewing images. [218]
• When you edit with the visual editor a puzzle symbol tells you there is an invisible template in the article. It will now mention the name of the template. [219]
• The button to read something in another language will move for mobile users. This will happen on 9 August. [220]
• When someone mentions you and links to your user page you get a notification. You will now get a notification when you mention yourself this way. [221]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 August. It will be on all wikis from 11 August (calendar).
• A message on Notifications panel will invite users to try Special:Notifications page. [222]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on August 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

My struggle

i agree with your Houghton Miflin determination. however there is also w:James Vincent Murphy (died 1946) translation at IA here [223] Gutenberg so get ready for another round on January 1. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 02:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

@Slowking4: I tried to base my wording around the translator's edition. I don't know sufficient around all the available edition, though would have thought that the original itself would have received 95 years from time of German publication. It seems that through notoriety, or no one suitably cares about what Hitler's distant relatives may wish to do to challenge those rights. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-33

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

Problems

• Last week Tech News announced you will get a notification when you mention yourself the same way as if someone else had mentioned you. This caused some problems and will happen later instead. [224]
• Creating and editing links to sections on other pages on the wiki now works again in the visual editor. [225]
• For some users, cross-wiki notifications haven't been working properly. The count has been wrong when only cross-wiki notifications were present. The cross-wiki bundle has been showing only the names of wikis and not the actual notifications. This will be fixed soon. [226][227]

Changes this week

• The login session when you choose "Keep me logged in" will now last a year. Previously it was 30 days. This will happen on August 16. [228]
• Some abuse filters will have to be updated during the week. This is because a bug will be fixed. [229]
• In compact language links, two new kinds of languages will be shown in the shorter language list: Languages that are used in the article's text, and languages where the article has a badge like "featured article" or "good article". [230][231]
• The visual editor will be available by default for logged-out editors on Wikipedias that use the Arabic script. It is already default for logged-in editors. [232]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 17. It will be on all wikis from August 18 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on August 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Starting the week of August 22 there will be three software deployment windows. They will be at 13:00, 18:00, and 23:00 UTC. This is to have more times when software of the wikis can be updated and make it easier for developers in different parts of the world. [233]

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

19:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-34

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

Recent changes

• The ORES review tool is now available on Special:Contributions as a beta feature. It can make it easier to find contributions that are probably damaging the wikis. The ORES review tool is available on Wikidata and Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish and Russian Wikipedia. [234]
• The norm and ccnorm functions have been updated to make it easier to write abuse filters. This also affects the TitleBlacklist extension. You don't have to transform "I" and "L" to "1", "O" to "0" and "S" to "5" anymore. [235]
• The old pageview data in the "pagecounts-raw" and "pagecounts-all-sites" files is no longer being updated. You can find the new pageview data here. This happened on August 5. [236]

Problems

• Some big image files could not be thumbnailed. This has now been fixed. [237]
• When you moved a page over a redirect it would delete the redirect without saving it in the logs. This has now been fixed. [238]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 23 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Sometimes when you mention another user they don't get a notification. You will be able to get a notification when you successfully sent out a mention to someone or be told if they did not get a notification. This will be opt-in. You can test this on the test wiki. [239][240]
• How you add text after an edit conflict might work in a different way in the future. You can test the prototype. [241]

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

21:17, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Page:Zodiac_stories_by_Blanche_Mary_Channing.pdf/275

Nominally taking a break (for the reasons see my talk page), but was keeping on eye on things. I note you changed the name on this. I was thinking it was â but you removed the accent. I thought it might have been a dotted a (per some other romanisation but wasn't sure.) Do we have an expert on these things? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:09, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks like s spot on the page to me. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:11, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

In comparison : Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/273, Given concerns I wanted to be sure it was at least consistent. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:15, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 13:18, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Overlapping side notes

I think I am going to go off to a small room and start manically laughing... Nominally on a break from editing, but I thought I'd look over something on a hunch.

And came up with: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/vKwrgJ

Which is effectively an extract of the first paragraph of : https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Historical_Works_of_Venerable_Bede_vol._2.djvu/121 with {{Outside R}} which you wrote, substituted for {{Right sidenote}}

This had an issue with overlapping 'sidenotes'. Only eleven (Ha Ha Ha!) additional characters in the span style namely "clear:right;" and it rendered as I was trying to get all along. I didn't seemingly even need to chanhe the span to be a block!! (No need for the monster that is {{sn-paragraph}} at all, no need for the endless disputes I had, and asperations cast.)

That it actually worked suprised me, other differences such as line-height can probably be converged between {{sn-note}} and {{Outside RL}}{{Outside L}} etc.

I am not asking for an update to {{Outside}} just yet as IIRC there were some other unresolved issues with it, you were still in the process of resolving. But I would strongly recommend cl-act-paragraph and related that I spent hours trying to fix aren't recommended for future use.

(Sounds of Insane laughter as user is taken off to the the funny farm.....) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:44, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Status Quo

Hi Billinghurst, thanks for your question. I have replied at Talk:The Status Quo in the Holy Places. Both UK Crown and Israel State copyright expiries apply worldwide. Oncenawhile (talk) 10:18, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-35

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them. This is to save mobile data and make the pages load faster. [242]
• When you edit a table with the visual editor, pressing Tab in the last cell of a row will take you to the first cell in the next row. Pressing Shift and Tab in the first cell of a row will take you to the last cell in the previous row. [243]

Changes this week

• The name of the "Save page" button will change. The button will say "Publish page" when you create a new page. It will say "Publish changes" when you change an existing page. [244][245]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "RfC: image and oldimage tables". The meeting will be on 31 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:59, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Activity level

Due to unforseen and other reasons, my activity level at WS has dropped significantly. While I check in almost daily to oversee my Watchlist, my contributions have been insignificant. It is my intention to gradually chip away at projects on my "To do" list, but if this trend continues through next year, I will likely not seek continued adminship. Your vote of confidence in my nomination was very much appreciated, and it was/is still my desire to contribute to the maintenance of this site, but my own estimation of the role and expectations of an admin far surpasses my contribution in that capacity to date. Thanks! Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:28, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

<sad face> Hope that things are okay. Re adminship, there is no requisite admin activity level at enWS, it is solely to contribute (ie. not lost to the wind). The granting of the right is a statement by this community that we trust you to utilise the tools to enact the consensus point of view. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:14, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Things are going well, just a shifting of focus. Thanks for your words re adminship. Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-36

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

Recent changes

• Word-level diffs now work in longer paragraphs. [246]
• Interactive maps now have a frame by default. This is to make them look like other multimedia objects. This affects all Wikivoyages, the Catalan, Hebrew, Macedonian Wikipedias and Meta. [247]
• When you preview the MediaWiki:Captcha-ip-whitelist page it will show a validation output of the listed IP addresses instead of the list of addresses only. This can help you to identify if your whitelist rules will work or not. [248]

Changes this week

• You will be able to use <maplink> on all Wikipedias. It creates a link to a full screen map. [249][250]
• Sometimes when you mention another user they don't get a notification. You will be able to get a notification when you successfully send out a mention to someone or be told if they did not get a notification. This will be opt-in. [251][252]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The CheckUser extension could work differently in the future. There is a Request for Comments to figure out how. [253]

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

17:12, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

RecentChanges

It seems to me that this change did break RecentChanges interwiki as Special namespace does not seem to be supported by Wikidata. Maybe it is worth to restore the interwiki some way? Single interwiki to oldwikisource looks strange there. Ankry (talk) 06:32, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

missing page

What happens when the scan has a page missing? This is the only version available on IA, but it's missing the first page of the preface (/10). ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

For missing pages the community has been known to assist and hunt out those pages in other resources. Otherwise we have an incomplete work, and it will remain that way. It won't be the first or the last, and while it is imperfect it is not valueless. You then have to make the determination whether you wish to proceed with an imperfect work, or or not. With the work as is, I would recommend asking for someone to inset an extra (blank) page into the work, and then we reload it. Therefore if we ever get the missing page it becomes very easy to insert/replace it and have a complete work. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:04, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I see. Well, the scan on Google Books is complete. I'm thinking of taking that page from them, and add it to the IA DjVu file, while giving attribution to both sources. I'll look into it when I have more time. ~ DanielTom (talk) 11:23, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

It's easier for me to just upload the Google Books' version. I wasn't going to use IA's OCR text anyway. ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:00, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@DanielTom: then reupload the image as an overwrite, update the description and source accordingly; then purge the file at Commons to ensure image and text layers are pushed through. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:04, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I did it a few hours ago; seems to have worked. ~ DanielTom (talk) 00:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-37

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia Commons app for Android can now show nearby places that need photos. [254]
• <maplink> and <mapframe> can now use geodata from Open Street Map if Open Street Map has defined a region and given it an ID in Wikidata. You can use this to draw on the map and add information. [255][256]

Changes this week

• The RevisionSlider will be available as a beta feature on all wikis from 13 September. This will make it easier to navigate between diffs in the page history. [257]
• A new user right will allow most users to change the content model of pages. [258][259]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• When you search on the Wikimedia wikis in the future you could see results from sister projects in your language. You can read more and discuss how this could work.

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

18:04, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-38

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

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back because of bugs. Creating new accounts did not work between 15 September 19:10 UTC and 16 September 12:50 UTC. [260][261]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will hopefully be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar). This is the version that was meant to go out last week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is multi-content revisions. The meeting will be on 21 September at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will start working on adding support for Wiktionary. The Wikidata development team is now taking one last look at the development plan. [262]

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

22:08, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Over/under editing layout

Could you be so kind and check your over/under editing layout. I switched to monobook to test it and the problem is the same. Perhaps you can notice it even though you are not familiar with it. The upper window is open to the actual page size and I can't even take a screenshot to upload an image of it, it's so large. Usually it's about 12-14 rows high. I tried working side buy side but it just doesn't work for me. — Ineuw talk 05:21, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

PS: stitched this image together from three parts. — Ineuw talk 05:30, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Ineuw. It is broken as I reported a few days ago at WS:S. I am guessing that it is now full width and has lost its relationship to the under over window. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 08:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Could you please provide a link to your comments in regard to this issue? I've been searching WS:S history and can't find anything. — Ineuw talk 16:26, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Crispi

Hi and thanks for the wellcome. I have a question about editing. I tried to limit the entry about Francesco Crispi to Crispi alone, but some other topics are included as well. How do you deal with that? Any tips? - DonCalo (talk) 13:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@DonCalo: we reproduce that article as it was published in the EB1911, we don't amend it. We are not the encyclopaedia that is WP's task, we are the library. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:08, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I think DonCalo meant eliminating other EB 1911 entries from the Mainspace page, which I have attempted to do with sectioning. Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:21, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Indeed that was what I meant, but your attempt did not really work. Thanks for the effort anyway, but apparently something else is needed. - DonCalo (talk) 21:37, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@DonCalo: I am not seeing the other biographical entries on the same page anymore. Are you still? Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Not anymore, many thanks. - DonCalo (talk) 16:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-39

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

Recent changes

• If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can request it after a community decision. See how to request it. [263]
• When you edit text and mention a new username they are notified if you add your signature. Before this only happened under certain conditions. [264]
• Users are notified if they are mentioned in a section where you add your own signature even if you edit more than one section. Before, users were not notified if you edited more than one section in one edit. [265]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version that was supposed to come to the wikis two weeks ago was put on hold again because of new problems. The MediaWiki version after it is now on all wikis. [266][267]

Changes this week

• There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [268]

Meetings

• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on September 27 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Abandoned tools on Tool Labs could be taken over by other developers. There is a new discussion on Meta about this. It will be discussed until 12 October and then voted on. [269]

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

18:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Looking for thoughts on what to do with a page

Hi, Page:Bills of Mortality.pdf/4 is very large page that was included in this tract as an example of one of the Bills. My ponder is whether to bring it in as a facsimile, or to reproduce it (or even both). I'm concerned that it will go somewhere close to the template limit as even the border should be reproduced—skulls and cross-bones and all. Do you have any thoughts or ideas? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: Hmm. How about add the page as an image within the work, as it is an example to be viewed. Then we can look to separately reproduce that Bill as its own work, and we can link both ways. That won't hold up the production of the original, and provides the value of the text later. Re the iterative issue of borders, I am sure that someone can help us do that part of decoration at some point, to me the decoration is nice, but the text is king. (Thanks for asking). — billinghurst sDrewth 22:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks!

Just a quick, hopefully non-obtrusive, "Thank you!" for all the help and guidance over the past few months. I really appreciated it! Hope to catch you on #wikisource some of these days. Tromaster (talk) 02:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-40

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Tidy will be replaced. Instead the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This would cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. [270]

• <slippymap> will not work on Wikivoyage after 24 October. You should use <mapframe> instead. If you need help to fix this before 24 October you should ask for it as soon as possible. [271]

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

21:30, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes/The Resident Patient

Hi. My edition is based on The Resident Patient (The Strand Magazine) and The Resident Patient (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes). Sapun (talk) 13:55, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Sapun: At enWS each presented work is transcribed based on a specific edition — which is why we require the source detail for a work. We do know that there are variations between editions, especially whether it is US vs UK published. So I am not doubting that the version you are checking is different, I am just not certain that it replicates the version/edition that we have. Unfortunately, this work is a Gutenberg copy, and it doesn't present the original publishing details, so we simply don't know, and in the end I simply don't want to get into a fight about inconsequential changes.

As a result of such matters (in our history), this is why this community now prefers to have image-supported transcribing to avoid this type of discussion. It is also why we will maintain multiple versions of work as we can demonstrate that a work can morph through time and space. Such is life. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:26, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Page moves

Thanks for the follow-up pages moves on Author:William Whitaker – I couldn't remember the standard practice, so I followed the first example I found, which apparently led me astray. One question though – have we settled on using a plain hyphen in the date ranges in titles? I would have thought that in author pages, as well as in DNB entries and the like, that an ndash would be more appropriate. Spangineer (háblame) 16:06, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

We decided on the hyphen as it was on the keyboard, rather than an en dash. Long ago for DNB, and it followed through with our KISS style guide and then WS:Naming conventions — billinghurst sDrewth 17:12, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough; thanks. Spangineer (háblame) 17:53, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

title change

Hello Billinghurst. I want to add "tr. Fawkes" to the title "The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius" here, but moving the Index page does not seem to be sufficient. Would I also have to move all the pages associated to it that I've already created? One more thing: when I reverted the (Index) page move, all the created pages (up to 35) lost their yellow/proofread color... Oops? ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:18, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The Index: name needs to be the same as the name of the File that it's linked to. The title of the Mainspace: page can be different to that of the Index, and that's where you can include the disambiguator. Refresh your cache to have the colour come back. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:39, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Beeswaxcandle. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

We would generally not move File:, Index: and Page: ns pages once we have started a transcription. Those names are not authoritative, they are indicative only. It is why we try to get the filename right prior to starting transcription. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:07, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Okay, understood. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:18, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-41

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

Recent changes

• You can show Special:RecentChanges on a page by using {{Special:RecentChanges}}. You can now use tag filters by using {{Special:RecentChanges/tagfilter=tagname}}. [272]
• The notification badge is coloured if you have notifications. When you check the notification the badge will now turn grey on all wikis instead of just the local one. [273]
• Colours used in the Wikimedia wikis' main interface changed slightly. This is to make them easier to see for readers and editors with reduced eyesight. [274]

Changes this week

• Hidden HTML comments will be more visible when you edit with the visual editor. <!-- You write hidden HTML comments like this. --> [275]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week is CREDITS files. The meeting will be on 12 October at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Language converter syntax will soon no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}- must be replaced. You will have to write -{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }- instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. [276]

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

20:29, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Truce Pact between Bolivia and Chile

Hi Billinghurst,

please, be so kind and add the license and the source to Truce Pact between Bolivia and Chile. I didn't found such register in the header and I added it to the main text. thanks in advance, --Keysanger (talk) 12:28, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Help - vandalism (fraudulent article created, etc) here at Wikisource...

I am not all that familiar with WS but am a longtime editor at WP. I've posted a notice at WS' Admins Noticeboard but wanted to get as many eyes on this as possible. There are some meat or sockpuppets that have recently popped-up on a WP article: "Presidency of Thomas Jefferson". They have created a fraudulent WS article Thomas Jefferson's Third Inaugural Address and their associated vandalism has extended to at least 2 other WS articles: editing history. Help! Shearonink (talk) 14:44, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-42

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

Recent changes

• There is a new newsletter from the Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation. It will have more details about for example Flow and notifications. You can read the first issue.

Problems

• Some users got a warning about Wikipedia's security certificate last week. This was because of a problem GlobalSign had. This has now been fixed. Only a small number of users got the warning. [277]
• Editors couldn't edit semi-protected pages in the Wikipedia app for Android. This has now been fixed in the beta version. [278]

Changes this week

• There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [279]

Future changes

• The Editing Department are working on a new wikitext editor. It will have tools that are in the visual editor but not in the wikitext editor today. You can read more about this. This is an early plan and things can change. The old wikitext editor will still exist.

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

16:42, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Status key

Hi. This is a stupid question! I don't know whether should I put the status key to yellow when I first create a page and read all of the text and arrange it or I should leave it for another user? --Yoosef Pooranvary (talk) 20:02, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

@Yoosef Pooranvary: If you have checked all the text on a page, and fixed all the problems, then mark it yellow (proofread). A second person checking the page will later mark it green (validated). However, if you have just formatted the text, without checking the spelling, spacing, and punctuation against the original, then you can leave it pink (not proofread). --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you --Yoosef Pooranvary (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

@Yoosef Pooranvary: Help:Page status should explain this, if it is short on detail then please let us know, or make some clarifying edits. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:59, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

At first I realized maybe the approval process of a text includes 3 users at least. Someone saves the first version and two other users review it... I think the help is alright but maybe adding a sentence about this issue might help other newbies.--Yoosef Pooranvary (talk) 23:27, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Non-formatting link

The link to Fig 15-3 won't format, despite it being the same as the one for 15-1 further down the page:

Page:UK Traffic Signs Manual - Chapter 3 Regulatory Signs. 2008 (Second Impression 2008).pdf/135

Some consistency from the parser would be appreciated :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:53, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure why you are right formatting images that are centred, but carry-on as you sit fit with the works that you contribute. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:07, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

This was a delibrate stylistic choice when converting the 2 column original into web format.

If you want me to change it to centered I can do that, but some pages appear to have been validated with the format currently used.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:14, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-43

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

Problems

• The abuse filters had a problem and caught too many edits. This has now been fixed. [280]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from October 26. It will be on all wikis from October 27 (calendar).
• The "Search" text in the search box will show the name of the project. For example, on Wikipedia it will say "Search Wikipedia". [281]
• About a dozen wikis now have numerical sorting in categories. If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can ask for it. [282]
• Some wikis that want numerical sorting in categories can also ask to use UCA to sort categories. The biggest difference is that characters with diacritics will be sorted together. For example, for most languages Ä will be sorted with A instead of at the end of the alphabet. This is not true for languages that have Ä as a character in their alphabet. Wikis that already use UCA are listed on Meta. Languages that can use UCA are listed on MediaWiki.org. You can test it.

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

17:39, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Question about author page & PSM project

I noticed that you remove the subheader at Author:Overton Westfeldt Price in this edit. Should I stop using this header to distinguish works in PSM or was this by accident? I noted that I was using the Pd/1923 wrong in this case, will be more vigilant about that :) Marjoleinkl (talk) 10:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

If there is only the one or two articles, then there is no particular need for a heading. We started grouping for the DNB works, and in that situation we switched from {{DNB link}} to {{DNB lkpl}} where the latter is a link and no detail on the work. As the PSM link template fully qualifies it is redundant.

For pd/1923, I just run this query "Check for {{pd/1923}} in Author: pages prior to 1916" listed at my user page every so often to clean up, not a biggy either way. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:22, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Clear, thanks! Have a good one Marjoleinkl (talk) 13:18, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Special:Watchlist

Is it just me, or has Special:Watchlist been nominated for deletion? I'm getting the "This page is being considered for deletion at Proposed deletions" message under "Sister Projects" (bottom left) when I visit my watchlist. ~ DanielTom (talk) 02:53, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

It was everyone. :-/ I have fixed the issue, put in measures to prevent it happening again. Thanks for the heads-up. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:33, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Hi I wondered what this reversion meant at Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Dagon Bytes). I didn't understand the edit summary "deletion request; not progress by user". I thought perhaps someone decided to keep the page, but it's still listed on Proposed Deletions. Pasicles (talk) 22:23, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the prod. Not sure how I missed it on the page. <shrug> I have restored the tag. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:43, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Is a block warranted?

Hi, I'm inclined to block Nrgullapalli. S/he's been validating a huge number of pages over the past 24 hours or so and the only page on which a change was made was an erroneous extra character. You, Hesperian and I have all tried explaining what's expected. They acknowledge, but it seems to make no difference to what they are doing. Anything they've touched needs re-doing. I'm checking in with you as this is potentially a controversial block. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:41, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: we probably need to have specific examples of fail to progress to a block, though I am not against a short term block until they pay attention. We should alos bring to the attention of all admins. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:58, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: The work Index:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu has some convoluted editing and small print (poor combo). I know that I will not have proofreading at 100% correct as I find spaces. etc. when latter transcluding. It seems that the validation is progressing without error-finding. :-/ Do you want to prod there? — billinghurst sDrewth 11:35, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I checked a single page done this evening and found six errors that he missed (one minor). I've detailed them on his talk page and asked him to have another go at that page and then to go back over the work done so far and look for similar. No time for more right now. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:02, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-44

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

Recent changes

• Now you can include Commons video films with subtitles in your wiki language. Before you could see translated videos on file page at Commons only. [283]
• Search now has an updated preference tab to configure the search completion suggester. [284]
• The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script. [285]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 1^st. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 2^nd. It will be on all wikis from November 3^rd (calendar).
• Now you can use autocomplete for page names in "Preview page with this template" field when editing templates. [286]
• Special:NewPages can now be filtered by page size. [287]

Future changes

• New MediaWiki deployments will be now based on MediaWiki 1.29. [288]

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration Guideline is available for community review. Any feedback welcome, in any language.

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

16:18, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Double redirects

Hello, regarding this edit, would you not prefer automating this thankless task? I operate my bot dealing with double redirects on practically every wiki. There are a few exceptions and this wiki is one of them. My last request was denied by an admin who wanted to fix double redirects manually. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 19:15, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Are you actively ignoring this? A simple response is all I ask. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 00:36, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I presumed it was a rhetorical question. If you have asked at the community and the community did not accept your offer, I am not sure what more you want me to say or to do. Not my decision in any sense of the matter. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:41, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not in the habit of asking rhetorical questions on peoples talk pages. I have not done so once to date. If you think the issue is worth exploring, the request can be renewed. As you may recall, I work on this task (double redirects) on about 700 wikis. I do not want to bring this issue tot he community "until I get my way" though. I merely noticed automation in dealing with the issue, in the past it was purely manual. If my help is unneeded, I certainly do not want to trouble the community. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 04:47, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

There are so few, and it is unimportant to me as an issue to get automated. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:19, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

As you wish. I will keep this wiki among the 4 I do not work on. Sorry for the trouble. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 12:51, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

That is a weird response, please don't push guilt or anything that I have done as inhibiting you. You are welcome to pursue it if it is important to you. I personally I just don't see it as an issue at this wiki, and I am entitled to my thoughts and focusing my limited time on issues that I consider important. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:02, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry, that wasn't my intention. Indeed it is a minor issue. It isn't that important for me. I just merely take over this task so humans can work on practically anything else. :) -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 15:44, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

authority control template

I've noticed you adding {{authority control}} to the bottom of author pages. Is this something I should be doing when I create a new author page? (And, if so, maybe it could be added to the default new page template in authorspace?) I'm afraid I don't entirely understand the purpose of the template. --Mukkakukaku (talk) 12:14, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

That template displays adds a box to the bottom of the page where any data links from Wikidata will be displayed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:07, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

There's already a "data item" in the header linking to Wikidata.... Mukkakukaku (talk) 21:21, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

@Mukkakukaku: Please do add the item if you remember, don't worry if you don't, as we will pick them up at a later time. It is mentioned to be added in Help:Author pages (recently added). The data item shows a link to wikidata; this link to WD also allows us to extract data from WD for inclusion here, including the authority control data which is links to other sites, usually international libraries, and similar. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:21, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-45

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

Recent changes

• Victoria Coleman is the new Chief technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. [289]
• First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available. [290]
• .gitreview for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to using track=1. [291]
• Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability. [292]

Changes this week

• The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 7 November.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 8th. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 9th. It will be on all wikis from November 10th (calendar).
• Special:ActiveUsers will allow users groups selection. [293]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 November 2016 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Image Thumbnail API and allow SVG files uploaded on MediaWiki to have XHTML namespaces. The meeting will be on 9 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• RevisionSlider will be enabled by default on all beta wikis, on testwiki, testwiki2, mediawikiwiki and de.wikipedia.org. [294][295][296]
• Upcoming holidays will impact deployments. The schedule has been published.

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

23:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-46

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

Recent changes

• When you edit with the visual editor you can use meta + shift + k to add a reference. The meta key is often the control key or command key. [297]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 16. It will be on all wikis from November 17 (calendar).
• In Special:Preferences you can choose which language menus and buttons will be in. If there is no translation for that language, MediaWiki has a list of fallback languages. A fallback language is a language many will understand better than English. MediaWiki will now use English when there is no Ukrainian translation. [298]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Magic links might not work in the future. [299]

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

19:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Author:Diego Grez-Cañete

Hi there, Billinghurst! It's Diego here. Just wanted to ask you if you could restore that author page, I do have published works, and that seems to be the "general notability guideline". There are many authors who have a page, and they won't have one of their works added to Wikisource anytime soon. If you need proof (re. my works), there is plenty: [300] [301] and news articles hanging around.

I would write this using my own account, however I don't recall my password, I've been out of wikis for some time already, but I have good memories of my time at Wikisource collaborating with Chile-related works. Kind regards, --190.164.51.223 01:26, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, I think user:Beleg Tâl makes a good point at Wikisource:Proposed_deletions#Author:Diego_Grez-Ca.C3.B1ete. By the way, was it Warko who requested speedy deletion? --190.164.51.223 01:27, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

The criteria that I have worked to are

1. the potential to have works so we have these pages for out of copyright or creative commons writers
2. authors (or close to authors) where we have biographical works about them
3. authors who are mentioned in other works, or their works are mentioned (even if less likely to have works at enWS, ie. foreign authors)

It would be my observation that the author pages are subsidiary to our main namespace, not so much an independent entity. So, I have a different viewpoint to yours of the notability criteria. Predominantly with the criteria if we don't have an author's works and are unlikely to have their works, we don't need an author page. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:35, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, I actually released a translation of "Es un lindo día" under the CC-BY license... --190.164.51.223 21:28, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

You did release such a translation, but it did not meet our criteria for original, unpublished translations. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:14, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-11

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Our quarterly goal is to add filters to the Recent Changes page, that show ORES good-faith and damaging tests and filters around new users. The work on this is proceeding mostly as planned. We hope it shall be available as a Beta feature (only on wikis where ORES is available as a Beta feature) before the end of the quarter.

Edit Review Improvements [More information]

Recent changes

• The filters design prototype for Special:RecentChanges is now stable. Development of these filters will now start. [302][303]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Notifications concerning Flow are no longer all grouped together in your preferences. The "Edits to my user talk page" category will now include Flow notifications about your user talk page (if your user talk page uses Flow), and the "Mentions" category will now include mentions on Flow pages. Previously, all notifications related to Flow were grouped together in the "Structured Discussion" category. [304]
• The orange bar will now also be displayed when a message is posted on a your user talk page if your talk page uses Flow; previously, it was only displayed if you had a wikitext talk page. [305]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:32, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Messed up at Commons

Hi. I moved by mistake commons:Category:Stratemeyer Syndicate commons:Category:American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Could you move it back please? Thanks a lot.— Mpaa (talk) 18:58, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Update: @Yann: has taken care of it (I contacted him on IIRC, but cannot get in touch with him any longer now).

The only thing is that now the history of the two cats is mixed up. commons:Category:Stratemeyer Syndicate looks very new (it is the history of the redirect created by my move) and commons:Category:American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt actually has the history of the original commons:Category:Stratemeyer Syndicate.

I guess that for the sake of clarity, this status should be cleaned moving back commons:Category:American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt and overriding the current commons:Category:Stratemeyer Syndicate. Thanks again.— Mpaa (talk) 19:41, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

@Mpaa: categories are shocking to move and basically shouldn't be. I wouldn't fuss the Commons history, just make sure that things are in the right place. If there is the need to have things moved, let me know. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:21, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks.— Mpaa (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Index:Freud - Group psychology and the analysis of the ego.djvu

Not happy, finally traced the translator, and found this wasn't PD-UK after all. (sigh) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Done file now at English Wikisource, awaiting update. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:41, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

File info updated. I'm still not entirely happy, but I don't think there's a policy justifiable reason for local deletion here. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:15, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

<shrug> Whilst we may have a 1924 edition, if it is essentially the same as a pre-1923 edition, then it is out of copyright. We could bother more, however, I don't think it is worth the effort. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:13, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-47

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

Recent changes

• Administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers can now use two-factor authentication. This makes their Wikimedia accounts more secure. This can be turned on in Special:Preferences. There are discussions on how to best turn it on for everyone. [306]
• You can now search for file properties. For example you can search for media type, how big a file is or what resolution it has. [307]
• The latest Collaboration team products newsletter has been published. It has more details about their work than Tech News has.

Problems

• A hacker group is hacking Wikimedia accounts. They can probably do this because users have the same passwords on Wikimedia wikis as on other sites. Please have a password you use only on the Wikimedia wikis and nowhere else. This is especially important for administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers. These users can also turn on two-factor authentication. [308]

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• RevisionSlider will be a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia. This will happen on 22 November. It will come to other wikis later. [309][310][311]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• It will be possible to do cross-wiki search. The developers who work on this are looking for communities that want to test this. [312]
• Hovercards will leave the beta stage. The Wikimedia Foundation Reading Web team wants communities to set Hovercards as a default option for readers who are not logged in. Communities that are interested can say so on the Hovercards talk page. [313]

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

15:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-48

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

Changes this week

• When someone tries to log in to a blocked account they will be blocked by a cookie. This means their browser will be blocked even if they change their IP address. This makes it more difficult for returning vandals. [314]
• When you use Content Translation to adapt a template to a new translation it will work differently. You can adapt big templates such as infoboxes. Translators will have control over the template parameters. A first version of this is released this week. It is possible it will not work correctly with all templates. There will be more updates for this soon. [315]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
• Gadgets will have a new option called "hidden". This means you can register gadgets that can't be turned on or off from the preferences page. Hiding gadgets was already possible by using [rights=hidden]. You should now use [hidden] instead. [rights=hidden] in old gadgets should be changed to [hidden]. [316][317]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Tool Labs could get two new policies. One would be to be able to adopt tools without an active developer. The other would be a right to fork. There is a request for comment on Meta.

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

21:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Linking to page namespace

Can you please elaborate why not link to the Page namespace? Is this a new rule? Because I believe that introducing readers to the mysteries of where pages originate, and how they are displayed, is important. After all if we can have five different and non-working ways to clear a cache, what is another wikilink matter? —unsigned comment by Ineuw (talk) .

From a table of contents it is not appropriate to take users to the page namespace (our workspace, the back end) unless they are expecting to go and edit. When they are trying to read the work we should be presenting links to read. So links in a ToC that are putting users to the Page: ns are misleading and confusing to most new readers, especially as they are indistinguishable. Readers are needing chapters, or the appropriate expected book subdivision. The means to get to the page namespace is through the page links in the left margin.

It is a long time rule. It was all discussed and was the reason for the development of {{djvu page link}} and the purposes of the template. So if you truly wish to have links in Page: ns — billinghurst sDrewth 23:51, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Re: Your message

Thank you, User:Billinghurst for your message.

I'd be glad to get back to you in case of need or help.

Regards. Blackbuckakash (talk) 09:34, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-49

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to see users from specific user groups in Special:ActiveUsers. [318]
• Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message. [319]
• ORES can now show how likely an edit is to be damaging to the wiki with different colours. This only works for languages that have trained ORES to recognize damaging edits. [320]

Changes this week

• You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there. [321]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 December at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You vote for wishes on the survey page until 12 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2015 results page.

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

18:06, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Stemoc has deleted my global userpage

Hi Billinghurst,

I've copied the w:Module:Formatnum from enwiki to Metawiki, because it's a dependency of Module:Wikidata, and it was missing from Metawiki. I've tried out some features of the Wikidata Module, which did not work due to this missing library.

Stemoc then deleted the module, my userpage and a (private) userpage with charts from Wikimedia Commons. I can't believe, that this is the usual procedure. Now he has temporarily restored the charts page, but he still refuses to give me my global userpage back. His says, it would be off-topic, what's simply wrong. My text there was neither overly lengthy nor promotional.

May you please talk with him?--TIB-NOA (talk) 13:54, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

@TIB-NOA: I hope that this is now resolved. Always useful to argue the case based on the scope of the respective wiki. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:52, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

On updating Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu

Hi, Billinghurst! I see that you have done bulk updates to pages of Index:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu. But you did these updates in not a perfect way, leaving pair of excessive opening braces, e. g. in this edit:

{{c|{{smaller|143}}}}

was replaced to

{{{{center|143}}

This causes unwanted displaying of that pair of braces at the end of the page. I think it would be good to pass through those pages with AWB once again — to eliminate that defect. --Nigmont (talk) 10:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure. Thanks for the prod. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:06, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

FYI, certain users are still making the footers small on validation. Thanks, BethNaught (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@BethNaught: Thanks. I will wait until the work is fully validated and tidy up. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:11, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry if it's a bad question, but nevertheless: maybe there are any pointings in the rules of the en-Wikisource that some aspects of formatting (e.g. font size) should not be applied to the header and footer sections of the pages? I just want to be aware of it, because I also did such formatting (make footers 'smaller' etc.) during the work on Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu — because some user(s) did start making such formatting before me, and I thought that it might be of some sort of standard on the English WS (I usually hadn't changed font sizes in page headers and footers when I worked on the multilingual WS and on the Russian WS, but here — on en-WS — I thought, when I saw that somebody kept doing it, — that it might be necessary and required here, so I started to do the same myself). --Nigmont (talk) 00:21, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Questions are just questions. I am only looking to apply uniformity to the work, and I had to choose one of them. You will also see that I did similar with use of {{fine block}}. With these collaborative works we would generally set them up with the footer/header fields in the index, though that wasn't done in this case. The other way is to use the index_talk: page to talk about the standard for the work, and that wasn't done here either. None of which is a problem, it just means a clean-up at the end. So please don't think that there is any wrong here, just difference. It happens, and clean-ups, especially with a bot are nothing new. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:54, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-50

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

Recent changes

• Users who have Yahoo email addresses could not use Special:EmailUser to send emails. This has now been fixed. Emails will now come from a @wikimedia.org address. Users who get an email from you will still reply to your email address and be able to see it. [322]
• You can now see how many categories and pages there are in the categories in Special:TrackingCategories. This is to help you find pages that could need attention. [323]
• Markup colours for reviewed and pending revisions in the page history and recent changes and logs now match Wikimedia standard colours. The "You have a new message on your talk page" notification will have a slightly different colour. [324]

Problems

• Because of work on cross-wiki watchlists global renaming is not working. The plan is to turn it on again on 16 December. Global renaming was turned off for a while in late November and early December as well. [325]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on December 13 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Some questions

Hi Billinghurst,

thanks for solving my problem with Stemoc. I'm preparing a mock-up of a scientific paper transferred to Wikisource in the moment: Overview on CO2 valorization: challenge of molten carbonates (Index:Fenrg-03-00043.pdf). I hope that the formatting is somewhat ok.

Generally I have the problem, that Wikisource is meant for working on texts with a scanned source, and not for what I'm doing. When we will do this on a larger scale our source will be the XML and not the PDF (like the publishers, which generate the PDF from XML). This will ease several things (like math and chemical formulas), but we won't have a pagenumber then.

I think it doesn't make sense for me to use Index: and Page:. It would be better to introduce a new template for imported fulltexts with all information and containing a link to the paper at Commons, which I will still upload, even using the XML as source.

What do you think about introducing a new prefix (like Fulltext: or Electronic:) for fulltexts?--TIB-NOA (talk) 15:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T153186

@TIB-NOA: I agree, though I would rather have the detailed conversation at WS:S in full public view, and then appropriately archived. Conceptually the work that you are doing is electronic documents as source, and there is no need for proofreading, no need for cross-checking any original source. Therefore we should utilise our methodology prior to scans of using edition = yes in the {{header}} and adding the source using the {{textinfo}} template on the corresponding talk page. That is doable today, it is just still old-fashioned and open to improvement. At this point to other technical details, I will say that is WS:S discussion matters.

As I mentioned elsewhere we need to look to readily identify digital documents, and I have created a phabricator ticket (see tracked) to have that progress. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:22, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Index:The Grammar of Heraldry, Cussans, 1866.djvu

I did some OCR cleanup on the first few chapters of this (inserting images based on the versions that were in a mainspace version). Not marked as proofread because the early images seem to use a different approach to the later ones.

I've also attempted to transcribe the extant catalouge pages marked ad.

Would you be able (amongst a very large number of other priorites) be willing to take a look? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for what you have done. It is on my agenda for the next couple of weeks when I will have a little more time, and a little more patience and energy. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

blocking file types

Over the past several days, we've had a user repeatedly creating new accounts to upload anime files (and nothing else). Is there a way to automatically block the uploading of files ending in .webm so that we don't have to worry about this? Is there ever going to be cause to host files here with that extension? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: My understanding is that it is just another video type, and while we don't normally host video it isn't outside of our remit. If we were going to restrict file types it would take a phabricator request, a demonstrated consensus, and reality is we should probably consider each video type. I believe the quicker way to stop the issue is through a checkuser request, with a range block outcome; as it would seem to be an Angolan kid playing away. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:10, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Discussion started at Special:Diff/6560043/prev — billinghurst sDrewth 22:21, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-12

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

A decision has been made about how the Recent Changes filtering scheme will affect current ORES beta feature users. When this new filtering system rolls out as part of the beta, it will replace the current ORES display on the Recent Changes page. That means the automatic color coding, the red “r” symbol and the “hide probably good edits” filter will go away, to be replaced by the new, more nuanced set of filters and user-defined color coding. All other pages that have ORES features, like Watchlist and Related Changes, will remain as they are now for ORES beta users. We think those pages could also benefit from the new filtering system. But we'll wait to see how users react to the beta test—and make any necessary changes—before we start spreading the new UI around. That's the plan as it currently stands. As always, please let us know if you have any thoughts, in any language.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The Filters for Special:RecentChanges description page is now finished and ready for translation.
• On wikis that use ORES, new colors have been chosen for damaging changes displayed on a list of changes. [326]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Problems

• Sometimes, after marking an important number of cross-wiki notifications as read, the counter remained at 1. This is now fixed. [327]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Due to a bug, it was not possible to activate Flow on user talk pages as a Beta feature. This is possible again for wikis that have that feature. [328]
• Flow boards can be moved without constraints. However, this requires the move-Flow-board right. [329]

Miscellaneous

• The MoodBar extension has been removed from all wikis. [330]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:08, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2017.
• The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

• Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English. [331]
• Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. [332]

Problems

• Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. [333]

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings

• The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is done. It decides what the Community Tech team will work on during 2017. You can see the results.

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

20:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Suspicious user

Hello, Billinghurst! (I know that you are an admin and that you are active here, so I write to you). Please take a notice on this user (I have noticed today while being not at my own computer): User:NellOKeeffe01, it seems to me that this is just a spam concealed under fake introducing. --Nigmont (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry for disturbance, because now EncycloPetey has already blocked it and deleted the spam. --Nigmont (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@Nigmont: Yep, typical spambot. Thanks for the early notification. We do have triggers to react, though eyes on pages are truly the best. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:36, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Billinghurst! Let me report of some more wrong users (I've noticed today): spamers: User:Toiturepolaire (spam on the talkpage), User:JoesphSchonell1 (Russian spam), User:ArronMcCarty73; and one seemingly is just a vandal: User:ISLAMIST BARRACK OBAMA. --Nigmont (talk) 19:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thx. All managed, and the urls are now being tracked or blacklisted. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:26, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Index:Armistice Day.djvu

The pages marked in blue, were marked as such because they were sections of the work that couldn't be transcribed for copyright reasons. Ideally someone should also blank the relevant scan pages. ShakespeareFan00 09:49, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. @ShakespeareFan00: I have marked the pages as empty which hides them away. Can you please make the appropriate notes on the Index talk page. I would suggest as a cheat that we can use {{do not move to Commons}} with expiry=20xx in each pertinent section. That will allow us to unwrap each at the appropriate time. If unknown just use 95 years post publication. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:47, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Should be cleaned up now, If you want to review and oversight/revdel past revisions of the pages which contained the problem material, feel free. I can't as not admin. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:51, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

The remaining issue is actual redaction of the scans. Know anyone with djvu tools to do this quickly? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:54, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I've also put in a request for the file to be "localised" - Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Armistice_Day.djvu. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:16, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I really don't understand you and your actions at times. No ability for a reality check. I think that you would cause waves in a kiddies' pool. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:59, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

My apologies for being over-cautious. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:31, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

File "cleaned", and re-uploaded. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:27, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

A Plea for Atheism

You asked for me to tell you when I finished proofreading it, so: I have! Unfortunately there are a couple of pages marked problematic because Hebrew and Greek letters are missing. BethNaught (talk) 20:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)