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Statutes at large Missing pages

Index:Ruffhead - The Statutes at Large - vol 6.djvu Index:Ruffhead - The Statutes at Large - vol 8.djvu

Both of these volume seem to be missing a blank page and the first the page of the 'List of Titles', would it be possible for 2 blank pages to be inserted after the nominal title page, and any contributions on these volumes to be shifted accordingly? Thanks.

I have no idea where replacement scans might be found, Neither Google or Hathi Trust have an exact match for the specfic edition (although Hathi Trust has some volumes of a much later edition by Charles Runnington, that may enable a 'reconstructed' page to be made if someone want to do a lot of image work :( ) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I would rather use the blank pages at the beginning. When replacements are found, they can be swapped. The rest can be left as is.— Mpaa (talk) 21:46, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Index:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu

Can someone swap the scans for Page:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu/1102 and Page:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu/1101 which seem to be in the wrong order? and swap the transcription on those pages as well? Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:56, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Done.— Mpaa (talk) 21:40, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
ThanksShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Other discussions

OCR for Persian

Hey librarians! I know that it is not the right place to ask this but I’m not sure I could find an answer in another place. Is it possible someone could turn on Google OCR for the Persian wikisource (fa.wikisource.org)? We are in desperate need of that. Now the users are taking pictures of the pages and upload them to their Google Docs. Then import the pages into a Google document, and then Google OCRs the picture. The precision is so good that it's worth the hurdle. But the process is long. Can anyone help? --Yousef (talk) 05:50, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

@Yoosef Pooranvary: Add this line in your Mediawiki:Common.js: 
mw.loader.load('//wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:GoogleOCR.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
--Hrishikes (talk) 17:23, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
@Hrishikes: is there a proper way to use it on two columns documents ? like Index:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu ? Assassas77 (talk) 08:57, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
@Assassas77: See Google ocr result on this page. -- Hrishikes (talk) 09:12, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Hmmm, the OCR does help a bit but the result must be edited to be split in two column then. Okay ! Assassas77 (talk) 09:15, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
@Hrishikes: Thank you. It works well. --Yousef (talk) 18:25, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Abbreviations in reference works

Is it acceptable to expand abbreviations when transcribing reference works such as dictionaries? I know that ideally we would try to be faithful to the source material, but some entries have so many abbreviations as to be unintelligible out of context (see diff).--Underlying lk (talk) 15:41, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

No. We strive to present works as they were published. Mass altering of text would not be desirable. However, once the original text exists here in a scan-backed form, it is reasonable to then add a separate copy of the work which has been "annotated", such as by expanding the abbreviations. Draft policy of this can be found at Help:Annotating, but there isn't much there. The key points to note are (1) there should be an original, unannotated copy here first, and (2) that the annotated version should make it clear that the text is annotated. For example, calling it "My Book (annotated)" or "The Annotated My Book" (where 'My Book' is the title of the original. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:47, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
@Underlying lk: As EP said, no, we wouldn't; it doesn't represent the work as published, AND it just makes it harder to accurately proofread. That doesn't stop us from doing a couple of things. 1) If there are not very many, we can transclude them into the notes section. 2) If they are expressed on a list on a page, putting a wikilink into the notes section that points to the abbreviations. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:34, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Follow-up. I see that we have Page:An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language.djvu/21 and Page:An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language.djvu/22 pages that would we would transclude to "name of work/List of Abbreviations]]" probably as a separate page, so typically when we build the transcluded pages we would have a header note "see [[../List of Abbreviations/]]" as this sort of relative link that is such a pointer. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:42, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Good idea, adding a link to the abbreviations surely can't do harm.--Underlying lk (talk) 02:06, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this for some time. How about adding the expanded word in tooltip form, as {{SIC}} is used for example, we could have the best of both worlds. When you hover over the world it will give you the full word.Jpez (talk) 08:57, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Nice idea, but there would be hundreds of thousands of tooltips required across the whole dictionary. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:23, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Lippincott pdf files

I have downloaded several pdf's directly from google. I would like to begin uploading them but was encouraged to come here to check on protocol and first pages and the like.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian: pdf files are not as obedient as djvu files when it comes to transcription, and Google has a shocker of an additional front page (and one that troubles Commons-netizens); which is why we initially and normally push files to InternetArchive then use toolforge:ia-upload to bring in a djvu without the horrid front page. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:53, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: I don't think they are there, with the exception of one of them. The tool to strip the first page is ia-upload, isn't it?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 01:55, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: If you can point me to where the netizens have complained, I might be able to handle their complaints when they come for me.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 04:09, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
This is not about winning the argument, as we have beaten it to a standstill, and currently looking for a tool to resolve, so it is preventing the further occurrences of the problem, preferably. Yes, IA-upload is the upload tool that enables the removal at the upload phase. PDFs can be problematic, greatly more so than djvus. We developed the process to this solution as it worked better. Lived and learned experience. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
One half (that is a guess, not calculated -- it might be closer to one third) of the djvu I have gotten from ia have ocr pages missing or are off by one or two or more pages. I try to be as picky as possible about raw materials, but am hesitant to put the documents through another electronic sieve. I truly would like to read a or the discussion which is one of the advantages of 1) a wiki and 2) people working together. To increase my own knowledge and understanding and also to know the user names of the people who find this important enough to discuss.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
DjVu is a free and open format, produces small files optimised for text, and works with the software. Any problems with a djvu file probably results from poor scans, like the 'needs more jpeg' google file conversions out there. There is an essay Wikisource:DjVu vs. PDF, and some of the related discussion in links to that page, but sooner or later users come to the same conclusion. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 19:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
This discussion is about files that are just not worth converting. Very few images. The OCR is fine enough. I am not going to argue ever for pdf over djvu. The extra step to convert pdf into djvu because djvu is a more preferred format is a different matter.
Instead of this, cygnis who used to have that annoying statue on your page, we should be discussing Lang.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 20:44, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@RaboKarbakian: This is exactly why we upload good files to archive.org. 1) there is another persistent source, esp. out of Google where half the world can be blocked; 2) they are in a bigger array of file types, including JP2 for better image extractionl and 3) we convert them to DJVU through ia-upload. we see that extra step as winning. Additionally as housekeeping we also get the opportunity to get uploads in {{book}} format, rather than {{information}} which is waaaay more useful when creating an index page. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:49, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: is there a specific problem with one of my upload, <pages />, and installing the transcription file into the main space? I made a book template and pasted the information. It is easy if you don't use that stupid wizard. There were mistakes (in the book templates edited paste) but those were fixed at the commons when I found the first page. Also, they all point to the same wikidata entry. That is really the thing that is not right and iaupload doesn't know anything about that.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 02:18, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
All my commentary has been generic about our processes from our lessons learned, nothing specific to your actions. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:56, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-26

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

Problems

  • When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [1][2]

Changes later this week

  • Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [3]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (calendar).

Meetings

  •   You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

œ with circumflex

I need this ^ + œ character (as it appears in the 'immer' entry on this page) but I cannot find it anywhere. An attempt to type it by using ^ as a modifier also failed. Any help is much appreciated.--Underlying lk (talk) 00:31, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

We have a {{unicode}} template that's supposed to handle Unicode letters, but I can't get it to handle a letter that needs to be composed. You'd need U+0302 (the combining circumflex) and U+0153 (the oe-ligature). --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:53, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
@Underlying lk: How is it: œ ^ ? Hrishikes (talk) 01:52, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
The correct Unicode character is œ̂ or œ̂ (which should be the same).--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
That works, thanks!--Underlying lk (talk) 02:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Customise the User option page.

Hi,

When editing pages I recently noticed that there is a empty User option page found at the bottom of the drop down list.

I often find myself changing between the Wiki markup and Accents or Ligatures options etc., is it possible for me to edit and customise the User option page to combine my frequently used Accents and Ligatures etc?

If so could you please point me to the instructions for doing this?

Thanks --Sp1nd01 (talk) 21:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

You can customise it by creating "common.js" as a subpage to your user page. If you search in the User: namespace for "charinsertCustom" (or just search everywhere) you can see how it's done and perhaps get a few ideas. — Mudbringer (talk) 23:47, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Many thanks for the information! I've found and copied your common.js and customised it a little, and it looks like its working exactly as I would like. Looking through some of the other common.js scripts I see there appears to be a lot of other customisation possible. I will probably take a look through some of those other options and have a play now that I am aware of them. Sp1nd01 (talk) 08:35, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Postponement of the deployment of the New Filters on Watchlist

There was a recent announcement about the plans to graduate the New Filters for Edit Review out of beta for this Wiki. It stated that the deployment would happen by late June or early July. Since that announcement, we received feedback about a performance issue related to the change which is being actively worked upon. As a consequence, the deployment is postponed until further notice. Sorry for the inconvenience caused, if any.

Please let us know of any other issues or special incompatibility that you may face so that we could make sure they are solved before the feature gets deployed. Thanks, Kaartic (talk) 15:39, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Tidy to RemexHtml

The Parsing team will be replacing Tidy with RemexHtml at this wiki on 5 July 2018.

Some pages at this wiki use outdated HTML. This change may change the appearance of those pages. Special:LintErrors has a complete list of affected pages.

Read this e-mail message for more information. Read the instructions at mw:Help:Extension:Linter. You can ask questions at mw:Talk:Parsing/Replacing Tidy. Thank you for helping fix these problems.

m:User:Elitre (WMF) 14:38, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-27

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

Recent changes

  • The database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [4]

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [5]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  •   You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Transclusion problem: only three pages, then it's broken

In Tales from the Arabic/Table of Contents of the Calcutta (1839–42) and Boulac Editions the preview gives: 

Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.

and the page is broken. Is there anything I can do to fix it other than simplifying the code? —unsigned comment by Jellby (talk) .

You will probably have to code the TOC as a table, without using the templates. The TOC templates make the page look pretty, but they place a huge strain on the software. It's one reason I don't use them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:18, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
yes, the dotted line templates are memory hogs. for simple TOC s, i use tables with https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/tab2wiki.php , for complex indents, i use the Template:TOC row 2-1-1 family. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 01:04, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Is there any way to affect column widths (especially first and last) with the {{TOC row 2-1-1}} family? Jellby (talk) 16:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
indirectly, by using line breaks like <br>. (and look at how others used the template for examples [6]) keep in mind our work floats at multiple zooms and screen sizes, so layout will be approximate - when i get frustrated, i go do some simple pages. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 16:45, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jellby: If you look at the source of the page, at the end you will see report like 


NewPP limit report
Parsed by mw1276
Cached time: 20180703174918
Cache expiry: 1900800
Dynamic content: false
CPU time usage: 0.948 seconds
Real time usage: 0.996 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 15153/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 0/1500000
Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 20153/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 11/40
Expensive parser function count: 1/500
Unstrip recursion depth: 1/20
Unstrip post‐expand size: 605704/5000000 bytes
Number of Wikibase entities loaded: 0/400
Lua time usage: 0.330/10.000 seconds
Lua memory usage: 1.75 MB/50 MB


Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)
100.00%  831.552      1 -total
 70.94%  589.917    264 Template:Dotted_TOC_line
  9.13%   75.924      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/279
  8.42%   70.016      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/272
  8.35%   69.434      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/273
  8.15%   67.778      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/278
  8.08%   67.160      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/276
  6.91%   57.492      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/275
  6.51%   54.118      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/281
  6.47%   53.815      1 Page:Tales_from_the_Arabic,_Vol_3.djvu/271


{{dotted TOC line}} is one of the experimental templates that doesn't manage its constraints of "Post‐expand include size". The template is a complex beast that many of us cannot untangle, so we don't use it. I wouldn't be thinking about a typographic reproduction, as suggested I would think that a suitable representation of the ToC is sufficient. Personally I just code as tables, and ignore dot leaders. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:34, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

maybe we should have a "help:table of contents" page, maybe at Wikisource:Style guide/TOC. dotted template is a snare for the typographically scrupulous, and not our consensus. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 16:51, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
I would prefer to delete and remove the template. FOR EVERY LINE OF USE it inserts a TABLE with five DIVISIONS. It is overkill for the intended purpose. People getting too damn inveigled in the look of a work, and not in its reasonable presentation. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:01, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
As a novice editor who has recently used the ToC style template, and not being aware of the pros and cons of the numerous templates in use on the site, when I can't find guidance in the help documentation, I tend to try and follow an existing style I have seen or browse through the templates for something which seems to be appropriate. I would certainly appreciate a Wikisource:Style guide/TOC showing a recommended approach. Sp1nd01 (talk) 08:23, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Using {{def}} to expand scribal abbreviations

Does this count as an annotation under WS:ANN? Just wondering what other editors think about this type of markup. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 11:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

It is an interesting example to consider, I would waver between a number of possible approaches and principles if I was transcribing. The notes in the work say this, "The Saxon characters and abbreviations may for the purpose of this collection be read thus, though not critically correct in each instance", at Page:Christmas Carols … /327. I would also be interested to see what others thought, or have done in similar circumstances. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 22:04, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
I'd think it better to offer a separate version in modern orthography, instead of adding that many notes.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree that it would be better, but I'm not sure that it's required. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:31, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
When the same form appears repeatedly in a carol, wouldn't it be better to mark just the first one? In most cases I don't think the abbreviated forms are any more difficult to recognize than obsolete spellings such as "cyte" or "nyzt". My personal preference would be to provide a clean transcription, and a cross reference to an edition with modern orthography. This edition seems to have most of them. — Mudbringer (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Re-scheduled deployment of the New Filters on Watchlist

There was a recent announcement about the plans to graduate the New Filters for Edit Review out of beta for this Wiki. The deployment was stalled to fix the performance issue related to the change. The performance of the new interface has been improved significantly as an outcome of the work by the developers [7]. So, the deployment has been re-scheduled. The deployment is scheduled for this wiki on July 16th 2018.

Please let us know of any other issues or special incompatibility that you may face so that we could make sure they are solved before the feature gets deployed. -- Kaartic (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Blackletter and the transclusion limit

Is there a way to deal with large lists of alternating Blackletter-normal words without incurring into the transclusion limit? I have split the list into five different subpages and there are still too many instances of {{bl}} to display all the content.--Underlying lk (talk) 03:02, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Not with the template the way it is. It has a "switch" in the coding that balloons the computing power needed for the template. To preserve the look of the text, you'd probably need a simpler version of the current template that was coded for use only in Kluge that could work with far less code. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:39, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
If anyone else runs into the same problem, I created {{Blackletter light}} (even though it didn't fully solve the issue in my case).--Underlying lk (talk) 17:36, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have it be a large span and then unset the non-blackletter parts? MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:27, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
  •   Comment I would prefer that we simplify {{blackletter}} (back) to doing its simple job well, removing the kruft. For the vast bulk of what needs to happen it doesn't need the baggage. If there needs to be a more complex form, then we build that separately. We can clean up with a bot. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
After reading Wikisource:Style guide/Orthography I decided to use the Blackletter font in the Page namespace, and remove it elsewhere.--Underlying lk (talk) 01:31, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

nested? templates

Is it problematic to have a block center template nested (if correct word) within another block center template? Please reference this page. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't know whether it's a problem in the technical sense, but given the length of this particular piece (relatively speaking), is there a reason for placing the entire content into a block center template? I'd use a layout 2 on the final copy and place just the short bit of text into a block center. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:53, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
My answer to your question is that I would like the whole text to be block centered. Remind me: Is layout 2 in a different font than default layout? My overall wish is for uniformity of formatting for the whole work. Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Re: Layout 2. This is the preferred formatting I use for drama. View Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902)/Tyrtaeus to see what it looks like; the top portion is a paragraph of text, the bottom poetic portion is in a block center template. It sets the margins so that text width is restricted, and you don't get as much variation in line width, which helps for drama or lengthy poems that have shorter and longer lines. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes. I can see why you would use it, and will keep it in mind for future works. But I still am not keen on the difference in font style, and if nesting block center templates is not an issue techniclly, I think I'll keep things as is for now at least, although with an open mind :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

  Comment I don't believe that it should be problematic to nest them, they are divs within divs, and should do their tasks suitably as long as the coding internally is compliant. They have been nested in other places without issue. What issue concerns you? — billinghurst sDrewth 22:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-28

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

  • WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [8]
  • The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [9]
  •   All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [10]

Problems

  • When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [11]
  • Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [12]

Changes later this week

  • When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [13][14]
  • On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [15]
  • When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [16]
  • Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [17]
  •   When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [18]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).

Meetings

  •   You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [19]
  • Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [20]

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

23:10, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences are available

Global preferences are now available, you can set them by visiting your new global preferences page. Visit mediawiki.org for information on how to use them and leave feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

19:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

March of the Volunteers

  • Isn't this in the wrong language?
  • The lyrics are still copyrighted until January 2019 in China and Taiwan, and probably until January 2036 in the United States. Should this be deleted?

Jc86035 (talk) 08:17, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

the proper venue for that discussion is here c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:March of the Volunteers. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 11:54, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

"Technical administrators" are coming: we need a plan

For those of you who are not aware of the ongoing consultation at Meta, a change is coming which will affect who can edit CSS and JS pages in the MediaWiki: namespace. A new group called "technical administrators" will be created and only they will be able to do this. Important quotes from the consultation page:

"By default, bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant group membership to users, the same way it works with admins. How to appoint new technical administrators will be left at the discretion of each local community (or the global Wikimedia community if that community creates a global policy through the usual means)."

"A new set of permissions (editsitecss and editsitejs) is being introduced to MediaWiki; to edit a .css or .js page in the MediaWiki namespace, both the old editinterface permission and the corresponding editsiteXXX permission will be needed. Admins and other user groups who currently have editinterface will receive the new rights for a short migration period (so that the transition can happen without any disruption) but eventually won't have them, and the software will enforce that no other groups than technical admins can have it."

"After this consultation ends, there will be a migration period (probably two weeks) in which the technical administrator user group will exist but normal administrators will still be able to edit CSS/JS. Please make sure your community is aware of this so they can add people to the technical administrator group during that time, and have a process for deciding who gets added. (What that migration process should be is left to each local community; it could be as simple as adding every administrator who asks for it.)"

"Also, please make sure your wiki has some documentation and election process for the new group past the migration period. Again, this could be as simple as asking newly elected administrators whether they also want to be technical administrators and whether they are familiar with Javascript and basic security practices. In any case, it is recommended to make the bar for technical admins at least as high as for admins (in terms of trust and user behavior), and maybe even higher (see the user group page for more advice)."

The consultation runs to 23 July and the migration period after that is expected to be 2 weeks. That gives us one month to decide a policy governing this group and implement it. I was thinking it would be helpful if people could express their initial ideas first, and then we can crystallise those comments into a formal policy proposal. BethNaught (talk) 15:19, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

  • My opinion: we should add "technical administrator" to the Restricted access policy separately from administrators. Access and revocations should be discussed in the same way as for other restricted access roles. Users should be able to make "rolled-up" applications, i.e. request adminship and techadminship at the same time. Likewise confirmations should occur together (as for bureaucrats, for example). At any rate, we should use this as a starting point for simplicity, and re-evaluate later on if desired. As for current admins, any active admin who has a record of editing site JS or CSS without problems should be grandfathered in without a discussion (although still subject to confirmation). BethNaught (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

We have tried to keep things simple, non-hierarchical, where adminship is access to tools, not an elevated personal status. Though being aware of the issues that occurred which and has driven this technical change, the community should be more restrictive of that right. So, my thoughts are

technical
  1. rights in independent groups (eg. admin and techadmin)
  2. techadmin group can be assigned by local bureaucrat
    • noting that 'crats can now assign people to groups with an automatic expiry, so temporary assignations are easy and possible
  3. ability for local 'crats to remove techrights group directly
    • whereas we continue the existing practice of the standard removal of admin group to be on recommendation of 'crats to stewards
  4. specify the name that we wish to have in place for this group (per project page)
procedural
  1. yes, address function of both groups at Wikisource:adminship in different sections
  2. applications for adminship/techadminship would state the right(s) requested on application to, and consensus of, the community
  3. existing admins should identify if they require techrights, with justification, and be grandfathered
    • run process at Wikisource:Administrator (we can use global message bot to ping all admins on their talk pages), and no response means standard admin rights, 'crats retroactively able to assign
  4. enWS qualifications for assignation of the techadmin rights can be determined at our rate independent of above process as this is not a particularly active zone (bar to access should not be extreme IMNSHO)

— billinghurst sDrewth 23:21, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Book only available on Google Books

This pamphlet is relevant to my work and I'd like to set in motion a transcription project, but I find it on Google Books and nowhere else. I could ask the British Library for the PDF, but I hope that someone may have the ability to import the book from Google Books- I seem to remember there being a tool to do this, although I don't see it in the Help pages. Thanks in advance for any help, MartinPoulter (talk) 20:23, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

You may be thinking of the Book Uploader Bot. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
If you would he happy with the PDF, you can just download it from GBooks itself—from the cog menu. BethNaught (talk) 21:16, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@MartinPoulter: c:File:Description and Use of a New Celestial Planisphere.pdf -- Hrishikes (talk) 10:00, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Consultation on the creation of a separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all,

I'm preparing a change in who can edit sitewide CSS/JS pages. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which are executed in the browser of all readers and editors.) Currently all administrators are able to edit these pages, which poses a serious and unnecessary security risk. Soon, a dedicated, smaller user group will take over this task. Your community will be able to decide who belongs in this group, so this should mean very little change for you. You can find out more and provide feedback at the consultation page on Meta. If you are involved in maintaining CSS/JS code, or policymaking around adminship requests, please give it a look!

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

See #"Technical administrators" are coming: we need a plan above. BethNaught (talk) 11:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

section problems

i have been going through old encyclopedias adding sections, i.e. [21]. however, it appears the wikieditor is converting the section tag to "##" and then breaking them, [22] making subsequent edits much harder. this is a recent problem. is there a work around? Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 22:05, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I've always used the double-hashtag notation, as I find it easier to use. I believe there is (or was) some setting in the Preferences to adjust how sections are treated when editing, but cannot find it at the moment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:13, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
it is wrapping the initial ## in nowiki, [23] forcing section tags to save sections ; turned off "easy LST" gadget, but problem remains for me. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 22:06, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
It worked fin when I edited just now, but I think the problem may have been that you had two separate "s7" sections (one of them I changed to s6). The duplicate section name may have been causing the problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:41, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
no, it is a wikitext editor setting that is so opaque, i cannot undo - i.e. [24] i guess i will stop saving any page with a section tag. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 23:56, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Check your "Gadget" Preferences settings. I have checked "Easy LST: Enable the easy section labeling syntax in the Page: namespace" on mine under Page namespace options. Do you have this activated? It could be the issue. This is the setting I couldn't locate before. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:31, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
no dice. all editing gadgets off = same problem. the wiktext editor is highlighting the initial ## in blue and preventing saving as a section tag. it also loads previous section tags as ## and then breaks them. this is in firefox and chrome. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 00:45, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm also using Firefox, so that at least doesn't seem to be the issue (at least not on its own). Are you using AWB or some other editing tool? I tend to edit manually and don't get highlighting. If it's an editing tool issue, I won't likely be able to help with solutions. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:58, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

  Comment For your two identified links when I am viewing them in standard editing mode, I am not seeing any issues with the pages, ie. no breakages. Can you please edit some more pages and save so we can have some actual diffs. I am wondering whether it is just your editor rendering things incorrectly, rather than the output generated, though don't have enough data to make a credible opinion. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:15, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

here is a snip of edit window Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 7).djvu/44
 
and as saved Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 7).djvu/47
 
i expect it an obscure wikitext setting. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 17:10, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
When I was fixing up lint errors in some of my old sectioned works I found that using the page migration tool by itself worked fine, but if I clicked preview it messed it up.... MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:42, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
ok, i found it - in the edit toolbar. there is a "syntax highlighting" button that toggles on and off. i do not recall turning that on. and in addition to highlighting it adds some nowiki code. do not recall it working that way before. sorry about the drama, very obscure. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 01:06, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Converted Template:custom rule

I have converted Template:custom rule from a table-based template to a div-based template as it wasn't centering in mobile view. I built test cases and checked a range of uses and it looks fine. If anyone finds examples of it breaking then please let me know on the template's talk page adding me as a ping. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:45, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

image centering in mobile fixed too

On the same note, via a phabricator ticket, Londonjackbooks and I have had the universal mobile skin fixed so it centres images where wikicoded to be centred, it had been left aligning them. Another little tick feels good. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:48, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Good news! Mobile view looked very ugly before, I'm glad it's sorted! Jpez (talk) 13:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jpez: nobody had said anything so it has been unaddressed because of that, and for how long??? Can I encourage people to identify the ugly bits and put them before the community for our attention. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

What questions concerning the strategy process do you have?

Hi!

I'm Tar Lócesilion, a Polish Wikipedia admin and a member of Wikimedia Polska. Last year, I worked for Wikimedia Foundation as a liaison between communities and the Movement Strategy core team. My task was to ensure that all online communities were aware of the movement-wide strategy discussion. This year, my task similar. Phase II of the strategy process was launched in April. Currently, future Working Groups members are being selected, and related pages on Meta-Wiki are being designed.

I’d like to learn what questions concerning the strategy process would you like to be answered on the FAQ page? Please answer here, on my talk page, or on a dedicated talk page on Meta-Wiki. Thanks!

If you have any questions or concerns, please, do ask!

Thanks, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

author link

When is using {{al}} problematic, and when is it not? Or is it just a matter of personal style preference? In the past, maybe some years ago, I had used the template, but had it changed by someone to [[Author:]] (I have since forgot who, maybe @Billinghurst:?) I meant to ask why, but never did. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:04, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The name {{al}} does not have clarity to its name, so has those issues, and next to zero people use the full {{author link}} version—count looks to be 3,556 for former, and 51 for latter. So it lacks some clarity for namespace work, and it will fail when used when we have non-personal authors where the pages are in the portal namespace.

If I replaced it, it was probably due to the template not being readily bot'able compared to standard wikilinking to the author namespace, and it was easier to make a change that way for what I was doing. Not certain that I particularly recall doing it, though often it is easier to do a preliminary substitution on something, then linearly apply a regex to a standard replacement than code a more complex regex to take in all the permutations and combinations. [Well for my grade of regex'ing]. Similarly if we are doing a deep search for author links, something like Special:Search/insource:"Author:William Shakespeare" is far better than trying to faff around with trying something like Special:Search/insource:"{{al|William Shakespeare}}" and then the other form of the template; with all the implicit search weaknesses. One area where having one form would just be easier, though not one where it becomes impossible to work, just a rise in the level of difficulty. Waving a magic wand, and I would subst: the lot of them every so often, though not to the point that I am going to have the discussion/argument/... — billinghurst sDrewth 04:21, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 04:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Saxon character set?

Anyone aware of a Saxon character set? At Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/312 I have characters which need setting into the unusual. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:18, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

w:Insular script -- Hrishikes (talk) 08:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Which then leads to MUFI character recommendation v. 4.0 (MUFI = medieval unicode font initiative) which indicates that they are not current characters within Unicode. Anyone have thoughts on how they would like to see them transcribed? Just standard, or do we want to try to dig through Template:ULS -> mw:Universal Language Selector? — billinghurst sDrewth 10:53, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
ULS is already implemented via {{insular}}. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:33, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-29

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

Changes later this week

  • Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [28]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).

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Future changes

  • Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
  • You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Ebook-only tag?

The ws-noexport tag works well enough to exclude parts of a page from the ebook (and print) version. I'm looking for something to achieve the opposite, so that some content will only show up in the epub/pdf (this would be helpful to link pages within the ebook, among other things). {{Only in print}} promises to achieve this, but it doesn't seem to be working.--Underlying lk (talk) 21:55, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

ia upload generated scans seem always to be off

When the OCR is not available to use, getting the uploaded OCR'd via IA-upload tool seems to always generate OCR which is off by one in the beginning and probably missing pages as the scan progresses.

I am not sure if it is something I am doing or not doing.... If it was my software, I would be suspicious of the part that drops the first page except that does not seem to be the direction that the scans are off.

How do I progress from here?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 21:52, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I think that under some conditions IA-upload tool fails. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T194861. The djvu file needs to be manually fixed.— Mpaa (talk) 07:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Anyone else having personal common.js issues?

I am having failure in the operation of my scripts from my common.js page. They worked a couple of days ago, and fail today, and it looks as though they are just not seen, as I can move them to my global.js page and they work fine. Is anyone else having issues? — billinghurst sDrewth 14:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Cleanup scripts or other? I still have not eliminated redundancies from transferring my data to global—tried my scripts from here and they seem to work ok. All my customized edit buttons work ok as well. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:46, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
  Comment Not sure if this is related, but yesterday I would occasionally have the software render labels in Polish instead of English, e.g. on Index pages. The effect was not limited to Wikisource, but on Wikisource a hard purge solved the problem each time it occurred. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:52, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, sounds like I have a personal issue, though cannot say why. Reverting to a point in time hasn't helped. I must be missing something obvious. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:45, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

H. M. Elliot

I think it will be benificial if H. M. Elliot's work "The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians" is covered and made available here. It is one of the most authoritative, even if quite biased, source for history of Muslim rule of India to early colonisation period. The authors are long dead and the publisher no longer exist. It was published first in UK. Any advice on how to go about it will be helpful. MonsterHunter32 (talk) 16:00, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

See Help:Beginner's_guide_to_adding_texts.— Mpaa (talk) 17:22, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
here is a search of internet archive [29] appears to be 3 volume work --Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 00:34, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
This is a 8-volume work: Links at Author:Henry Miers Elliot. Hrishikes (talk) 01:26, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

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

  • When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [30]
  • Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [31]
  • Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [32]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

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09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Index view of page status—diff between logged in and logged out

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T199288

For me, if I view the page Index:The empire and the century.djvu logged in I am seeing the page status with appropriate proofreading colours. Whereas if I am logged out, I see no page status colouring. Is that what others are seeing? — billinghurst sDrewth 23:00, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I saw no colours either way on desktop. However in mobile mode I see them both logged in and logged out. BethNaught (talk) 23:04, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I can confirm that for mobile. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:03, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
User:Zdzislaw and me created a workaround for this problem: some JavaScript code that purges index page when the problem is noticed. Users who are troubled by this problem may copy the workaround fom my common.js to their own common.js or import it from sourceswiki where I make it available as a . This workaround should be removed once T199288 is fixed. Ankry (talk) 06:58, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Translation published before the original work

May I ask somebody who is familiar with US copyright to look at this case? Is this book OK for Wikisource? Ankry (talk) 14:18, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Based on that discussion, it should be ok under {{PD-US-no-notice}}. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I didn't see that we established that it was first published in the US, and thus not restored by the URAA.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:00, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Original contributors' works

As a public domain and free-knowledge enthusiast, I have been thinking of a place to publish some of the things I wrote as a kid for the whole world to see...to use for whatever purpose they want to. No matter how juvenile or immature these works may have been, I somehow feel it is my right to make them freely accessible.

Also, I am in the process of writing a novel right now, and want to make it publicly available when it's done, somewhere.

Your inclusion criteria mentions "added value", a concept which I'm afraid I don't understand. What "value" are you talking about? Does community consensus alone verify that a work is important enough to be included here, or does some technical criterion, such as the work actually having been officially published somewhere?

I understand that my (or most other users') writing probably doesn't belong in the mainspace, but I just want to clearly understand what exactly draws the line and what doesn't. Also, if I copy my free content into subpages of my user space, is that going to get deleted as clutter? If not, unrelated to Wikisource, what is the best place to publish original content to the public domain, which is easily searchable, findable, and navigable? Probably FAQ types of questions, but please understand I'm new. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:05, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

The "added value" clause is interpreted in a number of ways. For instance, we invoke it for unpublished journals or letters of famous individuals. Its spirit is to allow for items that are likely to be of significant interest to our users in some way, or which have some academic or historical value by virtue of their provenance. Original contributions, however, tend to be frowned upon. We don't bar them entirely, but we usually want the works to have undergone some sort of vetting process, such as a thesis which has had academic review, or works whose author has gone on to achieve fame or notoriety. We do also have some efforts here to provide Wikisource-created original translations of published works, but that is a different animal with its own set of guidelines.
I'm not sure what sorts of places would welcome original self-publication, with a wide audience, or without assessing fees to publish. That's a question better answered by someone else. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure who you are but it's possible that you are a notable person whose unpublished work could be reprinted here. (e.g. scientific work not published). I personally would have no problem with you having personal writings in the username space assuming 1.) you didn't have some wildly excessive amount, 2.) they don't otherwise infringe on copyright, and 3.) they weren't obscene. But really this isn't the platform for first publication except in some very narrow circumstances. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:28, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
To clarify, I am not a notable individual by anyone's standards, and my works are not scientific or academically notable (if academic at all). I only want to publish some things I wrote when I was younger because I want to allow people to access and use them freely. It is for no purpose of personal pride in these works that I want to make them accessible (in fact, many I today think are ridiculous), but only for the mere reason of making them accessible.
I was wondering if the userspace here is a good place to do this, and to link to on other wikis. Sounds like it is; by analogy, entry-looking neologisms are allowed in reasonable amounts on Wiktionary userspace, articles on non-notable topics allowed in the Wikipedia userspace, so it makes sense to do the same here. There is no overly excessive amount, probably less than 15, and even that's a stretch. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
We have given lots of latitude in user namespace. Be reasonable, be practical, don't stretch friendships, don't break copyright. This is covered at WS:WWI#Original contributions — billinghurst sDrewth 21:42, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
(ec) @PseudoSkull: I think that you can say we apply a "notability" standard. Generally we are reproducing work that has passed a review process be it fiction or non-fiction; or documents of historical significance/notability (ie. stood the test of time), so best guidance is WS:WWI. Within that there will be argument, and I would say that where it is a Wikimedia-related publication then we have possibly been more accommodating, eg. conference presentations. Maybe also peak at Wikisource:For Wikipedians for some flavour. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:40, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

I would also recommend posting to https://everything2.com/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:02, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Size of editing window

Do I remember that one used to be able to set length/width size limits in Preferences for one's editing window? Has this option gone away, is it somewhere other than preferences, or am I not remembering correctly? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 08:53, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Your memory serves you right, but the feature to set the number of rows for editing was removed a long time ago. I set my windows sizes, text width, and font size in my common.css and common.js. Please feel free to copy. Ineuw 10:17, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
(ec) Yes, it used to be on the editing tab. I did a quick search on w:MediaWiki 1.30, mw:MediaWiki 1.31 and mw:MediaWiki 1.32 for window size though didn't see anything obvious. You may wish to try alternate searches to see where it disappeared. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:25, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
If I can set dimensions myself using css or js pages, that would be ideal (but @Ineuw:, I am not sure which entry at your pages is what I am supposed to copy. It's not evident to me). The width of my window is fine, but I would like to play with the length (it needs to be shorter—that is, fewer lines—than it currently is). @Billinghurst: Wondering how would my searching for the case of the disappearing feature help me accomplish what I am looking to do? Thanks both! Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:11, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
@Londonjackbooks: Waited for you to let me know what you needed. I can copy and install it for you. Are you editing side by side where text edit is in a column on the left, or over and under where the text edit is in the lower window? — Ineuw talk 21:20, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ineuw: I edit using side-by-side. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 04:27, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

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

  • The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [33]

Problems

  • Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [34][35]
  • Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [36][37]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

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14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

No TOC in Mobile View

(moving from user talk page) Greetings! The page Translation:Likutei_Moharan when viewed in Mobile, does not show the TOC. The code has the {{toc|limit=3}} code and the TOC works great in Desktop, but I don't see it in Mobile. Any idea? Thanks, Nissimnanach (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2018 (UTC)Nissimnanach

Bump. Also this problem seems general and not dependent on the toc limit -- that is, this page too in Mobile did not show toc for me. Nissimnanach (talk) 22:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)Nissimmananch
Looks like this is a feature of the 'Minerva' skin used by the mobile site (eg. en.m.wikisource.org), which does not display the built-in Table of Contents. See, for example: https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Translation:Likutei_Moharan&useskin=minerva. This is also the same behavior found on the other wiki sites (eg. wikipedia itself), which use the same or substantially similar theme. --Mukkakukaku (talk) 06:40, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks but so is that legit? Wouldn't you like to have the TOC on mobile devices, especially when a phone is say 3x5" compared to a 17" PC screen! Am I in the right place here to complain about this or should this discussion then be moved to a Minerva developers'/community page which where would that be. Nissimnanach (talk) 14:35, 5 August 2018 (UTC)Nissimnanach
If you browse Wikipedia in mobile, you'll see that instead of having a TOC they instead decided to make all of the sections 'collapsible', and have all of the sections be closed. So when you go to a longish article, what you'll see is the introductory paragraph(s), followed by all of the section headers in the article. It works well enough in Wikipedia for their use case (articles). Not so much here.
This is rather an intrinsic part of the Minerva style design. I'm not entirely sure where the appropriate venue is to complain about it. That being said, you may want to consider using a template like {{Auxiliary Table of Contents}} and moving each chapter to a sub-page of the work. --Mukkakukaku (talk) 16:02, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I've divided the page into three major parts, and added that TOC template to the main page. Each of those three parts has its own sections and toc. How can I get those TOC's transcluded into the main page TOC? I've tried

{{CompactTOCalpha-fromsubpage}}

which didn't work (it's on the page code currently) and I don't want the alpha so it seems there needs to be a TOC-fromsubpages|limit=# template.. Nissimnanach (talk) 21:34, 5 August 2018 (UTC)Nissimnanach

For last question, moved to new topic below, how to transclude TOC from subpages Nissimnanach (talk) 21:04, 8 August 2018 (UTC)Nissimnanach

Google OCR

Following up a discussion from WS:Scriptorium/Help#OCR text layer is off for ~second half of book.

Thanks to @Hrishikes: suggestion, I've installed the Google OCR. When it works, it seems to usually do a very good job. However, two things:

  • Often, it seems to have no effect whatsoever. Is this a known bug? Anything I can do?
  • Occasionally, the original OCR seems to offer better results. I'll try to document an example, if folks think that would be useful.

@Billinghurst: Is the proposal to simply enable a gadget, which would place the Google OCR button alongside the existing one (as the instructions Hrishikes gave me do)? Or is it to permanently replace the existing one? If the latter, my questions above seem more pressing. -Pete (talk) 18:01, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I have no specific plan, I simply gadgetised Google OCR to make it more readily available. It is up to the community to determine what happens in the gadget space. [I am aware that Mpaa has done some magic to leverage Google OCR with pywikibot, which is aligned with the tool and any of its strengths and weaknesses, though not directly with the gadget.] — billinghurst sDrewth 21:31, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
I would keep both buttons. So one can easily compare which is better on a case by case basis. I see no harm in it.— Mpaa (talk) 07:58, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: Installing Google OCR in common.js of the user and choosing the gadget should have same effect; it should not replace the existing Tesseract OCR, except by specific inactivation in Mediawiki:common.js. Now about the quality. It would be helpful if you could provide specific example where Tesseract output is better than Google output. I have used both, but am yet to see such a phenomenon, at least I don't remember. Anyway, various ocr applications give different outputs. Most books here are from IA and have pre-existing ABBYY ocr. The ocr buttons are for Tesseract ocr and Google Cloud Vision ocr. Google Cloud Vision ocr recognises the language of the Wikisource domain and gives output accordingly. For example, it gives excellent Bengali ocr in Bengali Wikisource, but does not recognise Bengali script in English Wikisource. Sometimes it is overloaded (= Google ocr is external, it fetches the ocr from Google; not internal like Tesseract), and doesn't give any ocr. But you will get the ocr if you try after some time. For doing ocr of the whole book semi-automatically, you can use Google Drive ocr, by using the OCR4wikisource script. Google Drive ocr can also be used by direct uploading of the pages as images or short pdfs to Google Drive and then opening with Google Docs. The output is slightly different between these two types of Google ocr. I have also used Microsoft Office Document Imaging for creating ocr layer for djvu files created offline. All these ocrs have different outputs, but generally, ABBYY and Google are best, IMHO. Hrishikes (talk) 10:26, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@Hrishikes: I've been on the lookout for places where Google OCR underperforms. I agree that it's generally very good, but I know you're interested in the anomalies, so here are a couple examples. On this page of poetry, it seemed to get very confused by indented lines, and put them in odd places in the text. On this page, it somehow missed the word "still," and instead put simply the letter "s". (The first change visible in the diff.) I've encountered both these errors on various pages, these are fairly representative examples. FWIW. -Pete (talk) 21:57, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: Yes, I am aware of such issues. When I encounter these (see this page, for example, in ocr mode), I just correct them and move on. Hrishikes (talk) 03:22, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks all for all the clarifications. @Billinghurst: I did think you were discussing something more ambitious than you've described; making a gadget out of a useful user script is of course an uncontroversial benefit.

@Hrishikes: Very helpful info. On reflection, I'm not sure I want to stand behind my earlier statement that Google OCR is sometimes worse; I don't remember very clearly, but it may be that I'm thinking of cases where both OCR buttons yield less-than-satisfactory results, with different kinds of problems. Here's a page where that's the case. (Note, perhaps its yellow background has something to do with it.) -Pete (talk) 07:07, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Uploading the page image to Google Drive gets better OCR, I have checked. I did not put the output in the page as you have already edited it. Hrishikes (talk) 07:36, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Hrishikes: Interesting. Please feel free to do so if it's still handy; I only saved the text layer with very minimal edits, I haven't done anything substantial there yet. -Pete (talk) 07:45, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: Please check. Hrishikes (talk) 07:53, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes...vastly better, thank you! -Pete (talk) 08:02, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Boys' Life

I'm new here. If this magazine is still being published today under the same name, are old versions of it (from 1923 and under) in the public domain? I'd like to make freely accessible here old versions of the magazine, as I find them very entertaining historical reads. Learning about young people from the 1910s-20s and the Scouting movement back then is my intention with this pursuit. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:31, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Under US law, anything published before 1923 is in public domain, including old issues of magazines. The license may not extend to other countries, depending on the author's date of death, but for en.WP, we concern ourselves with US copyright status. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@PseudoSkull: And just in case I'm talking down to you, please let me apologize beforehand: the fact that it's published today may mean that someone has a trademark on the name "Boy's Life" and certain trade dress associated with it but that trademark cannot serve as a perpetual copyright on previous work. That may be where a confusion is setting in: whether or not something is continuously published today will not impact that old copyrighted material but may make a big difference in trademark issues. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:38, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
First copyright renewals for periodicals says "Boys' Life: issues renewed from July 1934 (v. 24 no. 7); see 1962 Jan-Jun; contributions renewed from Oct. 1923; see Jan-Jun 1951". We'd have to be careful, but we could go about a decade beyond 1923. I don't know where he's seeing Oct. 1923; the first renewed contribution I see is in 1927. 1923 works will also be clearly public domain in January.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:08, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
don’t see much scanned at Internet Archive. [38] one standout issue 1924-01 [39] ; they appear at google books [40] but not scanned? i see they have an archive site with scans. https://boyslife.org/wayback/
maybe a trip to the library is in order, in addition to Dance Magazine. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 19:43, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Don't worry; all volumes are on Google Books. I'm doing the monking, since it actually helps with my reading, if you guys don't mind me doing that. See my contributions in my user space. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:08, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
i would suggest uploading them to internet archive, and then to commons using the IAuploader, (then we can have side by side transcription. see also Help:Beginner's guide to adding texts. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 02:12, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@PseudoSkull: Without side by side scans, then the works will never be validated, and will not feature at our site. To get quality-rated works, we do recommend scans. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:22, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, I finished what I guess you would call the first stage of rewriting the story "The Lost Express". I feel good that I accomplished that. I understand I'm probably gonna need to do a lot of extra things to these before they can be officially published here, including at least one personal proofread and probably a peer proofread as well, but I will work on that later. I look to do this whole reading-writing thing more often now, so that's where my contribution to Wikisource comes in. By the way, unrelated, but you guys should probably give that story a read. It was full of great creativity and suspense and was a very enjoyable reading experience for me, so just throwing it out there in case you want to enjoy it yourselves. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:43, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
@PseudoSkull:: see comments above about side by side scans. You will soon find out that you will have to redo a lot of work if you do not start with the right step.— Mpaa (talk) 10:06, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
So you mean you want me to give it a second scan? (as in, buy this and scan it)? I mean surely the book is legitimate in the first place, I won't have to redo any steps due to just the nonexistence of 2 scans right? PseudoSkull (talk) 14:54, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
You were given advice about the process above. See Help:Beginner's guide to adding texts, step 1. Get a file with scans where you (legitimately) find it.— Mpaa (talk) 16:17, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
cut and paste text layer is so 2011, and gutenberg-like. we have been going through and redoing the old ones, i.e. [41] by doing the setup work, we can host complete issues in a e-reader / phone friendly format, with a good provenance to the scan.
do not need to buy issues. the old scans are at their archive site and google books.[42] (and we normally book scan at library) please experiment with uploading complete issues
ok did first one https://archive.org/details/2ThyM8T1J4C, bouncing at commons for the moment.[43] try some other issues - i can help if you have questions. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 17:23, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
File:Boys'_Life_Mar_1,_1911.djvu.— Mpaa (talk) 21:00, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
thanks Index:Boys' Life Mar 1, 1911.djvu , we could use a commons template:magazine for the issn number, like book Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 16:49, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

New user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all!

To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.) A new user group, interface-admin, has been created. Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).

You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.

Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

This is happening in five days, so we need to be ready. See previous discussion at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2018-07#"Technical_administrators"_are_coming:_we_need_a_plan. BethNaught (talk) 09:11, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
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